Global Media Intelligence 2019: Turkey

Key Features

As in previous years, survey data from Turkey highlights behavior in a young, urban population—the archetypal early adopters.

• Smartphone ownership among Turkey’s internet users was close to 98% in H1 2018, according to GlobalWebIndex. And penetration has plateaued at that level, with 97.6% of respondents owning a smartphone in H1 2019. By contrast, PC penetration fell by nearly 4 percentage points year over year to 71.3%. More than half (53.0%) of respondents owned a tablet. But all these figures should be judged in light of the population surveyed (see note below).
• In most countries that GlobalWebIndex polled, time spent with desktops, laptops and tablets outstripped that of mobile, but the opposite was true in Turkey. On average, internet users ages 16 to 64 spent 4 hours, 6 minutes (4:06) per day with mobile phones, compared with 3:25 on larger-screen devices.
• Smart TVs have a firm foothold in Turkey, with 44.6% of internet users owning one in H1 2019. Females and older adults were more likely to have a smart TV, but respondents in affluent homes registered the highest penetration, at 66.2%.
• Traditional media haven’t lost their audiences. For example, 92.0% of internet users polled in Q1 2019 had watched TV in the prior month, and nearly 72% had read a print newspaper; 64.7% had read a print magazine, and a similar number had listened to broadcast radio. Additionally, internet users spent a daily average of 2:15 with broadcast TV and 49 minutes reading print press.
• But in many respects, attention is turning to alternative—typically digital—content and platforms. Some 55.9% of respondents polled in H1 2019 had used a broadcaster’s catch-up or on-demand services to view programs, and 53.8% had watched TV shows they’d recorded at the time of broadcast. Crucially, the share watching TV or films via subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services like Netflix was even larger, at 57.1%.
• In total, nearly 86% of respondents in Turkey had streamed TV, film or other video content in the prior month, GlobalWebIndex reported.
• Close to nine in 10 internet users were active on social media in the month prior to polling, and time spent on social accounted for just under 3 hours per day, on average, according to internet users’ own estimates. That put social media well ahead of broadcast TV in terms of time spent.