Half of all UK adults now use video-on-demand services

The rise of services such as iPlayer and Netflix, coupled with growth in tablet and mobile sales, has seen use of view on demand (VOD) grow 23 percentage points over the last three years.

The findings come from the latest Ofcom Communications Market Report, published today, showing that 50% of UK adults claimed to have used a video on demand service within the previous 12 months.

Claimed use of Netflix is growing more quickly than any other VOD service, but still remains lower than the services provided by the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV. However, the US-based platform had the largest increase in Q1 2014 among the online respondents in this survey, with a six percentage point increase, making it the most popular VOD service outside those provided by Public Service Broadcasters.

BBC iPlayer remains the most popular VOD service overall, with 38% of respondents claiming to use it in Q1 2014. This is almost double the claimed use of the next two most popular VOD services, ITV Player (22%) and 4oD (20%).

The amount of time spent watching catch-up, free and paid VOD services accounts for 8% of all viewing time among UK adults.

Although the VOD market is expanding, it is still a small part of the UK’s viewing. Results from Ofcom’s Digital Day diary research showed that adults watched an average of 2 hours 59 minutes of live TV per day, equating to 69% of all their media viewing time.

(However, this is different to Barb’s stats for total TV viewing which show that on average viewers watched 3 hours 52 minutes of TV per day in 2013, down by 9 minutes from 2012.)

The next most popular viewing activity in Ofcom’s Digital Day diary, recorded TV, accounted for 40 minutes (16%). The research also showed that, on average, people spent about the same amount of time watching TV or films on DVD, Blu-ray or VHS video as they did watching free on-demand/catch-up TV (12 minutes, or 5% of all viewing time, each).

Paid-for, downloaded or streamed TV or films accounted for 7 minutes (3%). Added together, free and paid on-demand and streamed content accounted for 8% of all viewing time across all devices.

The report also revealed that VOD content is watched on TV more than any other screen.

Overall, unique programme requests for long-form VOD are estimated to have risen by 38% between the second half of 2012 and the second half of 2013.