Karol Severin

Karol is a co-founder and Research Director at MIDiA. With over a decade of experience in consumer research, industry analysis, and consulting, Karol oversees the direction, coverage and quality of all MIDiA’s research output. Prior to co-founding MIDiA, Karol gained experience in TMT market research and consulting, as well as an entertainment industry startup founder. He holds a business management degree from Queen Mary, University of London, with specialisation in strategy, quantitative methods, and entrepreneurship.

Quick Take: Activision Blizzard Results And Why Engagement Matters Now More Than Ever

Karol Severin
Activision Blizzard reported its Q3 results late last week. Despite beating guidance on net income, which reached $260 million, the company’s stock plummeted following the announcement. The key worries include engagement, success of future games within franchises like Call of Duty and Destiny, as well as having a very good successful previous year to compare against.
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Tech Majors Market Shares Q1 2018
Advertising and Subscriptions Power Growth

Cover image for Tech Majors Market Shares Q1 2018
Alistair Taylor, Karol Severin, Tim Mulligan and Zach Fuller
In Q1 2018 advertising revenue and services revenue drove strong growth for the tech majors – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, with Alphabet and Apple retaining their respective leads in each of those revenue segments but losing market share. Subscriptions were also a big part of the Q1 narrative; Amazon and Apple highlighted significant subscription growth underpinning their growing service businesses.
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Profiling Chinese and Indian Gamers

Cover image for Profiling Chinese and Indian Gamers
Karol Severin
Gaming in China and India is much further away from the mainstream than in key English-speaking markets. Gamers in both countries however form a highly digitally sophisticated, engaged and spending addressable consumer niche. And though the word niche is used proportionally to suggest less than 50% penetration, make no mistake – the gamer niches in both China and India already dwarf the English-speaking markets regarding number of users.
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Spotify and Netflix Are Experiencing Opposite User Engagement Trends

Cover image for Spotify and Netflix Are Experiencing Opposite User Engagement Trends
Karol Severin
The latest Fuse data enables us to comparemonthly hours per MAU spent onSpotify and monthly hours per subscriber spent on Netflix over 2017. Interestingly they are travelling in opposite directions. Spotify & Netflix's Monthly Hours Of Engagement per MAU/Subscriber While Spotify’s monthly content hours per MAU increased from 19 to 25 in 2017, Netflix’s average monthly hours per subscriber decreased from 50 to 39.
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