Media consumption Lockdown’s attention boom

Our clients have full access to all of our reports. Clients can log in to read this report. Click here to become a client or, you can purchase this individual report.

The 20,000 Foot View:  2020 was a year like no other. With large swathes of the population confined to their homes for portions of the year, audiences had more time on their hands and more money in their pockets. These conditions created a boom in entertainment consumption, throwing up a mixture of intuitive trends and unexpected winners.

Key insights

• Audiences filled most of their additional        of time during lockdown consuming more entertainment. Overall media consumption time increased by        between        2020 and        2020
• Video consumption increased most over lockdown, up        to add        average weekly hours
• Non-music audio added less time than video        hours) but surged in relative terms        thus increasing its share of media time, while music added half as much time
• Games was the second biggest gainer of time after video, growing by        to add a whole weekly hour of time
• Audiobooks gained time by        compared to        for podcasts and just        for streaming music 
• Audiobooks and podcasts’ combined share of audio time  increased by       
• Music streamers spent lockdown looking to do something different with their extra spare time, increasing audiobook time more than music streaming
• Weekly radio listeners decreased their radio listening by        shifting their behaviour both away from audio as a whole        and to audiobooks       
• Traditional TV viewing time was up        hours, but 
• audiences spent even more time watching on demand        hours), resulting in traditional TV losing        of video time
• Mobile gamers increased their average time gaming across all platforms by        while computer and console gamers increased by just        and        respectively
• As life returns to some normality post-pandemic, the extra time and spend enabled by lockdown will recede. This coming ‘attention recession’ will affect all entertainment companies and may be compounded by an economic recession

Companies and brands mentioned in this report: Audible, Amazon, Amazon Music, Disney+, Instagram, Netflix, Spotify, TikTok, Twitch