Reports: Facebook

With a third of Canadians subscribing to traditional pay-TV, the country has a strong appetite for online video. This is demonstrated by the 20.3% of the population who are now Subscription Video On Demand (SVOD) subscribers. With the SVOD market already more than two thirds the size of the traditional pay-TV market, Canada is a litmus test for whether traditional pay-TV is able to co-exist with SVOD.

Streaming music drove trade revenues of $5.4 billion in 2016, up 57% from $3.5 billion in 2015 while music subscribers grew from 68.5 million to 106.3 million over the same period. The rate at which the streaming music market will grow, and the level at which it will peak, is determined not just by industry strategy but also by the underlying laws of consumer adoption.

The game console owner segment is evolving fast. Still relatively young for now, console game fans are both aging and heading towards truly mainstream demographic distribution. Simultaneously, console subscription models are gaining traction, migrating premium physical software budgets into digital spend.

In the cord-cutting era TV networks are having to think about what life beyond the traditional pay-TV ecosystem might look like. With SVOD services snapping up audiences in their millions, operators are busy focusing on higher ARPU users and demanding more rights from networks but with tightening budgets.

With content now a more difficult proposition in itself to sell directly, the overall experience becomes, for many, their central core monetisable proposition. We have already seen this development in the online world which is characterised by the transition from sales to consumption.

As the app economy matures into an amorphous content landscape, a picture emerges of how free and pure subscription models impact the bottom-line of the creative industries across music, online video, publishing and gaming. In one corner, freemium has been accused of devaluing content as a product, yet it is also credited with driving higher revenues from super-fans who previously had their spending capped by blanket pricing, at least in sectors like games (music still caps spending).

As the app economy matures into an amorphous content landscape, a picture emerges of how free and pure subscription models impact the bottom-line of the creative industries across music, online video, publishing and gaming. In one corner, freemium has been accused of devaluing content as a product, yet it is also credited with driving higher revenues from super-fans who previously had their spending capped by blanket pricing, at least in sectors like games (music still caps spending).

Whatever your digital content proposition, mobile gamers comprise a significant share of your user base. The segment is not only important due to its sheer size and app economy value, but also because it straddles otherwise diverse components of the digital entertainment landscape, be it video, music, or messaging.

By reaching the apex of cultural ubiquity, social media is being forced to answer questions it never imagined it would need to. Zuckerberg, Dorsey and Co.’s original missions could not have comprehended the way in which their communications tools would construct world-views.

Facebook beat financial analyst estimates with its Q3 2016 earnings but announced that ad revenues would likely slow in 2017, due to the digital ad market feeling the pinch of advertiser budgets, which are lagging behind the shift in user behaviour. Facebook’s stock fell by 7% but Plan B is already in motion: to become a media company.

Instagram was far from the first image-centric service to gain prominence, but something about its simple interface, filtering capabilities and ease of sharing saw the platform become something of a visual lingua franca for the selfie-generation. Now part of Facebook and boasting impressive growth figures, it surprised many with its longevity and continues to embellish its established position as the premier destination for photographic content in the digital era.

Since its launch back in 2005, YouTube has dominated online video with an audience winning combination of user generated content and corporate short form content. While YouTube is more successful in terms of brand recognition and video views than it has ever been, it now faces real competition from video newcomers Facebook and Snapchat.

Facebook is emerging as a serious challenger to YouTube and is building clear momentum that is giving the incumbent cause for concern in a way that few other short form challengers have yet managed to do. The total number of videos viewed by Facebook users was 4 billion a day in April 2015, up from 3 billion only three months earlier.