How many different streaming services are you regularly using, particularly over the last 12 months? With the COVID-19 pandemic forcing many markets indoors due to lockdown in 2020, the growth of streaming services has exploded especially across TV, film and music with subscription-based streaming service providers continuing to gain popularity. Demand-side platforms such as Display & Video 360 (DV360) provide access to inventory across popular streaming services.
In this article, we explore the explosion of streaming services throughout the Asia-Pacific region, the most popular streaming services currently being used within the different markets and how advertisers can take advantage of streaming service popularity.
What is a streaming service?
A streaming service is an on-demand online entertainment source that delivers content over the internet including TV, film, and music, typically as a subscription-based model from a streaming service provider.
According to our 10 digital marketing and ad trends for 2021, online videos are expected to make up more than 82% of internet traffic by 2022 showing the power and popularity that streaming services (both free and paid) weld. Importantly, with this in mind, what are some of the popular streaming services and what is the timeline when they started to influence what content we’re consuming online?
How are the main streaming services performing in Asia Pacific?
Video has become an incredibly popular form of streaming service, particularly in South-east Asia with providers such as YouTube showing that it is not just paid services that have huge popularity. Our recent article identified how big streaming is in South East Asia (SEA) with YouTube users from the region driving 20% of all video consumption around the world and 83% watching online video daily.
Further to this, Think with Google has identified that “compared to regular YouTube users, YouTube Enthusiasts (or those that spend more than 10 hours a week on YouTube) in SEA are 87% more likely to subscribe to video-on-demand (VOD) services and 75% more likely to subscribe to music streaming services.”
Specifically, in Thailand, being stuck inside due to lockdown has meant 37 million unique users in the country watched content on streaming platforms in August 2020 online, a 28% increase on the monthly average in 2019. In the Thailand, Malaysia and Philippines markets, the major streaming services in the region are Netflix (with 44% of streaming revenue), Disney+ and Viu which is owned by Hong Kong telecoms company PCCW.
In comparison, Statista and the ABC have named Netflix as Australia’s most popular video streaming service, dominating the market with 57% market share (12.2 million subscribers) followed by Foxtel (4.94 million) and Stan (2.61 million) with 51% saying it was likely they’d watch TV from a streaming service rather than traditional TV channels.
Australia differs from SEA with localised streaming services being available and achieving success, including Foxtel, Stan and free-to-air streaming services such as 9 Now, 7 Plus and the country’s first internet television service, ABC iview.
Statista has also identified that 3.46 million Australians are subscribed to both Netflix and Stan highlighting the upward trend in the market of subscribing to multiple streaming services. Video isn’t the only type of streaming service that Aussies love with Spotify dominating the audio streaming market in the country followed by YouTube Music and Apple Music.
Netflix
12.2 million subscribers
Spotify
8 million subscribers
Stan
2.61 million subscribers
Statista further identified that localised streaming services have achieved success in China. Iqiyi.com or the Netflix of China led the way with 172 million unique visitors in the market, about 30 million more than nearest competitor Alibaba’s Youku.
With the expansion, streaming on TV screens is an area, in particular, that has seen an enormous increase of 800% global watch time of both ad-supported and purchased feature-length movies YoY from 2019 to 2020, according to Think With Google.
The proliferation of live-streaming platforms in China
Importantly, with the explosion of streaming services there has also been significant growth in live streaming platforms, particularly in markets such as China.
According to Statista, the market size of online live streaming in China reached around 16.3 billion U.S. dollars in 2020, a 53.8% increase from 2019, reaching 560 million users and accounting for 62.0% of the total number of Internet users.
In particular, there has been a shift towards eCommerce in the live streaming space, with giant eCommerce platforms such as Alibaba looking to enhance user experience by investing in interactive live streams.
SEO Agency China has identified the following top 3 in the market: Douyin (known as TikTok in other markets); Kuaishou Video (The dark horse); and Douyu.com.
Across other markets in the region, TikTok has seen widespread popularity along with additional platforms such as Vimeo Livestream, YouTube Live, Facebook Live, Dailymotion and Twitch all growing in use globally.
Access and consolidate streaming service inventory within Display & Video 360 (DV360)
With such substantial growth of streaming services over the last couple of years and even more so over the last 12 months, it provides advertisers a diverse audience pool to target their ads towards and be seen by different segments of people.
As the world’s largest and best Demand-side Platform, according to the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Ad Tech 2020 report, DV360 has access to 83 different ad exchanges including exclusive access to YouTube inventory. Importantly, with YouTube being the world’s second-largest search engine, second most popular social media platform and second most visited site after Google combined with DV360 audience targeting and frequency capping capabilities, advertisers can efficiently and granularly reach their desired audience.
DV360 is the connecting technology that allows advertisers to connect to users with personalised offers through streaming services. This can be achieved through a number of different buy formats including programmatic guaranteed, for more tangible impression and click agreements with the streaming service publishers.
As part of our recent webinar on consolidating media buys in DV360, we explored how you can set up programmatic guaranteed deals with streaming service inventory such as Spotify to ensure you are reaching your desired audience as well as how using DV360 allows you to consolidate the tracking of advertising with web and app properties using the Google Marketing Platform’s conversion tracking system, Floodlight activities (Floodlight tags).
With Think With Google research identifying integrated campaigns are 31% more effective than non-integrated campaigns and that ROIs for both TV and online video are 35% higher when they’re strategically integrated, it further reinforces the idea of consolidating any streaming service inventory within tools like DV360 and the Google Marketing Platform.
Regardless of the type of streaming service that you’d like to target your display or video advertising, DV360 provides industry-leading inventory to target your desired audience.
Conclusion
With the continued growth and subsequent explosion of streaming services following 2020s COVID-19 lockdowns, subscription-based services such as Netflix, Spotify, Disney+ and YouTube have continued to gain popularity, providing advertisers with a significant opportunity to reach their audience at scale. For organisations that have access to a Display & Video 360 (DV360) license have the ability to buy exclusive inventory and leverage the popularity of streaming services.
For support or consultation on the type of inventory you should be buying, or to get access to a Display & Video 360 (DV360) license, please get in touch with the FiveStones team today.
References
https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/whos-watching-what-in-south-east-asia-0
https://www.statista.com/topics/5038/video-streaming-industry-in-australia/
http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/8424-music-streaming-services-march-2020-202006010642#:~:text=%E2%80%9COver%2012.7%20million%20Australians%20