Behind the Numbers: Our Total Media Consumption Is Hitting a Ceiling. But In Which Areas Is It Starting to Fall?
26:25 Share

Thank you.

Hey gang, it's Friday, March 7th. Ethan, Oscar, Zach and listeners, welcome to Behind the Numbers, the marketing video podcast. I'm Marcus and today we'll be discussing the time we spend with media. Surprise, surprise, it's high. Today I'm joined by a few people for this conversation. We have with us our principal forecasting writer who lives in New York, it's Ethan Kramer-Flood. Marcus, I am here to spend time with you talking about time spent. What about us? What about us?

I don't know how much time I spend with you, but I know how much time I spend with Marcus. It's too much. Yeah, I was going to beat me to it. Senior Director of Forecasting also hanging out in New York, Oscar Orozco. Hello, everybody. I'm here to spend time with you listeners.

Zach, just give us a normal introduction. Senior forecasting analyst based in Colorado, Zach Goldner. Hey, Marcus. I really don't have time for this, but happy to be here. Fantastic. Still got any time joke. I'm fun. Rough start. Today's facts. Who invented the thing that resets the bowling pins?

Okay, so we owe our thanks to Gottfried or Fred, we won't buy him for short. Schmidt invented the first mechanical pin setter in 1936. Schmidt was a bowler from Pearl River, New York. He sold the patent to the American Machine and Foundry Company in 1941 and introduced a few years later, the first pin setter weighed nearly two tons and was nine feet tall.

Modern pin setters are a fraction of the size and a lot smarter as well. And that's why we have it. It used to be people would reset them manually. So it was like a person's job. And then they replaced it with a two-ton machine. That's a lot of work just to replace that guy. That's not even like you used to do this. I was there. I think kids would do this, right? Just for like a couple extra bucks. That was like an awesome job when you were 12 or something. Oh, yeah. You used to do this? Yeah.

You have to be like a hundred years old. Most bowling alleys, eight to 20 lanes, some of them 30, 40. The largest one in the world is Inazawa Grand Bowl in Inazawa City in Japan, 116 lanes.

I'd be furious if they popped you down on 114. Oh, gosh. As an American, I feel infuriated that someone has something bigger than us. They finally did it. Sounds like a nightmare to me. Today's real topic. The main ways our time spent with media is changing.

All right, gents, it's that time of the year where we talk about how media is changing and time spent with it. More specifically, every I think it's twice a year. You guys update our numbers to figure out the kind of nuances below the surface of all the time that we possibly spend with media, TV, radio, print, digital things.

Ethan, you put together the report for us. The two other gents we have on the call worked on the numbers behind the scenes. But could you set the table for us? What top line is Time Spent With Media looking like this year?

Absolutely. Yeah. So this is US time spent with media 2025 hot off the presses. And this year, the big insight is actually at the top line, because our our announcement, our conclusion is that media saturation is here.

From years and years and years, sometimes I've come on this podcast talking with you or just in general, this forecast has shown an ever increasing amount of time that Americans spend with media. It just goes up, up, up, up, up year after year. And we are now pretty much ready to say that

The wall is being hit. Now, it's being hit at a very high level, 12 and a half hours plus, right? An enormous amount of time spent with media. That story has existed for a while. I've come on. You've talked about it. We've all talked about it. It's a big, big number. But something is now changing because heretofore, we have always been able to count on Americans spending an ever-increasing amount of their day with media, either by actually spending more time with media,

or by multitasking and spending more and more time with two screens and three screens, et cetera. We all know that story. And we're basically saying that this is now coming to an end. If you can just imagine what a sort of change that is, like there isn't going to be any new space anymore. So as new types of media come on, new platforms come on, it's more of a zero sum game. Something's going to have to go down for something else to go up.

