← Behind the Numbers: an EMARKETER Podcast
Behind the Numbers: an EMARKETER Podcast
The Digital Lives and Lifestyles of Everyone in the World: How People Watch TV, Short-Form Video’s Global Divide, and More | Behind the Numbers
00:23:49
Loading summary
Transcript74 lines
- [00:01]
A
Consumers have been known to skip ads, of course, but they won't skip rewards. Fetch drives performance. With over 12 and a half million monthly active users and over 11 million receipts scanned daily, that will capture 88% of household spending, basically all of it. Your brand becomes the reward, earning real engagement, verified purchases and loyalty. Fetch, America's rewards app, where brands are are the center of joy. Hey, gang. It's Friday, October 31st. Happiest of Halloweens. Paul, Jenny, Jason and listeners, welcome to behind the Numbers, the marketing video podcast made possible by Fetch Rewards. I'm Marcus and join me for today's conversation. We have three people. We start with our principal analyst, living up there in the Great White north, it's Paul Briggs.
- [00:53]
B
Hey, Marcus.
- [00:54]
A
Hello, sir. We also have our VP of research joining us. Residing in New York is Jennifer Pearson. Thanks.
- [00:59]
C
Excited to be here.
- [01:01]
A
Absolutely. And Chief Insight Officer at gwi, based in the uk. Our special guest for today, Jason Mander. Hey.
- [01:09]
D
Thank you.
- [01:10]
A
Hey, fellow. Okay, we start anytime. We have a special guest with a speed intro. So, Jason, what do you do? In a sentence.
- [01:21]
D
So, I'm Chief Insight Officer. We survey millions of people per year, wide range of questions about their digital lives and lifestyles. And my job is to turn all of that data, all of those numbers into interesting stories and things that matter.
- [01:34]
A
Very nice. And we'll be talking about a few of those stories today. But second question for you all real quick. Jason, I'll start with you. If you could snap your fingers and give yourself a skill, any skill, but just for 24 hours and then it's gone, what, what would you pick?
- [01:48]
D
I would want to be bilingual or trilingual. I'm married to a Malteser. Everyone from Malta speaks English, Italian and Maltese fluently. Nice to have 24 hours where I could keep up.
- [02:00]
A
Sounds good. Jenny, how about you?
- [02:03]
C
I want to speed read and get through all the books that I keep saying I need to. And I'm hoping 24 hours is enough in my long list that I can't get to, but I'd love to be able to do that.
- [02:14]
A
Yeah, that sounds good. You'd have to. Yeah. Disappear from your family too, I guess.
- [02:18]
C
Yeah.
- [02:19]
A
Where's Mum? Gone? She's just.
- [02:20]
C
Yeah, just reading for 24 hours.
- [02:22]
A
She's in the library. Don't bother her. She's. Paul, what year for us?
- [02:26]
B
Yeah, I think for me it would be ski. Being able to ski moguls. And I know it's only 24 hours, but I would take. I would ski for like 24 hours straight on the toughest moguls in the world. You know, I could ski pretty well, but moguls have always been pretty choppy for me. But I think that would be that 24 hour skill. If I could snap my fingers, that would be. That would be heaven for me.
- [02:46]
A
Yeah. Very nice. Very nice, folks. Well, there are guests. Today's real topic, how media behaviors are changing around the world. All right, so Jason, you've been helping Marketer put this report together. It's our Global Media Intelligence Report. To be doing it for years, where we collaborate with you guys on this research where we survey a bunch of people around the world, pull out some stories. But you want to give us a bit of a better explainer than that in terms of what you've been up to?
- [03:23]
D
Yeah, sure. So this research is based on surveys among just under a million people across 50 countries around the world. They answer a range of questions about the devices, apps, social media that they're using, how they're consuming various channels and types of media. We break all that down by country, by age, by gender. We look at how things are changing over time. So it gives you a really strong view on how consumer behaviors are changing or in fact, staying the same.
- [03:56]
A
Yeah, it's absolutely fascinating research. It's very easy to think that just because you have a smartphone, because you're streaming things, because you are listening to digital audio, that everybody else is. And it can be further from the truth. Paul, you have been the lead author on this research for this year, I think in years prior as well. Do you want to talk to us a bit about some of the main stories that emerged from this piece?
