Squid Game is Netflix most popular show, with 142m households watching in the first 28 days

"There  is  no  better  example  of  this  than Squid  Game, a  unique  Korean  story  that  first  captured  the zeitgeist  in  Korea  and  then  globally.  Released  on  September  17,  it  has  become our  biggest  TV  show  ever. A mind-boggling 142m member  households  globally  have chosen  to  watch  the  title  in  its  first  four  weeks. The  breadth  of Squid  Game’s  popularity  is  truly  amazing; this  show  has  been  ranked  as  our  #1  program  in 94  countries  (including  the  US).  Like  some  of  our  other  big  hits, Squid  Game has  also  pierced  the  cultural zeitgeist,  spawning  a Saturday  Night  Live skit and memes/clips  on  TikTok with  more  than  42  billion  views. Demand for  consumer  products  to  celebrate  the  fandom  for Squid  Game is  high  and  those  items  are  on their  way  to  retail  now."

Source:  Netflix Q3 2021 Letter to Shareholders, 19th October 2021 

Note 1 - This smashes the previous record of 82m set by Bridgerton in January 2021

Note 2 - This is 2/3 of Netflix 214m member households

Note 3 - Netflix definition for 'watching' is to watch at least 2 minutes

NBC has almost sold out of TV ad spots for Super Bowl 2022

"The 2021 NFL season hasn’t even begun yet, and NBC is almost finished with its ad sales for Super Bowl 56—more than five months before the game will take place.

“As of today, we only have a few units left, and we’re purposely holding them back,” Dan Lovinger, evp, advertising sales, NBC Sports Group, told reporters this afternoon during a press briefing. The pregame show is also “extremely well sold,” he added.

Lovinger said the company has sold its most recent Super Bowl units for as much as $6.5 million per 30-second spot, and secured a matching investment across “other high-profile NBCU properties,” including the Winter Olympics, which will also be in February, at the same time as Super Bowl 56 on Feb. 13."

Source:  AdWeek, 8th September 2021

2/3 of UK homes subscribe to paid video streaming services

 "One element of the Establishment Survey results that is always of interest is the number of UK households with access to a subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service. This update for Q2 2021 shows that access has continued to increase since our last release. The number of UK households with a subscription to any SVOD service is now 18.8 million homes (66%), up from 17.4 million in Q3 2020.

All of the main services have seen growth, with market-leader Netflix increasing to 16.8m households in Q2 2021, up more than 1.5m since Q3 2020. Amazon Prime Video saw a larger growth in households than Netflix, increasing over 2.3m homes to 12.5m. The largest percentage-change in the market was from Disney+, which is growing from a smaller subscriber base than Amazon and Netflix, having launched in March 2020. In Q2 2021, Disney+ was available in 4.8m households, up 24% since last time. NowTV also increased, to 2.3m homes.

With the overall growth of 1.5 million homes lower than the aggregate growth for individual services, it’s also clear that more homes have multiple SVOD subscriptions. The proportion of homes with an SVOD service that subscribe to two or more services has risen to 65.3%, up from 58.3% in Q3 2020."

Source:  BARB's 2021 Establishment Survey, 26th August 2021

82m households watched (at least some of) Bridgerton on Netflix in the first 28 days

 "A record 82 million households around the world watched Netflix original series Bridgerton in its first 28 days.

Netflix reported that the period drama has made the top 10 in every country except Japan – hitting number one in 83 countries including the US, UK, Brazil, France, India and South Africa.

The success of the series also propelled the books, by Julia Quinn, into The New York Times best seller lists for the first time – some 18 years after they were first published."

Source:  Advanced Television, 28th January 2021

Netflix has 204m paying subscribers

"Netflix powered past the 200 million subscriber mark in 2020 to cap its biggest-ever year of growth, driven by viewership gains during COVID-19.

In the fourth quarter of 2020, Netflix added 8.51 million paid streaming subscribers, about 2.5 million more than expected, to stand at 203.7 million worldwide at the end of the year."

