Research |
Analyst: French say‘ non’ to Netflix
Netflix has yet to conquer the hearts and minds of the French, according to research from media analyst firm Ampere Analysis. Despite a global march to SVoD viewing on services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime, France solidly bucks the trend with the lowest uptake of SVoD among countries surveyed. This is despite having one of the highest uptakes of paid television. Data from Ampere’ s latest survey shows that French homes are the least likely among 14 countries surveyed to take SVoD overall and the least likely to take SVoD with a companion pay offer.
On-going research by Ampere Analysis has shown that, in Europe and the US, homes are increasingly likely to supplement their viewing by combining SVoD with a pay-TV service from a cable, satellite or IPTV provider or to take SVoD without a pay-TV service at all, but the French still prefer traditional pay-TV services and are not paying to also add SVoD services such as Netflix.
Ampere Analysis polled 28,000 people across 14 markets to evaluate their
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TV consumption habits. The research reveals the French market’ s unique character:
• Despite having one of the highest rates of pay-TV uptake among countries surveyed, French pay- TV homes are the least likely to also take an SVoD subscription to complement their pay-TV service. Of the homes taking pay-TV or SVoD, only 32 % in France take both, the lowest rate among countries surveyed.
• French Internet users are more than twice as likely to prefer pay-TV over SVoD. Overall, 31 % have an SVoD service compared to 76 % who take a traditional pay- TV offer.
• By comparison, in the US 72 % have SVoD and 71 % have pay-TV, and in the UK 67 % have pay-TV and 58 % subscribe to SVoD.
• While the US and most of Europe is heading rapidly towards SVoD being an essential add-on to pay-TV, France continues to resist.
• In both the US and UK, pay- TV in combination with an SVoD service is now the most common way to take paid television, with fewer homes having pay-TV without SVoD in these countries.
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Ampere Analysis also found that where SVoD is taken, it is more likely to be as part of a content stack. Only 3.1 % of French households are SVoD only, compared to 14.3 % in the US and 14.4 % in the UK.
In terms of prospects for change, Ampere Analysis notes that 61 % of 18 to 24-year olds in France have an SVoD subscription, suggesting that at 61 %, 18 to 24-year olds are much more likely to have SVoD – the comparative figure for the total Internet audience is 31 %. This compares favourably to countries such as Spain, where 67 % of 18 to 24- year olds have SVoD compared to 51 % among the general population. It remains lower than other major markets such as the UK( 81 % vs. 58 %), Germany( 78 % vs. 51 %) and the US( 86 % vs. 72 %)
• Enthusiasm for SVoD is France is clearly driven by younger consumers who make up almost two thirds of France’ s SVoD subscribers
• One third( 32.6 %) of Netflix’ s audience in France is aged 18 to 24, with 28 % of the audience falling in the 25-34 age bracket. According to Richard
Broughton, director at Ampere Analysis, a combination of factors has allowed French broadcasting groups to defend against the rise of subscription video-on-demand: Stricter local regulation demanding higher quotas of French and European content from on-demand service providers, extensive roll-out of advanced connected set-top boxes by French TV operators, and consumer demand for French language content( as opposed to the English-language content favoured by international VoD service providers) have all acted to favour incumbent local players.
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forecast for the market, Worldwide YouTube and Digital Video.
YouTube’ s ubiquity across the Google platform and easy integration on other content platforms have helped contribute to its dominance. In 2018, 40.4m people, or six out of 10 people in the UK, will watch video via the YouTube app or website at least once per month, eMarketer estimates.
Thanks to the proliferation of smartphones and the rise of streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu, watching video over the Internet is now commonplace in the UK, notes eMarketer. In 2018, more than two-thirds of the UK’ s population will be watching some form of digital video.
However, YouTube— which is video-only— is facing competition from these subscription streaming services. In addition, close to two-thirds( 64.3 %) of digital video viewers in the UK are expected to view content via mobile phone. Equally, YouTube is competing for eyeballs from Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, who have all been investing heavily in video over the past few years.
“ UK adults have been migrating their social media and video habits over to mobile for some time,” eMarketer senior analyst Bill Fisher said.“ It’ s no surprise, then, that the social media platforms have been making major plays in the video space. YouTube viewership isn’ t going to drop away, of course— it’ s too wellestablished. But it’ s going to have to compete for videoviewing time from a multitude of other options like never before.”
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Analyst: YouTube close to UK saturation
YouTube viewing is close to
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Netflix twice as many UK subs as Amazon
According to a report from
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saturation in the UK, with more than 90 % of digital video viewers regularly visiting the platform, according to eMarketer’ s first-ever YouTube |
the Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board( BARB), Netflix has almost twice the number of subscribers than Amazon Prime Video in the UK. Netflix |