Asian TV viewers are the most likely to use streaming services
Around 8 in 10 (78%) Asian TV content viewers are streamers, compared to 65% of TV content viewers overall, according to a Horowitz Research.
Asian viewers lead the streaming market with 78%, says Horowitz Research
The viewership is being driven by the demand for international content that was generally unavailable or expensive to subscribe to stateside, and the programming and marketing challenge the pay-TV industry faced in serving a culturally and linguistically diverse consumer segment.
Netflix is the main provider of Asian content ( 39%) followed by TV services like Sling TV and Directv Now.
The report titled FOCUS Asian: The Media Landscape 2019 further highlights how the average Asian TV content viewer spends more than half (52%) of their viewing time with streamed content, while just 39% of content is watched live through traditional TV platforms. Moreover, one in four Asians stream all their content.
Among Asian-language viewers, 59% say they access Asian-language content via streaming frequently, vs. just 31% who access it via traditional cable/satellite/antenna.
According to Adriana Waterston, senior vice president of Insights for Horowitz Research, even back in the 1990s, when internet meant dial-up and streaming videos was not even in most of our consideration sets, we found that many tech-forward Asian households had found ways to access and download content from their countries of origin to their computer— a painstakingly slow process that would take all night— so that they could watch their episode the next day.
She added: "The Asian market has always been a challenge for the pay-TV industry. We have always known that there is a strong market for in-language and culturally relevant content, but with the Asian population hailing from so many countries and with so many linguistic and cultural nuances, scalability has been a major hurdle. The efficiency and personalization of streaming solve many of the inherent challenges of serving this audience. Now the question will be which players will rise to the occasion."