And in fact, that's happening, right? So at the top line, the interesting story now is that we've got some major categories that are stagnant or even declining, which is not something that we've ever seen before at this level. So things like social media, things like digital gaming, things like digital audio, instead of going up, up, up, they're flatlining and they're even starting to go down. And of course, traditional television has been going down for a long time. So now, instead of having lots of digital up, up, up categories, we've actually got a whole lot going down

And we have a few going up also, and it all kind of adds up to not much change. - Yeah, that is a fascinating part of the story. 'Cause as you mentioned, 12 hours, 42 minutes per day with media. And that when large buckets is traditional TV, radio, print and digital things.

And now you have a case where from last year, folks were taking any traditional time and allocating it to digital almost minute for minute. So this year we're expecting Americans to take about 10 minutes of their TV, radio and newspaper time traditional and spend it with digital instead. Previously, we had digital time growing faster than traditional time was falling. And so you have that increase in overall time as Ethan mentioned.

In 2023, for example, people were adding 20 minutes of digital time and cutting 10 minutes of traditional. So overall, you had a surplus of plus 10 for that year.

Let's get into some of those trends we'll have a surface for this episode. I asked the gents to give me, there's a lot of them, but to give me the most interesting time spent with media trend going on this moment. And so they're all competing for that title. Ethan, we'll start with you. What do you think is the most interesting time spent trends going on right now? Yeah. So I'm going to keep it with one of these sort of surprisingly negative results. Netflix,

I'm not here to tell you that Netflix is doing badly. Netflix, of course, is doing great. But Netflix last year suffered its first ever decline in average daily time spent with it by its own users. And this is another symptom of the kind of thing we're talking about where people are just getting maxed out. Now, sub OTT streaming, the general category that Netflix is in, is one of the categories that is still doing well.

I mentioned before that a lot of big categories are stagnating or declining. Streaming services, they're still going up. But Netflix, not really. It went down by not much, like a percent and a half last year. Lost a couple of minutes or two among users this year. It's not going to lose anymore, but it's not going to regain all of that. And the interesting dynamic that we think explains it is that, A, it's gotten a lot of new subscribers. Netflix is growing.

password sharing crackdown worked well and they got a lot of new subscribers. Those new subscribers don't seem to be watching as much Netflix as the old subscribers did. And specifically, those who are choosing the ad supported tier, the cheaper option, don't seem to be watching as much Netflix as the older traditional members or even newer members who choose to pay through Nazi ads. Those folks seem to

watch more Netflix. The new people that everyone's excited about because their ad tier experiment is working so well are actually watching less, causing Netflix to have its first ever decline. And it's basically flatlining now while some of its competitors are actually still increasing in time spent. Okay. Because

Neilson was showing Netflix's share of total TV time is growing, right? So January to December of last year, they're showing 8% of all time to 8.6%, only second to YouTube. And that's true. And so the nuance there is they're talking about the whole country and I'm talking about among users. So as Netflix's subscriber base grows and grows and grows,

it does look better among the population as a whole. Yeah. You're comparing against everyone, but the average, the individual who is an active Netflix user, how much time,

per day do they spend with it when you get these folks that are coming in and not watching it as often as they newly subscribed they're going from zero to 30 minutes a day because they used to be zero so obviously that helps against the population as a whole but for netflix's averages which a lot of marketers want to know you know how much time did the people that are actually watching netflix how much time per day are they watching it uh it's not rising anymore and it probably isn't going to anymore yeah but that number is already over an hour a day among each viewer yeah yeah um

I'm not going to say Netflix is doing badly. We are saying it's going to stagnate, but one thing that Netflix hasn't unlocked yet is live TV. They've started testing it out here and there. But imagine when Netflix has those big sports streaming rights.

that could be a driver that we see in the upcoming future. We already saw the Jake Paul versus Mike Tyson fight do extremely well. NFL Christmas games do great. After those test runs, I think Netflix is going to see that that is the key to drive more growth in the years ahead, and that will fix its flatlining time spent. But Zach, it's the key. I mean, I would question whether Netflix is well-positioned to take advantage of

of live sports and live programming because it just continues to feel like they're way behind all their competitors. So, you know, to put a little bit of a doubt in the estimates, I wonder if we'll see stronger declines into the future because of that. And it feels like that is precisely what is eating into what we call linear TV or traditional TV time, right? It has to be that, especially that sports component. And I just don't know if Netflix is as well positioned.

