Here’s why BVOD is Australia's fastest-growing media category

By Steve Weaver, ThinkTV | Sponsored
 

Broadcaster Video on Demand (BVOD) continues to set new viewing benchmarks as more Aussies tune in to quality, broadcaster-driven content on the device of their choosing. And advertisers are equally enamoured with a 32% increase in revenue. ThinkTV’s Steve Weaver breaks down the numbers.

It’s been almost a decade since the TV industry first entered into the world of streaming content. At ThinkTV, we described it as TV having babies because broadcaster created content viewed on a device other than the TV in your living room is still TV.

Ten years on, when we crunched the numbers for the ThinkTV bi-annual Fact Pack, there was one undeniable fact that stood out – the incredible growth of Broadcaster Video on Demand (BVOD).

During the first half of 2019, BVOD recorded in excess of 20 billion streaming minutes (Live + VOD), up 52% on the same period last year.

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BVOD is positively booming and this growth is driven by a number of factors.


While BVOD’s early app-led usage, predominantly on tablets, led to the phrase ‘catch-up TV’, the BVOD market has matured beyond this with Australian BVOD services 7Plus, 9Now, 10Play, Foxtel Now, SBS On-demand and iView now offering a banquet of unique content via digital-only channels, member exclusives and snackable edits of recent transmissions.


Plenty of people are watching on apps or mobile devices, but in addition to this, more people than ever are live streaming broadcaster content fuelled by increased adoption of internet-capable TV sets. More than 50% of Aussie homes now own a Smart TV moving live streaming of broadcaster content firmly into the mainstream.

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The audience growth for BVOD consumption is unsurprisingly mirrored by revenues which are following the same trajectory.

As more and more people tune in to 7Plus, 9Now, 10Play and Foxtel Now, advertisers are seeking out these audiences with BVOD revenues up 34.2% to $67.1 million for the six months to June 30, 2019. BVOD revenue for the total financial year was $128.3 million, up 32.2% year-on-year.

Broadcasters are seeing increasing returns as programs including The Bachelor, The Block, Australia’s Got Talent and Big Little Lies deliver audience gains on top of the linear broadcast, particularly with younger audiences. The current season of The Bachelor, for example, is generating more than 20% of its total audience from BVOD with an additional 220,000 viewing on top of the 1.04 million watching the metro and regional broadcasts.

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With OzTAM’s Video Player Measurement (VPM) now applying demographics to its BVOD measurement, we can see exactly who is tuning in and where. Across the six months to June 30, a distinctive younger audience profile emerges for BVOD that is in contrast to broadcast TV for the same period. This data supports the fact that BVOD provides incremental audience to existing reach from broadcast viewing.

The inclusion of demographic information in VPM is welcomed by the industry and it is just the beginning with the pending roll out of Virtual Oz – the combined measurement database for OzTAM, RegTAM and VPM – set to build on these insights in the coming months.

The timing couldn’t be better as TV’s babies have well and truly grown up.

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