The State of Media and Entertainment Streaming Video
That could come from BARB, which began trialling the integration of PCs and laptops into its main TV panel, or from UKOM with its impending launch of a video audience planning system (Video Census). Backed by the IAB and the Association of Online Publishers, and administered by Nielsen, Video Census will combine panel data from more than 50,000 internet users across home and work with census data on inventory that signatories (e.g., broadcasters) wish to tag.
The ideal portfolio of metrics would include reach and audience composition, the contribution of the media context, and the impact of the advertising in terms of changed attitudes, perceptions, and behaviour. Much more work needs doing in this area to convince advertisers to part with bigger budgets online.
Broadband
According to European Union (EU) Commission data, 29% of EU residents have broadband connections of at least 10Mbps, compared to just 15% last year. Denmark and the Netherlands continued to lead in broadband take-up, with 40 lines per 100 reaching approximately 80% of households, although growth rates are slowing as markets reach saturation.
However, only 5% of EU residents have average speeds at or greater than 30Mbps, with just half a percent accessing speeds greater than 100Mbps—significantly behind Japan, Korea, and China.
A clear reason for Europe’s slower speeds is infrastructure, since most EU broadband lines are based on DSL rather than local area networks (LANs). According to the EU, just 3% of all Europe’s broadband lines are LAN-based, in contrast to Japan where 54% are. This means that, in terms of new entertainment services such as HDTV, Europe lags behind.
The European Commission’s Digital Agenda has earmarked 2020 as the date by which all households should have access to broadband speeds of at least 30Mbps, with 50% accessing more than 100Mbps.
“Fast broadband is essential for Europe’s prosperity and well-being,” stated Neelie Kroes, the EU commissioner in charge of the project. “Take-up and available speeds are improving, but we need to do more to reach very fast broadband targets.”
At the end of the year, the U.K. government pledged to spend £1.5 billion in a drive to give the country the best broadband network in Europe by 2015. The ambitious plan intends to site a “digital hub” in every community in the country to bring superfast broadband to 90% of the population.
Currently, more than 70% of U.K. households have broadband, and nearly 50% have access to a superfast 50Mbps service.
As a corollary, there are concerns about the U.K. government’s intention to end Net Neutrality for internet use. If it happened, it would allow ISPs to charge providers of bandwidth-hungry video services extra to guarantee a good quality of service.
One vocal critic is Erik Huggers, director, BBC future media and technology. “In an era of fierce competition, it’s understandable that some network operators might look to gain commercial advantage by charging for content distribution,” he said. “Plainly, an open and neutral internet is crucial to the growth of our digital economy.”
Mobile
The era of “video on the go” has finally arrived and is being driven by smartphone owners. The release of tablet devices when coupled with services such as the BBC iPlayer has further excited the market.
According to Dataxis Intelligence, European mobile subscribers will exceed 1.14 billion by 2015, representing about 140% of the population and up from 987 million at the end of 2009.
comScore data reveals that the number of people viewing video on mobile devices increased 66% in the past year to 12.1 million consumers across the U.K., France, Germany, Spain, and Italy. The U.K. and Italy each boast 2.7 million mobile video consumers, up 75% from July 2009 in the U.K. market and up 55% in Italy. Spain is demonstrating fastest growth, with mobile video up 90% to 1.7 million subscribers.
On-demand video programming appears to be the driver, up 99% since July 2009 from 5.2 million mobile owners across Europe. Across the main EU five countries, two out of every three people who viewed mobile TV/video were smartphone owners. In the U.K. 80.2% were smartphone owners, followed by Spain (71%) and France (67.7%).
This article originally ran in the 2011 Streaming Media Industry Sourcebook as "Onward and Upward: The State of Media and Entertainment."
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