Yeah, I'm curious if our forecasts would go out only one extra year now, if we push them out even more, whether Netflix... I can smuggle in an additional data point, right? Because the live sports component is why those that are growing are growing. So we've got Peacock and Amazon Prime Video are the ones that are starting to take share.

And Netflix is losing share. And you can pretty much entirely ascribe that to live sports. I should have prefaced all this by saying that Netflix is far and away number one in all these categories. So I'm not going to want to make it clear. Like they say people spend so much time with Netflix. It's like the top platform. But that made it interesting, though, that it is it is losing share and it's starting to go down. Yeah, it is good context, though, you think, because you have a chart in your report showing, you know,

how much time people spend on Netflix as an hour and change compared to second place Spotify, which is like 10 minutes behind that. And then you've got YouTube very close, Pandora very close, TikTok. And then you have the kind of the second tier, if you will. And then a big 10 minute jump back to Hulu, Instagram, Reddit, et cetera. So Netflix is by far and away the platform where people are spending most of their time. And I will argue Oscars,

point there. He says that Netflix is not suited to have live sports. I would argue it is the most situated to propel and thrive with live sports because it has the viewership. And

all they have to do from there is get the contracts i know that's a big if and that's a lot of money that comes with it but right now they did the hardest part done and they have that viewership and the user base yeah so they have to work out some kinks and get those big contracts and i think that we could see netflix continue to uh gain some consumption moving forward yeah yeah netflix might actually see some of those big sports leagues coming to them and saying hey what can you do for us because you have such a huge audience um

And so I think they are well positioned because they have the raw numbers. All right, very good. Zach, you're up next. What do you think is the most interesting time spent trend? Even more interesting than this Netflix one, which is pretty good. Yeah, let's talk about the fastest growing video form, which is free ad supporting streaming TV, aka fast TV.

So Fast TV is moving from niche to the mainstream. It's once seen as a secondary option for cord cutters, but now it's really moving into the spotlight. Are you talking about what kind of services? We're talking about fast services, which would include in platforms like Tubi, Roku Channel,

We can talk about Samsung TV Plus, Pluto Channel. There are a lot of growing channels within it. If you own a smart TV, the chances are that TV has its own branded content. And for any TV that is a Roku TV, it already has a built-in Roku channel. So that's immediately getting a lot of new viewers. But we're seeing it really take off.

uh this year among the adult population uh fast viewership uh among adults is going to be 19 20 minutes which is double that of 2021 and so in just a few years time spent on these platforms skyrocketed then we take a look at it among those who actually use those platforms it's closer to an hour it's at like 50 minutes a day uh this year yeah

That was surprising. Sorry, really quickly, the pushback there, though, is it has grown a fair amount the last couple of years. It's only adding like a few minutes per year, even amongst the fast users is only adding like three minutes, I think, per year. So are we surprised that it's already starting to brush up against a ceiling, so to speak?

Well, I think all of our formats are hitting a ceiling, but this 10% that's growing within 2025 is a really big accomplishment. But yes, that is across...

all those different platforms that's only gaining a couple minutes of time. Yeah, just to emphasize that point, I think it's important because what I kicked off this conversation about is that things aren't growing and it's really hard to move the needle. And if fast is gaining two to three minutes a year, that's actually a lot. And if it's growing 10%, that's a lot.

