Digital 2025: TV trends and realities
Based on the coverage that Netflix and Disney+ receive in the media, you’d be forgiven for thinking that streaming platforms dominate today’s TV landscape.
However – while there’s no denying the popularity and importance of “OTT” video – people’s TV behaviours don’t actually match that media narrative.
In fact, “linear” TV formats like broadcast and cable continue to account for the majority of the world’s TV time.
TV viewing in context
Across all distribution formats, the world’s internet users spend an average of 3 hours and 13 minutes watching television each day, which includes the time spent with linear TV, streaming platforms, and TV shows saved to recording devices.
For perspective, that figure is 7 minutes higher than the daily average we reported this time last year (+3.8 percent), but it’s also down by roughly 10 minutes per day (-5 percent) compared with the equivalent value from this time two years ago.
However, it’s worth noting that changes in GWI’s methodology – especially the addition of audiences aged 65 and above – may have played a role in shaping these trends over recent quarters.
And just as an aside, it’s interesting to note that people now spend more than twice as long using the internet each day as they spend watching television.
But having said that, streaming TV shows and movies also accounts for a meaningful slice of our daily internet time, and more than 3 in 10 of us also access connected content via our TV sets, so the distinction between these two media is increasingly blurred.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the latest data suggest that people are spending considerably less time watching TV today than they spent during the height of Covid lockdowns.
However, the current daily average is actually meaningfully higher than the figures that we saw for most of the last decade, with only 2019 seeing a higher daily average.
And crucially, that’s the case even when we remove the influence of audiences over the age of 65 from these latest figures [note that retirees tend to watch considerably more TV than younger generations do].
But perhaps most tellingly, despite enduring claims that the internet would “kill” TV, a hefty 97.5 percent of internet users watch at least one form of TV each month.
And crucially, that’s still higher than the 97.3 percent who use either a social network or a messaging platform each month.
In other words, these figures suggest that TV is still more popular than social media – albeit only by a fraction.
And that little nugget has particular relevance in the context of trends in global ad spend, which we explore in this article.
Streaming still lags
But for marketers, perhaps the biggest surprise in this dataset is the enduring popularity of “traditional” TV.
More specifically, the latest research from GWI – which covers 54 of the world’s largest economies – shows that linear TV accounts for close to 57 percent of total TV time today, compared with just over 43 percent for streaming platforms.
Indeed, it’s only amongst audiences aged 16 to 24 that streaming accounts for more than half of TV viewing time, and even then, OTT’s share only accounts for about 51 percent of the daily total.
Meanwhile, linear TV is still significantly more popular than streaming amongst older age groups, with people aged 55 to 64 spending more than two-thirds of their TV time watching broadcast and cable channels.
Age matters
These demographic trends have particular importance for marketers – as well as for the TV industry – because people aged 55 to 64 watch roughly 25 percent more TV than people aged 16 to 24 do.
The youngest cohort in GWI’s survey currently spends a combined 2 hours and 44 minutes watching all types of television each day, which is almost half an hour less than the overall average.
And for reference, streaming accounts for 1 hour and 24 minutes of that total, compared with 1 hour and 20 minutes for linear TV formats.
Having said that, despite their lower overall viewing time, younger people are actually the most likely to watch at least some television, with only 2 percent of GWI’s survey audience in this age group saying that they don’t watch any type of TV.
Meanwhile, despite their generation’s relatively high levels of viewing time, people aged 55 to 64 are the most likely to “avoid” TV, with 3.1 percent of respondents in this cohort saying that they don’t watch any kind of television.
That’s still only a tiny fraction of the total though, and – critically – TV ads are still the primary source of brand discovery for internet users aged 55 to 64, ahead of search engines, word of mouth, and any type of online advertising (more on this in this article).
Watching the pennies
If we remove the influence of people aged 65 and above – who are considerably less likely to watch OTT video than younger age groups – we can see that streaming’s share of total TV time has actually increased slightly over the past couple of years.
Back in Q4 2022 – just after a change in GWI’s methodology – streaming’s share of TV time amongst audiences aged 16 to 64 stood at 44.0 percent, whereas that figure has climbed to 44.5 percent today.
However, the share of internet users who pay for a subscription to a TV or movie streaming platform like Netflix has remained relatively static since the height of Covid lockdowns.
As you might expect, there have been some minor fluctuations over time, but GWI’s quarterly figures have hovered in the range of 30 to 32 percent for most of the past 4 years.
Are you still watching?
On one hand, that’s encouraging news for streaming companies, because it suggests that people didn’t cancel their subscriptions en masse after the end of lockdown.
But on the other hand, data suggests that just one in three streamers currently pays for the content that they watch.
And for comparison, GWI’s research finds that close to 92 percent of internet users watch some form of streaming TV each month, which is close to three times higher than the 31.5 percent who say that they pay for a subscription.
Having said that, it’s important to remember that – in most cases – only one person will pay for their household’s access to a particular streaming platform though, so these figures don’t imply that people are relying only on free streaming content, or that they’re inappropriately sharing OTT passwords.
For context, market leader Netflix’s Q4 2024 earnings results showed that the company had just over 300 million subscribers.
And while figures vary significantly from country to country, the latest data from the United Nations suggest that – at a worldwide level – the “average” household is home to about 3.7 people.
That figure tends to be meaningfully lower in wealthier countries though, where the majority of Netflix subscribers are likely to live.
So, all things considered, we might deduce that roughly a billion people currently have “legitimate” access to a paid Netflix subscription.
But given that nearly 92 percent of the world’s connected adults currently watch streaming TV each month, data suggests that there may still be considerable potential for growth in paid streaming – even for the market leader.
However, the key question for marketers is whether that potential growth will come from ad-free paid subscriptions, or whether ad-supported plans might come to dominate the next phase of streaming’s growth.
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This article is a sub-section of our Digital 2025 Global Overview Report.
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