Source:  Variety, 19th January, 2021

Netflix is the second largest TV company in Europe by revenues

 "Since launching in 2012, Netflix has grown rapidly in Europe. By 2016, it had launched its services across the whole of Europe, and passed the $1 billion revenue milestone. By 2017, it had the largest customer tally of any subscription TV business in Europe. And by 2020, it reached another milestone. Last year, Netflix had become the second largest entity in Europe in terms of revenues, behind only Comcast (which owns Sky’s operations in Europe), and overtaking the German public broadcaster ARD. It would seem that there is no limit to Netflix’s meteoric rise as it helps itself to a greater portion of the audio-visual revenues. In 2020, Netflix alone accounted for more than 6 per cent of all European TV revenues.”"

Source:  Ampere Analysis, 14th January 2021

Carat Trends 2021

 Carat's Trends for 2021 - 12 trends to help navigate the next few years.

Carat Trends 2021 - The Year of Emotionally Intelligent Marketing from Carat Global

Apple App Store customers spent over $540m on apps on New Year's Day 2021

"[Apple] App Store customers [spent] $1.8 billion on digital goods and services over the week between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, driven largely by spending on games. Customers ushered in 2021 by setting a new single-day spending record of over $540 million on New Year’s Day."

Source:  Press Release from Apple, 6th January 2021

UK adults bought 21m new connected devices during the lockdown

"One in five UK adults (21%) – the equivalent of 10.3 million consumers - purchased at least one new digital device as a result of spending more time at home because of the COVID-19 pandemic according to Deloitte’s Digital Consumer Trends 2020 report. In total, up to 21.2 million digital devices were purchased during the first two months of the lockdown period, including two million printers and monitors.

Deloitte’s research, carried out in May 2020 and surveying the digital habits of 4,150 respondents between the ages of 16 and 75, found that UK adults used 170.3 million devices* daily during the first two months of lockdown, equating to 3.5 devices on average per person.

Games consoles, laptops, smart speakers and eReaders saw the highest uptick in usage. Among those who own the devices, daily usage of games consoles rose by 10 percentage-points, with 44% of owners using their console daily, up from 34% in 2019. Meanwhile, daily smart speaker usage rose from 59% to 66%; laptop usage rose from 67% to 73%; and eReader usage rose from 30% to 34%.

Fitness bands and smart watches both experienced a decline in usage as consumers spent more time at home as a result of the pandemic. 60% of fitness band owners used their device daily during the lockdown period, down from 64% in 2019, while daily smart watch usage declined from 64% to 62%. This comes despite an overall increase in the adoption of wearables, from 27% to 31% in the last year."

Source:  Data from Deloitte, reported by Cambridge Wireless, 25th August 2020

More data here 

Adults in the UK watched more than 6 hours of video content a day during lockdown

Source:  Ofcom's Media Nations 2020 report, 5th August 2020

Full presentation here

Peacock has more than 10m subscribers

"Peacock, the latest major entrant to the streaming video universe, has added more than 10 million signups since its launch. Comcast, the owner of NBC News and Peacock's parent NBCUniversal, revealed Thursday as part of its second-quarter earnings.

“People are watching more frequently and for much longer than we projected,” NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell said on a call with analysts.

The news underscores the high interest in at-home entertainment at a time when consumers are staying home and movie theaters in most regions are closed."

Source:  NBC News, 30th July 2020

'Hamilton' attracted 750,000 new subscribers to Disney+

"A filmed version of the Hamilton Broadway theatre production premiered to much fanfare on the Disney+ streaming platform on July 3rd.

Consequently, the Disney+ app was downloaded 752,451 times globally between July 3rd and July 5th, including 458,796 times in the US alone, according to a report in Variety, citing analytics firm Apptopia.

It means US downloads were 74 per cent higher than the average of the four weekends in June 2020 over comparable time periods (Friday through Sunday)."

Source:  Advanced Television, 7th July 2020

25% of US households have a subscription to Disney+

Source:  Data from Parks Associates, reported 29th May 2020

The US was the top spending market for AVOD in 2019

Top five countries by AVoD expenditure ($ million)
Ranking Country 2019
1 USA 7,998
2 China 6,777
3 United Kingdom 1,620
4 Japan 1,611 4
5 India 632 5

Source:  Digital TV Research, quoted in Advanced Television, 1st June 2020

'Trolls World Tour' generated nearly $100m in streaming revenues in 19 days

"Universal’s decision to take DreamWorks Animation’s Trolls World Tour into homes at the 48-hour rental price of $19.99 during exhibition’s COVID-19 shutdown has reportedly racked up an estimated $95M in rental fees in the title’s first 19 days. With VOD terms in the studio’s favor at an estimated 80%, Universal is banking an estimated $77M in revenues before marketing expenses.  Those are better terms for Universal then the 50/50 or 60%-65%/40% splits they reap in their relationship with movie theaters."

