October channel trends and insights

October 2020: Channel trends and insights

We’ve rounded up the latest channel trends and insights for October. Read on to learn what’s happening across the channels from Social Display and BVOD to DOOH. 

Download the latest channel trends as a PDF.

Social Display

Social Display ads extend social posts across premium publishers on the wider internet where users can tap to watch videos, take social actions or click through to the landing page. Don’t have display creatives? No worries. All that’s needed is a link to the social post, and your campaigns can be extended across display environments. It combines the power of social creatives with the efficiencies of programmatic workflows to drive better results for brands by extending social creatives on the web programmatically in display inventory.

• Social Display drives 3x better performance compared to standard IAB creatives.
• With the peak retail period coming up soon, Carousel format via Social Display allows retailers to showcase multiple products in a single ad as each slide can click out to a different landing page. 
• Latest APAC Benchmarks:
  • Carousel 0.81%
  • Link post 0.45%
  • Video post 0.40%
  • Photo post 0.30%

BVOD

Since the start of 2020, BVOD consumption has been on the rise with weekly tracking of BVOD consumption revealing that a new baseline for viewership has been established. More than 1.6 million hours of BVOD content is being consumed every week as more and more Australians embrace the platform. The latest BVOD consumption data provided by ThinkTV and OzTAM shows that the weekly consumption of BVOD services across 9Now, 10Play, 7Plus and Foxtel remains high since March lockdowns.

• Seven West Media, 7Plus: 50% of the top 10 CFTA VOD shows over the past 4 weeks were on 7Plus, with 70% of 7Plus content exclusive to digital. The Ghost Whisperer is the 6th largest CFTA VOD show since launching on September 2nd.
• Nine Entertainment, 9Now: The Block was the #1 program streamed for the week on 9Now and against all CFTA broadcasters. The Block and Love Island USA are leading online viewing, taking the top 2 spots against all CFTA broadcasters. 9Now records consecutive WoW growth with majority of content consumed on CTV devices (67%).
• SBS, SBS on Demand: SBS has now recorded 8.69m registered subscribers with 1.6m monthly active users. There has been a spike in streaming of season 1-3 of Fargo in the lead up to the new season dropping this month. Tour De France 2020 has been a significant driver for SBS’s consumption with over 5.5m total video chapter views online.
• Network 10, 10Play: 10Play has recorded 2.63b minutes viewed YTD, +18% YoY.
• Foxtel & Kayo: We are seeing huge demand on Kayo off the back of the AFL, NRL and IPL season, reaching 600k subscribers and 1.8m unique audience over the last 3 months (330% increase in monthly reach). AFL and NRL viewing up 240% YoY and unique viewers up 20% compared to pre lockdown. The top episode of Wentworth on Foxtel has recorded 2.9m minutes streamed.

Video

Audiences are now seeking a variety of financial content with top categories including information about the economy, business, finance and shares. Real estate and property content has also been on the rise. With cricket and EPL seasons kicking off, we are continuing to see huge growth across sports content. Travel remains a popular vertical as audiences research about local and interstate travel due to international borders remaining closed.

• 7news has recorded a 9.9m monthly unique audience with strong growth across their business (+45%) and politics verticals (+49%).
• 9Honey Celebrity is the go to for consumers to keep up to date with the stars. Unique visitors are up 61% and visits up 36%, with 64% of visits via mobile devices.
• People continue to turn to AFR for the latest business, finance and investment news. AFR’s Work & Career sections records WoW growth in all key metrics (users +60%, page views +66%, session +93%).
• 64% of visits to Nine are via mobile phones. Visits peak between 10am and 1pm with another peak around dinnertime at 7pm.

Audio

As most of the country returns to work, listening behaviours have changed significantly over the recent months with audio consumption continuing to grow. Smart speaker listening continues to record extraordinary growth with SCA reporting 2.2m listening hours in August (+95% YoY), now accounting for 22% of total listening. Audience increase across all states in addressable live stream listeners on Hit and Triple M Networks demonstrates a consumer behavioural shift towards connected listening.

• SCA audiences are listening longer and more often, with 10m listening hours, an increase of 46% YoY.
• PodcastOne Australia has seen +167% growth in listening across the COVID-19 period from March to August.
• Catch Up Radio has reached 4.2m downloads this month (+74% YoY).
• SCA has once again broken another record as monthly listeners reach 1.5m.
• TripleM has recorded 906k listeners (+81% YoY) with total listening hours of 5m, followed by HitNetwork with 708k listeners (+67% YoY) and 4.8m total listening hours.

DOOH

The general trend of audience levels nationally (excluding Vic) are almost back to normal levels with people still avoiding public transport and driving more often. People are also seen to be spending more time in the suburbs as opposed to the CBD, which suggests the majority of people are still working from home. Throughout August and September, VMO Active audience numbers have continued to show consistent growth, supporting the fact that health and fitness remains an essential part of our everyday routines.

• As spring hits, audience movement at the gym has been back to pre COVID-19 levels.
• VMO reported that they have seen new visitation trends emerge. More Australians now opt to train at the gym mid-morning instead of in the evening.
• Vistar has a new built-in POI targeting set which allows brands to target screens in DOOH venues where traffic is at least 75% of the level it was pre COVID-19 (February 2020).
• Vistar’s patented technology is the only system to build segments for programmatic audience targeting accounting for both location and time.

For more information about programmatic trends and insights, or if you have any questions, please get in touch; we’re here to help.

Media at Bench

[email protected]

Sam Thompson, Head of Media and Partnerships

[email protected]; 0401 805 177