Reports: d2c

The music merchandise market has transformed, with significantly more artists selling merch and more product variety than ever before. The traditional line between “hard” and “soft” merch is blurring as new generations buy vinyl as a collectible keepsake, rather than a consumption format.

Smart-TV-owning gamers skew older and combine increased consumption spend with an increased willingness to pay for content and entertainment more broadly. Smart-TV owners over-index for games consumption and in-game spending,offering an unparalleled platform distribution opportunity for cross-platform gamesdistributors such as Xbox Game Pass.

With video streaming transitioning into mainstream TV consumption, we have moved into the era of streaming TV. As a result, the early focus on gaining subscribers is making way for the rising challenge of retaining these newly acquired subscribers. Retention is the key metric of the emerging post-growth streaming, with the ratio of weekly active users (WAUs) who are daily active users (DAUs) becoming the key metric to measure streaming success, as streaming TV becomes a fully digitally- native experience.

2020 brought video streaming into the mainstream, resulting in an aging consumer base as later adopters embraced the digital-first behaviour. With binge viewing typically occurring at the start of on-demand familiarisation, these new streaming subscribers are at risk of succumbing to accelerated churn rates, as savvy switching is likely to follow.

COVID-19 removed the constraints imposed by peak attention, leading to a surge in home-based entertainment consumption and streaming adoption. Fortuitous timing, enforced home working and the end of the commute, tied in with the need to entertain home-bound children, has greatly accelerated direct-to-consumer (D2C) adoption.

Ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) continues to lag behind subscription video on demand (SVOD) in a US market still heavily focused on paid subscriptions. AVOD weekly active engagement grew steadily in Q3 2020, and across all leading four AVOD services between Q1 to Q3 2020.

The current division between the new video D2C entrants of 2019/2020 has revealed a strategic split between those that are leveraging established distribution advantages versus those focused on monetising existing content assets. The current market distortions wrought by the ongoing COVID-19 epidemic have placed power firmly in the hands of services able to leverage zeitgeisty originals combined with libraries of proven content and brand assets.

The postponement of annual competitions and major quadrennial events has highlighted just how heavily pay-TV and sport-centric streaming services’ value propositions rely on live sports. Filling schedules with re-runs, docuseries, interviews and archived footage are stopgaps unlikely to increase engagement.

Awareness and Demand Indicators for Disney+ versus Apple TV+ in Q4 2019 / Q1 2020 On November 1st 2019 Apple TV+ launched, followed by Disney+ on November 12th. Both services represent flagship direct-to-consumer (D2C) services, headed by a dominant tech major and a dominant media major respectively – representing the diverging strategic drivers behind the 2019/2020 D2C big bang moment.

The direct-to-consumer (D2C) video big bang moment is getting into stride, with Peacock and HBO Max following Apple TV+ and Disney+ into the already-congested video streaming marketplace. TV show marketing teams now face unprecedented competition for audience attention and mindshare.

The big streaming networks Netflix and Amazon have become the powerhouses of video brand equity by simultaneously weaponising TV shows as acquisition tools and assimilating the brands of traditional networks through association with their shows. The disconnect between original TV networks and global audiences is becoming wider as local networks and streaming services gain audience appeal and relevance.