Viewers in the five leading European markets watched an additional two hours of on-demand TV in 2017 compared to the previous year, as consumption of live and recorded content continued to decline, according to a report from IHS Markit.
Despite the rise in online video consumption, total TV and video viewing time has remained broadly stable for the past six years in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK at a daily average of 247 minutes, the study found.
The share of viewing time devoted to online platforms has increased, with an average of 10 minutes extra per-person per-day devoted to online short-form video content (up to 15 minutes in length), and eight minutes to long-form content (over 15 minutes in length), the report said.
The IHS Markit analsysts commented that while subscription content has continued to gain market share, monetization of on-demand and time-shifted viewing, via ad-insertion and tracking technology, has been slow to keep up.
The growth in on-demand viewing in 2017 was led by the UK, where daily linear viewing time declined by more than eight minutes per person and where consumption of recorded content also declined for the second consecutive year. Meanwhile, on-demand viewing increased by five daily minutes per person.
Online long-form consumption grew 21 percent, rising three minutes per-person per-day compare to 2016, and subscription over-the-top (OTT) services accounted for 74 percent of viewing minutes, compared to 69 percent in 2016.
In France, online long-form viewing time increased by 41.6 percent year over year, or approximately five additional viewing minutes per-person per-day. Netflix, the leading OTT player in France, accounted for three out of four net OTT subscriptions in 2017. CanalPlay, which led the market before Netflix launched in France, experienced subscription declines and it standalone OTT service in 2018.
IHS Markit argued that the shift to OTT consumption signals a need for pay-TV operators to act quickly, in order to retain their position in the market.
