News & Views

Barb, the industry’s standard for understanding what people watch, has released data from its Establishment Survey showing that 20.1m UK homes (68.8%) had access to a subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service in Q3 2024. This is a slight increase from 20m UK homes (68.7%) 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 3.8m (13.1%) up from 2.78m (9.5%) in Q2. The Disney+ ad tier averaged 1.2m (4.1%) up from 820k homes in Q2. A different approach to moving homes to its ad tier means 86% of homes with Amazon Prime Video access in Q3 are on the ad tier – 11.5m homes (39.3%).

Netflix: 17.3m UK homes (59%) had access to Netflix in Q3 2024 up from 17.1m UK homes (58.6%) in Q2.

Amazon Prime Video: 13.4m UK homes (45.9%) had access to Amazon Prime Video in Q3 down from 13.7m UK homes (46.7%) in Q2.

Disney+: 7.5 UK homes (25.7%) had access to Disney+ in Q3 down from 7.6m UK homes (26.1%) in Q2.

Apple TV+: 2.5m UK homes (8.6%) had access to Apple TV+ in Q3 up from 2.4m UK homes (8.3%) in Q2.

Paramount+: 2.8m UK homes (9.4%) had access to Paramount+ in Q3 flat from 2.8m UK homes (9.7%) in Q2.

Discovery+: 3.2m UK homes (10.9%) had access to Discovery+ in Q3 flat from 3.2m UK homes (11.1%) in Q2.

NOW: 2.1m UK homes (7%) had access to NOW in Q3 up from 1.98m UK homes (6.8%) in Q2.

Doug Whelpdale, Head of Insight at Barb said:

“After strong growth in Q1 and Q2 it was perhaps inevitable that the growth in homes accessing subscription VOD services would slow. The overall number of homes accessing at least one SVOD service remained above 20m, but the number with more than two services dipped to below 14m homes. Suggesting viewers continue to remain wary of economic turbulence.

This stability in overall subscriber numbers further demonstrates why services are exploring other avenues to continue revenue growth. While Amazon is likely to be the biggest ad tier for some time, it’s interesting to see the growth of the Netflix ad tier towards 4m homes and Disney+ past 1m homes. With darker evenings and the festive season on the horizon the number of ad tier homes for Netflix and Disney seems likely to grow.”

Barb’s viewing data shows how new titles and library programming combine to drive time spent with these streaming services.

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.