Source:  Deadline, 28th April 2020

42% of UK households with Samsung smart TVs watch 2 hours or less of linear TV a month

"The stats are these: 28% of Samsung smart TV households in the UK watch less than 2 hours of linear TV a month; and 14% watch none at all. All told then, 42% are light — very light — linear viewers.
Now the first caveat is that Samsung smart TV households are not representative of the nation as a whole. But there are 5m of them, and 44m across Europe. According to Ofcom, smart TV penetration in 2019 was 47%, and probably over 50% now. It’s unlikely that viewing habits in other smart TV households will vary much."
Source:  Presentation by Andy Jones of Samsung Ads, reported by MediaTel, 4th May 2020

515m people subscribe to Apple apps and services

"Sales of services such as streaming television content rose with billions of people locked in their homes, the company said. The segment, which includes iCloud storage as well as its streaming services for music and television shows, saw sales of $13.4bn, compared with analyst estimates of $12.9n, according to FactSet data. Cook said Apple had 515 million subscribers to apps and services, up by 125 million from one year earlier."
Source:  The Guardian, 30th April 2020
Note - I'm assuming that this is 'people' rather than devices

More than a million people are watching Joe Wicks' YouTube workouts

"A YouTube workout by the online fitness guru Joe Wicks has been livestreamed by more than a million people, as parents turn to alternative teaching methods to cope with their children not being able to attend school during the coronavirus outbreak.
Wicks, who was due to start a tour of schools to promote fitness and healthy living this week, decided to livestream a daily workout instead, saying he wanted to become “the PE teacher for the nation” as the coronavirus forces more children indoors.
The former personal trainer said he had “never seen anything like” the support his workout received on Facebook, where it was shared more than 150,000 times, with support from school teachers who directed students to the stream as an alternative to PE lessons. Some schools also included links to the workout in home curriculum documents emailed to parents."

Source:  The Guardian, 23rd March 2020

Boris Johnson's Covid-19 Lockdown Broadcast was watched live by 27m people

"Boris Johnson’s address to the nation ordering Britons to stay at home due to the coronavirus pandemic was one of the most-watched broadcasts in UK television history, with more than 27 million Britons tuning in live to watch him announce the historic lockdown of the country.
This puts the pre-recorded broadcast in the top tier of most-watched British television programmes ever, up with the likes of the 1966 World Cup final and the funeral of Princess Diana, making clear the historic importance of the occasion as the country collectively watched the prime minister give the latest coronavirus guidance.
The overnight viewing figures do not include the millions of Britons who watched the broadcast on internet livestreams through news apps and websites, or those who watched it through catch-up services, meaning the real audience is likely to have been substantially higher."
Source:  The Guardian, 24th March 2020

Note - It was shown simultaneously on several major channels

51% of UK households have at least one paid video on demand subscription

"The proportion of UK homes with a subscription to at least one of Netflix, Amazon Prime Video or NOW TV passed 50 per cent for the first time in Q4 2019, standing at 50.5 per cent.
27 million UK homes access at least one of these services, a quarter-on-quarter increase of almost 600,000 homes (4.4 per cent) since Q3 2019.
Netflix remains the largest service with 12.35 million homes subscribed, a year-on-year growth of almost 20 per cent.
Amazon Prime Video is the fastest growing service year-on-year, increasing by just over 35 per cent versus Q4 2018 to 7.14 million homes.
NOW TV saw almost 8 per cent year-on-year growth, bringing it to 1.69 million UK homes in Q4 2019 (although it experienced an 8 per cent quarter-on-quarter drop from 1.84 million in Q3 2019).
In Q4 2019, 6.03 million UK homes (21 per cent of homes) subscribed to two or more SVoD services, up 1.72 million year-on-year."
Source:  Advanced Television, 20th February 2020