You're right that it's a small number right now, but the fact that it's leading in growth is worth discussing. And the fact that it's going to continue to grow is worth discussing because a lot of other things aren't. Yeah. And as a share of time spent with video overall, all the time people spend with video,

YouTube or social video or whatever, it is ticking up a touch, which is impressive to be able to grow fast enough to be able to gain even more, a greater share of the video pie. Sorry, Oscar. I think we haven't looked at it from this angle, but when you think of growth in digital media from a device standpoint, it's really mainly coming from CTVs. And so to that point, fast services are very well positioned to gain because

people are watching them on CTVs, right? Not only that, they really, and Zach made a, you know, who worked on these estimates, made a great point about how the fast services seems to be the most well positioned to, you know, they're encroaching and taking time away from the linear TV

time that we're seeing. So in that way, they're even better positioned than many of these sub-OTT or SVOD services that we've talked about. Yeah. I mean, cable TV is too expensive, so we've had cord cutting for years. Digital pay TV, we thought maybe was going to be competitive. Now that's too expensive.

These things are free. And they're just sitting there waiting for you, right? No signups. No signups. It's just their... Roku just jams it down your throat, but then you're like, oh, wait, this works. It's really... Whoever hasn't used these services, I mean, they are recurated channels based off of very niche interests and preferences and a lot of nostalgic viewing, too. So they provide something completely new for viewers. Yeah.

And I want to bring up a couple more points because I'm the one who came up with this. Um, but you're looking at more paid, uh, subscription services, add on, add tiered services. If you like the content that's coming from these fast TV channels, and you just want to sit back, turn on the TV and watch.

For a lot of people, it's not worth it to pay for those Netflix accounts or what other services they may have when they're still getting decent or good content from fast channels. And one monumental milestone that occurred or accomplishment that occurred in February this year was that Tubi had its Super Bowl moment. For the first time ever, the Super Bowl was on a free ad-supported platform.

and that over 13 million viewers tuned into. So even though that's a small fraction of the total Super Bowl audience, it just shows what these platforms can become in the future. Fox owned property, correct?

Yes.

which is not nothing. I mean, because they just make it so easy. Yeah. You know, if you have a CTV, they're just sitting there. You have one click. So yeah, that's very believable to me. Yeah. That's a good one. Oscar, see if you can beat it. What's your most significant, impactful time spent milestone trends theme going on at the moment?

Yeah, I mean shifting away from the video platforms that we've been talking about, I want to talk about Reddit. Reddit, you know, I don't feel like Reddit gets enough coverage due to the fact that they've just been performing so well since their IPO. Before I get a little bit into Reddit, you know, and talk about some of the key metrics there, I did want to talk about something that Ethan mentioned at the beginning, which is, you know, within

Reddit operates as a social media platform. Social network time, as Ethan mentioned at the beginning, has stagnated and is starting to drop a little bit. So keeping that in mind, it is more interesting how Reddit is actually moving in the other direction, which is increasing their time. When you think about... You think it peaked, right? Social networking peaked last year at about an hour and 53. Yeah.

Exactly. It peaked, it was largely events driven, not just like the Olympics and because of the elections and things like this. So it's starting to drop and part of that is the meta platforms and TikTok and things like that. But Reddit is really positioned to continue growing. When you think about just the amount of total minutes that Americans, adults here, we're looking at adults, spend on social networks,

By next year, we think Reddit will take up about 10% of that time, which is massive growth over the last two or three years. Users are spending 34 minutes a day on Reddit, which is third, just right behind where TikTok and Instagram are. So it's above, you know, just legacy platforms that have been around for a long time.

Reddit is doing great with SEO, search. They've positioned themselves as sort of like the social media Wikipedia of sorts. And they're doing great with video. They're just really moving in the right direction there. And I think it was time to talk a little bit about their growth. And one final thing, we estimate that last year their time spent on the platform grew 15% year over year.

in terms of minutes. So just massive growth. So, but has the growth in time spent flatlined now though? Cause they've gone from 26 minutes to 34 minutes per day over the last couple of years. But I,

I thought I was reading the numbers as they're starting to hit their own ceiling. They're starting to slow down a little bit, but Reddit themselves have said that users who are on the platform for four years start getting closer up to 40 minutes a day. Those who have spent seven years or longer on the platform are up in the 40s. So I do think that there are a lot of new users as well. So that does kind of average things out. And this is signed-in users that we track.

