How Total Video is changing in Australia
- May 13
- 4 min read
Updated: May 21
Over the past few months, I’ve been rewatching some of my favourite television shows, including one of the most rewatchable shows of the prestige TV era: Mad Men. Watching Don Draper and the Madison Avenue ad men grapple with the rise of television as it became the dominant advertising medium in the 1960s, I couldn’t help but see the parallels in how that same medium is now experiencing its own disruption from streaming video today.
So what exactly is the state of play in video consumption trends in Australia? In this article, I’ll take you through the current state of the Total Video market as measured by our quarterly study, where we’ll discover that the old adage of ‘the more things change, the more things stay the same’ really rang true for this past year.
Measuring Total Video
Our Total Video dataset is comprised of a large-scale diary study that paints a vivid one-day snapshot of long-form video viewing for Australians aged 18 to 69 across platforms, devices time-of-day and content genres.
While this report doesn’t offer daily ratings, it does provide comparable data across platforms enabling us to see large-scale trends across all forms of video consumption. Now collected quarterly, I’ll refer to the Q4 2024 report here, allowing us to see key trends when compared to the same quarter in 2023 to look at year-on-year changes.
Total TV and SVOD are largely stable
The biggest impact on video viewing in recent years has been the meteoritic rise of SVOD. For example, 2023 saw SVOD increase its 18–54 viewing share by 20% points over the previous five years, while TV lost 17% points over the same period. In 2024, however, the data showed that both TV and SVOD were largely stable in share across 18–69 viewers.
Looking beneath the headline numbers, we observed two key drivers:
The first was a continued pivot to streaming with BVOD growth (+1.9% points) offsetting the declines in linear TV (-0.6% points). There was also more viewing for free TV streaming services, such as Samsung TV Plus, LG Channels and Tubi, albeit from a low base.
Secondly, we saw changes in viewing across different age groups: on the younger end (18 to 34), slight growth in TV and free streaming, as well as YouTube, at the expense of SVOD’s share; whereas on the older end (55 to 69), there was growth in SVOD and TV, largely at the expense of DVD and downloadable video (TVOD).
SVOD household penetration stalls
But why is SVOD viewing changing for younger and older Australians?
One of the main drivers is the change in access. SVOD household penetration for the leading brands[1]
grew by just 1% point to 82% in the past 12 months, after a decade of continuous inclines.
What’s more, this household access actually dropped for younger viewers (-2% points), while it grew for older Australians (+4% points). This has a direct impact on the SVOD viewing trends that we saw for these age cohorts, as outlined above.
Furthermore, we’ve seen the average number of services carried by SVOD households drop from 2.8 to 2.6 (out of 11), with a marked increase in those who have access to just one brand.
A number of viewers reported that cost-of-living pressures and pricing were impacting their decisions to shed excess brands or consider adding new services in the future.
SVOD doubles ad-supported video share
One place where SVOD has seen growth, however, is in advertising.
This reflects changes in available subscription plans, with Amazon Prime and Paramount+ offering ad-tiers within the last year, joining existing players like Netflix and Binge.
Not only has this led to an increased share of SVOD subscribers with an ad-supported tier, it has also seen SVOD double its share of video time with advertising, from a low base.
However, TV still remains the dominant total video platform for content with advertising.
And interestingly, this growth in SVOD ad time hasn’t come at the expense of TV, but has grown the amount of total video with any advertising, seeing a reversal in available video for campaigns.
What this means for media owners and advertisers
In many ways, 2024 felt like an inflection point for TV and SVOD.
While it seems unlikely that TV’s share of Total Video viewing will grow at this point, it’s conceivable that it may maintain its share for years to come, given that SVOD household penetration appears to have levelled out. Of course, if there were big changes in how TV is delivered (e.g. shutting down of broadcast transmission, which has impacted certain regional areas) or changes in key content offerings (e.g. sport or news), this could accelerate further change.
For those media owners with access to TV and SVOD assets, we think there is a big opportunity to maximize audiences across platforms by windowing content and creating solutions that can deliver vast reach for advertisers.
We also expect the availability of ad-supported tiers to increase and an even greater share of advertising time to flow to SVOD players. For effective monetization, however, we think local sales operations and harmonized measurement across platforms will be key for winning over agencies and brands—and for international SVOD players, this could mean teaming up with local businesses to create these opportunities.
The world of Don Draper’s Madison Avenue no longer exists: TBWA\Chiat\Day was the last major advertising agency to leave the storied location in 2023. Such change is inevitable – what matters is how you respond to it. We believe that those businesses that understand and adapt to changes in Total Video will likely see the most success. As in the words of Don Draper, “Change is neither good nor bad. It simply is.”
[1] This is based on 11 key brands – including global players such as Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon, as well as local services such as Stan, Binge and Kayo.
