Faced with changing consumer behaviours and the slowdown of linear advertising revenue growth, European broadcasters may have found a way to bounce back. Many are now betting on catch-up platforms to provide them a share of growing digital advertising revenues, while finding additional ways to monetise content.

According to Ampere Consumer polling data in Q3 2019, 39% of internet users across the UK, Germany, France, Spain and Italy said they had used an online video catch-up service in the last month. Indeed, some commercial broadcasters in Europe have already gained significant online audiences: in the UK 38% of internet users had used ITV Hub in the past month, and in France 26% had used MyTF1.   

Such audiences could be highly valuable as they belong to clusters which are popular among advertisers. Catch-up users across the EU Big 5 countries skew younger than average consumers and over-index in the 18-24 and 25-34 age brackets (36% of them are aged 34 years old or less).They also tend to be more affluent: 31% of BVoD users have annual household income higher than $51,000 versus 26% of all respondents. Thanks to the roll-out of compulsory user registration, these free platforms enable their parent companies to collect consumer data. Coupled with the development of targeted advertising this helps them potentially deliver advertising to more defined consumer groups than linear TV advertising or anonymous online viewing.      

Consumers are also increasingly given the option to pay a monthly subscription fee to access ad-free BVoD content. By launching services such as ITV Hub+ in the UK or Atresplayer Premium in Spain alongside the ad-funded versions, broadcasters are positioning themselves to capture all internet video viewers regardless of their preferred type of access.