36% Italian viewers pay for on-demand services
March 18, 2016
By Branislav Pekic from Rome
More than a third (36 per cent) of TV viewers in Italy are paying for on-demand services, well below the European (50 per cent) and global (65 per cent) averages.
The Global Video on Demand Survey by Nielsen reveals that those accessing on-demand services in Italy do so mainly through smartphone (48 per cent) and tablet (38 per cent) devices.
Also, 39 per cent of Italians are connected to social media while watching (49 per cent EU average) in order to discuss programmes with other viewers.
The main factor for the rising interest in on-demand services, explains Nielsen Italia CEO Giovanni Fantasia, is the possibility of users to access TV content “when, how and where they want”, adding that media companies “cannot avoid this challenge”.
Over 50 per cent of Italians that use on-demand do so at least three times a week. Those surveyed said they used the service to create a personalised schedule, both in terms of timing (69 per cent) and so that they could watch all episodes of a series in sequence (67 per cent).
Significantly, 54 per cent of those polled perceive the cost of on-demand services as lower compared to the traditional pay-TV.
With regards to the type of content watched on-demand, the most mentioned are movies (75 per cent), TV series (41 per cent) and documentaries (33 per cent). Currently, in Italy only 5 per cent use alternative players (such as Netflix) to access programmes on demand, while in Europe the figure amounts to 11 per cent and globally 26 per cent.