- [04:22]
B
Sure, I think so. I've been involved for, I think this is my third year. We've been doing the Global Media intelligence report for 15 years now in collaboration with Starcom, all that time and also using GWI as our, our data partner since 2018. So the trends that Jason mentions over time are really evident, especially when you look at a wide range of years. This year we look at some of the key areas like viewership is one key area that we look at and analyze and really it's about spending time with different types of content, be it on streaming apps or on broadcast TV or short video. One of the key takeaways this year was that across all the regions, if you look at penetration of streaming video usage, it exceeds broadcast TV in every single region. It's usually sort of over 90% penetration in most of those in most of those regions. So as as a takeaway for media buyers really leaning into the ad supported video streaming services that are out there as a way to reach consumers. Very good first piece of advice. But also in many regions broadcast TV still has really solid reach. So it's important to continue campaigns in that format as well. Yeah, I wanted to. So how do we get at that music streaming sort of details? Maybe Jason can help us in the questioning. Jason, how do you, by country do you, do you ask them about how they consume streaming or, or what services they use or how do you guys go about that?
- [06:04]
D
Yeah, sure. So when we're asking about the behavior itself. So how long do you listen to music streaming services? There'll be some localized examples. Some of those examples are obviously going to have global relevance. So something like Spotify or Apple Music will probably appear in most countries, but then it will be supplemented by region or market specific ones. So if we were talking about TV streaming services and the UK as an example, BBC iPlayer might appear as one of the examples there. There's also follow up questions where we present a long list of market specific options. So anything that's a viable, half popular at least option in your country will appear in the survey.
- [06:46]
B
Yeah, I think that it's, you know, those country specific or regional specific platforms are really important to get it. I know in Canada, you know we have a streaming platform called Crave, which is from B Bell Media. So that's very specific to Canada. I'm sure there's many, many examples across the world country specific streaming apps out there.
- [07:09]
A
So one of the stories, storylines from the piece Paul, listenership you say has gone digital, but radio is hanging on. Where did you find radio is highest across the world?
- [07:21]
B
Yeah, so sort of Western markets, Western Europe. If you look at Western Europe compared to the rest of the world, it's like, you know, more than five hours weekly spent with radio in Western Europe. That's pretty similar to a lot of, you know, western regions. But if look at what's happening in the Asian regions that we look at, that's the lowest time spent with radio anywhere. Just over like roughly about an hour and a half a day compared, compared to sort of that greater than five hours in Western Europe. So big, big change, big difference. I think, you know, with audio you've got there's sort of three areas that are measured here. One is music streaming penetration and time spent as well as podcast time spent as well. So those three legs of audio radio, podc, music streaming tell a story of how people listen to audio throughout their day and over the course of the week.
- [08:15]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [08:17]
C
Some standouts in Greece, 8 and 10 listen to radio, whereas like Vietnam, for example, it's just 4 and 10 are average listening to radio.
- [08:28]
D
I think the age story is really powerful, as it often is, but it shines through really strongly here. So if you look at the 16 to 24 cohort, they're spending an hour and a quarter on average on radio per week versus seven hours on music streaming. If you then look at the 55 to 64 cohort, actually it's quite equal about three to three and a half hours on both of those. So the age of your target audience is going to have a profound impact on how they're spending their time across those three different audio types.
- [09:01]
A
Yeah. What countries do they.
- [09:05]
D
I was talking about age groups. Sorry, across all on average.
- [09:08]
A
Across the. Oh, across everything.
- [09:09]
D
Yeah.
- [09:10]
A
Oh, fascinating. Okay, okay. It's interesting because, yeah, radio, it's a, it's traditional media and it doesn't get talked about nearly as much because digital has consumed everything. But we talked about it on the show recently in the US it's still $9 billion space. There's still a ton of money that's going there. And that brings me to something I was going to say before, which was that even though you just mentioned poor streaming has overtaken linear in terms of how people consume television across the world. But the ad dollars, like in the US it has overtaken as one of those very markets. But in terms of the ad dollars, CTV ad dollars are still a third and then linear makes up 2/3 of the total where the ad dollars go into a TV screen pie. So the ad dollar is still lagging quite far behind the viewership part.
- [10:03]
B
Ctv. I think a lot of that has to do with sort of the maturity of the ad buying ecosystem.
- [10:07]
A
Absolutely.
- [10:08]
B
And I think that is sort of like when as that matures, it'll catch up and far exceed linear tv. But in the case of audio, local radio I think is still a very powerful advertising medium. So whatever town you are in, if you're in the car, commuting to work, what have you, there's a ton majority is local hyperlocal advertising about something in your geographic location, in your town or your city. So that still maintains its effectiveness for advertisers. That hyperlocal aspect to radio, I think.
- [10:43]
D
That'S a key point right throughout this data. You can't really take a global snapshot. You need to understand what's happening in your country or in your region. And if we talk about broadcast TV, there are still 34 out of 50 countries that are spending more than five hours per week, but then go to France and that climbs to nearly nine hours. They're probably the biggest country out of the 50 for consuming it. So you could have one country that's got nearly nine hours and another that's down to two. You've really got to understand the particular country and the audience you're going after.