Yes, this is only the exact logged in users. But I do think considering that if those trends persist, we might be talking about Reddit moving into second or potentially first place in the future.

The growth figure is particularly impressive given the new user factor, because Reddit has had this explosive growth over the last few years, hence their stock rising. But when someone just discovers it because they've heard the hype, they're not likely to spend as much time per day as someone who is a

long-term Reddit user who it's their go-to. So that for Reddit, that's a positive because of course you want people to sign up and start using you, but it's going to take a little while for those new users to ramp up there. I agree with Oscar. I mean, I think they're on a pretty spectacular upward trend, although we should mention that they're still not close to TikTok. They don't have the trendy dances that the Zoomers love to watch. Speaking of young people, it does seem like it's

Those folks who are driving the growth, Gen Z users, close to two thirds of the 13 million new logged in Reddit users we're expecting to see over the next couple of years are Gen Z. So it is a majority of those younger folks who are taking interest and liking to Reddit.

They are. I think the core users are still millennials, but exactly, Marcus, you're seeing Gen Zers adopting the platform as well. And Reddit, again, the search story, you know, Reddit, people, they've mentioned themselves that more and more searches are, you know, individuals looking for a specific topic and adding Reddit to the end of their search because they were specifically looking for Reddit posts about that topic. So really no end in sight to see where their engagement numbers might end up.

Yeah. And that's just engagement. I was checking out their ad revenue growth. That's really impressive. So from 2022 to 2026, we expect them to have gone from a $500 million a year business to making $1.4 billion. So users doing well, time spent has been doing very well the last couple of years, but they're able to translate all of that growth and engagement into dollars. This is very impressive. And they're able to also sell off a lot of the...

that the big data, the language that's occurring on those platforms, the big tech companies and make other revenues that are not just associated with advertising. So we're going to see that becoming another huge stream of revenue for them. They let everybody else train their large language models on all of our nonsense on Reddit. But it's also in comparison, right, to that, to the original point about how social media in general is doing badly.

So, you know, like Snapchat is declining. X is declining. TikTok is declining.

It actually has been declining for a couple of years, and this has nothing to do with the regulatory thing and the ban. They were already going down. And then Facebook had been going down, kind of stagnant now. Really, Instagram and Reddit are the only two social networks in the US that are on a positive track. Yeah. There's just a ton of nuance here. And it kind of goes back to what you were saying at the beginning. Digital time spent overall is still growing somehow.

But there are some digital activities which do seem to have found their ceiling over the past or in the past few years. Digital audio peaked, playing games digitally peaked, time spent with social media platforms starting to tick down a bit, time spent using tablets, that's peaked as well. Recently,

On laptops, desktop laptop use as well. It's a CTV story. We still see momentum on smartphones, of course. Almost all the growth is from subscription streaming and fast, as Zach said, and a couple other small items that are growing a little bit. Yeah.

Full report. If you want all the details, US time spent with media 2025. If you're a ProPlus subscriber, you can head to emarketer.com. Link, of course, in the show notes. And I think Zach wins it. Partly because you all started arguing for Zach's point while he was talking about it. Now we're going to suffer. Now we're going to suffer through this. Howdy, partner. Zach. I had to bring over my championship hat. This is why I said we shouldn't do video podcasts. You go square dancing with that? You had to know that was coming. I know it.

That's what we do in my neck of Colorado. Oh, no. All right, we have to go before this is on screen for too much longer. Please, please. Thank you so much to my guests, all except Zach for putting that on at the end. But thank you to Ethan. Our time is up. And to Oscar. And it was time well spent. Thank you, Zach. I guess to Zach.

Appreciate it, Marcus. Thanks for having me. You won't be invited back. Thank you so much to the whole Editing Crew, Victoria, John Lance, and Danny Stewart, who runs the team, and Sophie does our social media. Thanks to everyone for listening in. We hope to see you on Monday for the Behind the Numbers show, an eMarketer video podcast.