Zenith: Online Video Viewing to Reach 100 Minutes a Day in 2021

The average person will spend 100 minutes each day watching online video in 2021, up from 84 minutes this year, according to Zenith’s Online Video Forecasts 2019 report.

This is the equivalent of watching 25 continuous days of video in 2021.

The amount of time people spend viewing online video has grown rapidly across the world, at an average rate of 32 percent a year between 2013 and 2018.

China and Sweden have the most active online video viewers, with the average person in each country expected to spend 103 minutes a day watching online video this year. These are the only countries where online video viewing exceeds 100 minutes a day, but by 2021, Zenith expects Canada, India, Mexico, the U.K. and the U.S. to join that roster.

“The consumption of online video is growing rapidly, and the average person will spend half as much time viewing online video as they spend viewing conventional television this year,” said Jonathan Barnard, head of forecasting at Zenith. “This fast-expanding supply of audiences is fuelling rapid growth in demand from advertisers, making online video the fastest-growing digital channel by advertising expenditure.”

Zenith forecasts that advertising expenditure on online video will rise from $45 billion this year to $61 billion by 2021, at an average rate of 18 percent a year (compared to 10 percent a year for internet advertising as a whole). Television adspend, meanwhile, is forecast to shrink from $183 billion to $180 billion over the same period, as ratings continue to drop in key markets. Online video will therefore rise to the equivalent of a third of the entire TV market in 2021, up from a quarter this year.

“Online video has boosted the amount of time that consumers spend watching audiovisual content and is amplifying advertisers’ ability to reach consumers with high-impact brand-building ads,” said Matt James, global brand president at Zenith. “The growth in serving ads to consumers via connected television sets will be a huge contributor to the growth of this format in the coming years, and it will help to bring attribution back to TV advertising.”