- [11:13]
A
Yeah. And just. Just to reiterate the point that this research was done across 50 markets. It's not just high level. This is kind of what we saw from top down. It's country specific. Every country has all these specific breakouts numbers for itself. So there's a ton of detail. But if you want to zoom out and get a sense of what's going on from 50,000ft, then you can. Speaking of that, Jason, one of the other storylines that came out of this was regarding short form video. Tell us about that one.
- [11:45]
D
Yeah, I mean, I think one of the key stories there is just how much time is being spent on what you would classify as social. So within this research we talked about sort of traditional social media, so defined as reading posts, interacting with ads, that sort of stuff. Then we talked about short form video, defined as Reels and TikToks. They're still very much part of the social ecosystem. And we also asked about longer form videos. So blogs. Now all of that is still really social. And the global average across those three is nearly 20 hours per week. Let's put that in context. That's about the same amount of time for social as for broadcast tv, TV streaming, gaming and podcasts put together. So there is a lot of time being spent here and a lot of chance to capture attention. Yeah, and the figures in some of the countries are just, you know, eye watering. 8, 9, 10 hours being sent on TikToks and reels and comparable. And you might sort of think, well, if one country is big on short form, maybe they're lower on long form. But no, there's a strong correlation between all three. So a country like Brazil is a good example. It's one of the leading countries in all three of those metrics. What we tend to see is that countries that have always been a bit more conservative or traditional when it comes to social as a category are also less engaged with short form videos. So particularly a couple of the APAC markets, but also northern Europe, you know, places like Germany, Austria, Belgium and even the Scandinavian countries. Look at Denmark, Norway, Sweden, they're really high on things like TV streaming or music streaming, but they fall down on short form video because they've never had that sort of mass enthusiasm for social.
- [13:45]
A
You were saying 20 hours a week. That's total social, right?
- [13:50]
D
Across the. Yeah, across social media. Short form video, long form video.
- [13:54]
A
So one day a week, one full day, just the whole Monday is just spent on social media, not eating food, you know, catch up with friends, uh, just, just working, just eat, just social.
- [14:11]
D
But it, you know, in a way it's because the reasons we have for using social have changed. So we, we capture motivations as well. And over time you can see decreases in things like communicating with friends, posting about my life, but increases in basically consuming content. Um, so scrolling, browsing, watching videos. It's an entertainment first ecosystem. Now it's, if anything, social media is just a bit less social than it used to be.
- [14:38]
A
Yeah. Jenny, you had a theme from the report for us as well. What's yours?
- [14:46]
C
Yeah, this was what technology our respondents are excited about and it was in particular for artificial intelligence. And so I think it's a decent gauge of where the optimism is in AI. So the leading, and maybe this correlates, Jason, we were talking about with Brazil. Brazil was the leader in this in that 66% of those surveyed were excited about AI. And then other high countries were Vietnam and Israel and Colombia. But then on the lower end of the spectrum are Croatia, New Zealand. The US is at 35% of respondents who are excited about AI. Just generally it's lower in Europe and a higher excitement in Latin America is an interesting theme and I think it does correlate a bit with some of the more social leaning countries that may be excited about a new technology.
- [15:46]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [15:47]
B
And I think it definitely correlates to sort of age of the population as well. When we looked at it, you know, ranking the top 10 countries or top 20, they were generally the youngest countries in terms of median age. So that is, is probably the strongest indicator about enthusiasm for AI is the relative age of the population.
- [16:10]
A
Okay.
- [16:11]
D
It's also interesting here that in most of the other things we've talked about, things like gender, income are relatively equal. Here they start becoming much more meaningful. So in every single region except East Asia and Oceania, men have a significant lead over women, as much as 10, 12, 14 points. And also the higher income groups lead the lower income groups. That one kind of makes sense. But the gender one stood out as being pretty interesting.
- [16:38]
A
I was trying to figure out the correlation and my initial thought was that high development in AI leads to high concern from the population. Like somewhere in the US is that A likely.
- [16:55]
C
So it's funny you say that, Marcus. I did a little research. There was a delay study of consumers in Europe who over 50% didn't have confidence that the government would regulate properly. And those are some of the lower excited consumers respondents about AI. So I do think there is some correlation there.
- [17:16]
A
Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I know too much about it and how it works, and now I don't want to use it anymore. Very nice. So a bunch of themes there. There are more as well in the reports, so not just those few that we talked about. To wrap up this episode, I asked the gang if they could identify a hidden gem of a stat, if you will. And so turned into a game, of course. And so I'm going to grade them and decide which one is the most interesting hidden gem of a stat. So we'll see. Start with. Start with. Paul, what did you find that maybe wasn't, you know, kind of blatantly obvious theme, but something you found particularly interesting?
