Southeast Asian Streaming Gains

Across AVOD, SVOD, freemium and gaming platforms, online video consumption in Southeast Asia rose to 1.2 trillion minutes in the second quarter, a 6 percent year-on-year boost, according to Media Partners Asia (MPA).

Southeast Asia Online Video Consumer Insights & Analytics: A Definitive Study taps into MPA’s own AMPD Research Platform to explore the video streaming landscape in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.

YouTube remains out front with a whopping 65 percent share of minutes streamed in Q2, with TikTok at 23 percent. In the premium video market—which commanded 10 percent of streaming minutes—Netflix has the lead at 40 percent. Regional platforms are also faring well, MPA reports, with Viu at 17 percent of premium online viewing minutes, WeTV at 12 percent and iQIYI at 9 percent.

Southeast Asia had some 29.6 million subs at the end of the second quarter, with about 10 million additions in the first half of this year. Disney gained about 3.6 million subs in the first half, while Viu added 1.9 million. Viu’s momentum in Q2 sees it overtaking Netflix in Southeast Asian subscribers, with a total of 5.2 million paying customers.

MPA analyst Dhivya T commented, “Future SVOD category growth in the region over 2H 2021 will be determined by key platforms focusing on customer satisfaction and churn management with a new array of originals, Asian content and sports events set to launch in Q4. Meanwhile, we note that premium U.S. and Korean content continues to drive subscriber acquisition while Japanese anime and long-tail Korean dramas have become ubiquitous across free tiers as reliable drivers of consumption. Local content drives about 20 percent of consumption in Indonesia and Thailand, with key players streaming local FTA dramas on AVOD. Use cases for local content as a lever for subscriber acquisition are emerging, especially with Thai content and certain premium originals in Indonesia. Premium Chinese content consumption has taken hold in Thailand, driven by the popularity of WeTV and iQIYI’s romance and period dramas.”