Source: Deloitte 2015
I went to the Deloitte Media Consumer 2015 survey presentation presented by Matt Guest, their Head of Digital Strategy EMEA. The survey focusses on media consumption habits in the UK, and was an informal, highly interactive presentation. So interactive, that I apologise to the rest of the audience for asking so many questions.
The invite pulled out some key stats:
- A third of us watch the same TV shows every day
- 61% watch on average one short form video a day
- The younger generation prefers sharing social media content with a limited amount of followers
- 36% of adults feel they don’t need to go and see big releases in the cinema as they are available on demand so quickly
- For up-to-date news content, 70% of users turn to Twitter
One of the points raised was how Deloitte have changed their data collection strategy for the survey. Self-reported data simply can’t be trusted, because all too often there is an underlying cause of inaccurate answers. As Dr House says, “Everybody lies”.
Video
Television audiences are definitely shrinking. Last weekend was the lowest terrestrial television ratings for a weekend in the UK. TV advertising revenues continue to attract the highest advertising costs though.
PewDiePie on YouTube outperforms Coronation Street for viewing figures in every metric. Except for ad revenue.
Broadcasters and producers are still having a hard time shifting to online platforms. They still insist of making short form clips of longer programmes, and wonder why the number of viewers is low compare to PewDiePie and Fred.
Of course, all of this goes out of the window when you think of sport, which continues to have massive audiences and is the most valuable of all video content.
There is still a trend for journalists to produce more content (large news organisations require around ten articles per day, compared to a single article a few years ago) and are now measured on traffic – which can be directly measured against advertising revenue.
Social
According to Deloitte’s survey, 50% of social network users mainly use the sites to keep up to date and communicate with friends; 70% of respondents don’t click on social media ads. Yet still the ad revenues keep increasing.
There are social media influencers, who have huge followings and are paid lots of money by brands for product placement, and know how to maximise revenue on the latest platforms. For instance, it’s natural for influencers to film and watch video in a portrait format rather than traditional landscape.
Although these were the key highlights, it’s worth reading the report in full, available here.
Interesting insights as usual Bradders Whilst I don’t despute Deloiite’s pedigree in this area I think there is a stark difference between how TV viewing figures and online viewing figures are calculated. Equally the value of a TV viewer is significantly different to broadcasters and advertisers (as demonstrated by advertising revenue being lower for online).
Whilst there is indisputably a trend towards online viewing the home viewers makes a greater commitment to watching a show in the home gathering together for big events. The online viewer is more casual and probably less discerning (the 65m viewers could be 1m people watching the same clip 65 times on average). Whilst this doesn’t necessarily change things it doesn’t automatically mean that broadcasters should look online for future viewers but they need to seek to balance the two whilst still continuing to produce high quality programming. The days when a TV channel could fill the airwaves with low quality broadcasting in order to broadcast 24 hours a day are probably numbered.
I agree with your points Max. Perhaps TV broadcasters should replace their low quality programmes with even lower quality cat videos to get higher audiences.
More seriously, what we both agree on is the fragmentation of viewers and their habits – those people who want to watch a scheduled programme on a large telly, watch it online through a catch-up website/app on their tablet, and grab a short interview with one of the cast on YouTube.
This is harder for broadcasters and production companies to deal with than the previous model of ‘a straightforward’ 45 minute episode.