- [17:59]
B
I looked at some. So the one new country we have this year, so last year we had 49 countries. This year we have 50. That 50th country is Croatia. And lo and behold, they lead the world in smartwatch adoption. Would make me think that they love their fitness or they love their tech, but I thought that was a pretty cool initial sort of piece of data from Croatia.
- [18:27]
A
Yeah. Is it like they just lead it or is this a sizable gap between them and number two?
- [18:32]
B
But I think it's probably sort of, you know, incrementally ahead of whoever's next.
- [18:36]
D
It's very close. Yeah. But they are ahead.
- [18:39]
A
Okay, fascinating. And is that, Jason, do you know, off the top of your head, is that they're second through 10 is Asia, and Croatia stands out amongst Europe, or I'm expecting the next 10 to be in a similar region.
- [18:55]
D
They're actually for the smart category, generally Western Europe and North America features very strongly. So most of the top 10 would be European markets.
- [19:05]
A
Okay, okay. Maybe that's got something to do with cost and affordability. Yeah. Okay. Fascinating. All right, Paul, good start. He came to play. Jenny.
- [19:14]
C
Okay, I dug up. So actually our first year with GWI partnership was 2018. And I dug up that in our archives to get some old obscure data point that Japan smart TV ownership is really the lowest, one of the lowest in the world. And in 2018, it was still 7, or between 7 and 8% owned a smart TV. And now it's just inched up to just under 12% of those in Japan own a smart TV. For context, it's 63% in the U.S. so it is quite a bit lower. Smart TV ownership.
- [19:54]
A
Okay, so it's notched up a few in terms of ownership of a smart tv. Yeah. Wow. So what, what's going on? Because Paul, I saw in your report you were saying Japan, South Korea clinging to broadcast despite world class digital infrastructure, as you say, and South Korea has nearly twice as much broadcast as it does streaming. I wonder what's going on there. That is a good one.
- [20:19]
D
There's a couple of things I would say at play there. Japan is often a bit of an exception when it comes to technology adoption. One of the reasons is the relatively old structure of the population in terms of age. Another is sort of definitions of technology and, and what we mean by a smart television, what someone in Japan might perceive. And Japanese cultural answering patterns also take a sort of a role here. So we typically find respondents there are less likely to disclose what they personally own. And it could be more effective if you ask what would the typical person in this country own? But because our methodology is the same questions in the same way in all countries, that's the way it's always been.
- [21:06]
A
Fascinating. Okay, very nice. Jason, you're up.
- [21:12]
D
Yeah, I sort of went across both of these areas actually. I looked at smart home products and to pick up what you were saying at the start, you sometimes think everyone must have something because you do. We've got a nine year old, so our house is full of smart home products to try and make that a little bit easier. But actually it's only 20% globally who own a smart home product. It's going up every year, but it's quite a slow increase. So go back to 2019 and it was 11%. Now fast forward to this year. It's still only 20% but the UK is the leading country in the world, which always makes me happy.
- [21:48]
A
Wow. Huh. Is it like significantly over indexing or.
- [21:51]
D
The UK is at 28% so versus a global average of 20. That's a fair index.
- [21:57]
A
Okay. Huh. Very nice. I wonder also the smart home thing, I wonder how many people that have one barely use it, you know, like it's there and it shows you the photos. It's kind of carousel of photos in the background. Your Alexa device or whatever, your Echo. But like people who. Yeah, like actual usage of and what they're using them for. I guess that would also be quite, quite interesting. Very nice. Okay. I think the winner has to be. Doesn't have to be, but I've made it. Jenny. Jenny is today's winner. That was fascinating. And then also with the assist from Jason, explaining some of the reasons why that that might be the case, I think is really interesting. But smartwatches in Croatia as well, Very good, Croatia. Brand new country. The 50th of our 50 that we have for you in this full report, which is already out, came out yesterday. And it's the Global Media Intelligence Report 2025 How Media Behaviors are Shifting in 50 Markets Worldwide. The link is of course in the show notes or you can head to eMarketer.com if you are Pro plus subscriber. Thank you so much to my guest today for going over some of the trends from the reports, but we barely scratched the surface. There's a ton more there, so go check it out. Thank you. First to Paul.
- [23:17]
B
Thanks for having me, Marcus.
- [23:19]
A
Absolutely. And thank you to Jenny.
- [23:21]
C
Thank you so much.
- [23:22]
A
Yes, yes. And of course to Jason for joining us again.
- [23:24]
D
Thanks, Marcus.
- [23:25]
A
Yes, sir. Thanks to the whole Asian crew and everyone for listening to behind the Numbers in the marketing video podcast made possible by Fetch. Make sure you subscribe and follow if you can. Leave a rating and review if the mood takes you. We'll be back on Monday, of course. Of course we will. Happiest of weekends.