The seven ages of mobile: millennials’ social shift pushes video use to the phone
Italians are the most regular mobile video users with nearly 40 per cent watching video on a mobile phone at least weekly. Americans (32 per cent) and Spanish (30 per cent) are a not-so-close second whereas across other major European markets, an average of just 17 per cent of people regularly watch video on their mobile phones.
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The stark differences are reflective not just of cultural identity, but of a noticeable arc in behaviour with regard to device and video consumption patterns through the age groups. While it’s becoming increasingly clear that young children favour tablets for video consumption, teens and young adults shift their video usage noticeably to the mobile, with our research showing a significant skew towards Millennials (18-34) for regular video usage on the mobile (at least weekly). This fits well with the change in app preferences among this group towards social engagement; where a rapid on-the -go response is key to social engagement.
While YouTube remains the most popular video app among regular mobile video users, Facebook video ascends in importance to become the second favourite video app among this group of users, again implying usage patterns skewed towards rapid social engagement on the move. Amazon Prime Video, torrents and Instagram are also popular among this group, all apps and services that are focused around video and experience sharing.
Heartening for traditional and new media players alike is the strong skew among regular mobile video users towards paid for television services. These users are considerably more likely than average to take pay TV services, Subscription Video on Demand (SVoD) services, premium linear TV channels and music streaming services.
And viewing isn’t restricted to just one device – 75 per cent of this group watch VOD at least weekly on a computer, 69 per cent on a Smart TV and 45 per cent on a tablet. In addition to paying for content to the mobile., 85 per cent of regular smartphone viewers have free VoD apps on their devices against the 48 per cent that have SVoD apps.
Heavy mobile video users do watch a lot less linear TV (although this is influenced by the age skew of these users as much as mobile usage) and favour Samsung and Apple devices.
What’s interesting about the findings is that mobile video usage seems to be driven by non-traditional video consumption (outside of music streaming, that means short-form video and video sharing). Content preferences also point towards shared experience, with comedy by far the most popular genre among this group, although they also enjoy action, and documentary content.
Mobile, it seems, doesn’t kill the TV star, it just shifts it a little towards sociability.
What are they watching?
Where are they?
The research
The results on this data are based on a survey of 10,500 people across 10 countries: Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, the UK and the USA. Respondents were all aged under 65, living in households with Internet access. It was conducted online in February 2016.
The above is written by Guy Bisson of Ampere Analysis.