Adolescence - sparking debate and breaking records

Shows like this have the opportunity to shape culture and change policy, and as noted on TRIE this week, have long been the property of terrestrial channels in the UK – see Mr Bates vs The Post Office on ITV last year – but with soaring budgets and global audiences, we can likely expect more traditionally BBC talent and scripts to be moving to streaming giants like Netflix and Amazon Prime to match their ambitions.

The numbers seem to back this trend up and in what was unchartered territory this week, Adolescence was the first programme on a streaming platform to top the weekly audience charts in the UK – with 6.45m viewers in it’s first week. In fact, all four episodes were in the top 10, with ITV’s Protection & The Bay and the BBC’s The Apprentice, Death in Paradise & Gladiators filling out the Top 10. Whilst streaming numbers have flattened over recent years, subscription VOD numbers are still up +54% vs pre-pandemic levels with the average UK adult watching >38 minutes per day.

So, what does this mean for advertisers? Whilst these platforms are huge in scale (and growing) it’s worth stating that their ad-funded models are far more modest, with only 10% of Netflix and 5% of Disney’s user base being reachable through traditional advertising (Amazon’s is the exception, currently sits around 90%). For advertisers trying to reach mass audiences TV advertising still accounts of 84% of video viewing, so should be key to any AV plan with cover at it’s core. At UM we treat every brief individually with no off the shelf planning and a true understanding the need to tailor our approach to the brand and their audience’s specific viewing habits e.g. the Heaviest 10% of TV viewers watch 96% linear, but lightest 10% are much more fragmented (48% linear, 24% VOD, 26% SVOD). Our new ‘Full Colour Media’ proposition is all about doing things differently and standing against bland media planning, which is only being exacerbated by the growth in an over-reliance in AI for media solutions. It’s backed by research from >10k brands and 3 years of data to help better understand the patterns which drive brand growth.
 

Whether the ‘Adolescence’ moment is a bursting of the dam for the streamers or an outlier in an evolving AV landscape, UM is perfectly positioned to consider the best way to navigate this increasingly complex market for our clients.