News & Views

Barb, the industry’s standard for understanding what people watch, has released data from its Establishment Survey showing that 20m UK homes (68.3%) had access to a subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service in Q4 2024. This is a slight dip from 20.1m UK homes (68.8%) in Q2.

Barb has again shared an advertising tier estimate for Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon. The number of UK homes on the Netflix ad tier continues to build, reaching 4.7m (16% of UK homes) up more than a fifth from 3.8m (13.1%) in Q3. The Disney+ ad tier reached 1.5m (5.2% of UK homes), up more than a quarter from 1.2m (4.1%) in Q3. A different approach to moving homes to its ad tier means 87% of homes with Amazon Prime Video access in Q4 are on the ad tier – 11.6m homes (39.4% of UK homes), slightly up from 11.5m homes in Q3.

• Netflix: 17.1m UK homes (58.2%) had access to Netflix in Q4, slightly down from 17.3m UK homes (59%) had access to Netflix in Q3.
• Amazon Prime Video: 13.3m UK homes (45.5%) had access to Amazon Prime Video in Q4, slightly down from 13.4m (45.9%) in Q3.
• Disney+: 7.6 UK homes (26%) had access to Disney+ in Q4, up from 7.5m UK homes (25.7%) in Q3.
• Apple TV+: 2.6m UK homes (8.9%) had access to Apple TV+ in Q4, up from 2.5m UK homes (8.6%) in Q3.
• Paramount+: 2.7m UK homes (9.1%) had access to Paramount+ in Q4, slightly down from 2.8m UK homes (9.4%) in Q3.
• Discovery+: 3.1m UK homes (10.7%) had access to Discovery+ in Q4, slightly down from 3.2m UK homes (10.9%) in Q3.
• NOW: 2m UK homes (6.7%) had access to NOW in Q4, slightly down from 2.1m UK homes (7%) in Q3.

Doug Whelpdale, Head of Insight at Barb said:

“The overall figures for Q4 2024 are largely flat compared to Q3.

“Looking at the three services with ad tiers, Amazon has the largest ad tier with 11.6m homes. With most Amazon homes on the ad tier this, this represented modest growth on Q3. But set against a modest decline in overall Amazon Prime video access, this would suggest newcomers to the service are taking the ad tier.

Meanwhile, the Netflix ad tier is now in almost 1m more homes than in Q3, while the Disney+ ad tier is now in 26% more homes than the last quarter. The majority of homes on these two services are still using the service without ads, so there is plenty of room for their ad tiers to grow.”

Streaming services with a household penetration of more than 5% are reported.

Caution should be applied when comparing Barb’s sample-based numbers to audited numbers published by the SVOD services. Respondent recall of access to these services is subject to some uncertainty – this could occur where the respondent is not the subscriber in the household, or the service is provided in a package with other services.