Netflix ‘under threat as top VOD net for UK youth’

Netflix remains the most popular service for British children and teenagers, but Amazon Prime Video and Now TV are gaining ground, a new study has found.

Some 58% of 13-19 year-olds polled by WPP-owned ad firm MediaCom use Netflix, making it the most popular UK subscription VOD service within the age group.

However, it is the only SVOD service that did not experience growth on last year, with Amazon growing the number of teens using it from 24% last year to 32% this year.

Around 15% of teens have used Sky-owned Now TV and 11% are watching content on Apple TV.

The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, The Grand Tour and Pretty Little Liars (pictured) were considered among the most popular shows. All four regularly feature in TBI’s In-demand charts, which poll online activity around programmes.

MediaCom’s research, conducted by Real World Insight in December 2016 and comprising a quantitative survey of 1,231 8-19 year-olds in the UK, showed an increasing number of children and teens streaming content through smartphones.

Thirty-three-per-cent regularly view TV content on smartphones, up from 25% in the 2016 edition of the study.

Around 38% of teenagers use on-demand services as their most common method of watching TV content, higher than 35% who plump for live TV.

This comes to a backdrop of wider smartphone ownership among pre-teens people in the UK. MediaCom’s study suggests 66% of 8-12 year-olds now own a smartphone, compared with 58% in 2016 and 49% in 2015.

Tablet ownership, meanwhile, appears to be rapidly losing pace, with the number of 8-12s with one down 8% and 13-19s down 4%.

“Mobile and on demand services have changed viewing patterns of everyday consumers,” said MediaCom CEO Josh Krichefski. “Whilst 84% of young people regularly watch live programming on TV, the explosion of streaming services such as NowTV and Amazon Instant Video show that ‘live’ is no longer the only way kids watch.”

He added that “on-demand capabilities are critical to the popularity of shows for adults like Game of Thrones and those for kids like Power Rangers in 2017’s viewing eco-system”.