Global Media Intelligence 2020: Spain

Key Features

TV and video viewing are settling into new patterns, but traditional media has also kept large audiences.

• Internet users in Spain still devote plenty of attention to live TV. More than 94% of respondents ages 16 to 64 had watched live TV in the month prior to polling and devoted an average of 2 hours, 14 minutes (2:14) daily to TV—6 minutes more than in H1 2019.
• Some 69.1% of respondents had used a TV channel’s catch-up or on-demand service to watch programs they’d missed—a slightly higher percentage than last year. Crucially, the share of internet users who’d watched TV via subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services like Netflix jumped by 10 percentage points, to 77.6% this year. Among younger internet users ages 16 to 24, 92.7% had accessed TV via SVOD in the previous month. In high-income households, 83.1% had done so.
• Despite the notable increase in SVOD usage, overall penetration of VOD services that GlobalWebIndex tracks in Spain dropped from 69.4% in H1 2019 to 65.4% in H1 2020. And video streaming occupied just 1:09 per day, on average—about half the time spent each day with broadcast TV.
• Meanwhile, 69.4% of respondents had listened to digital audio—including music, podcasts, and dramas—in the month prior to polling. That said, age-related differences remain much more marked among digital audio consumers. In the youngest age group (16- to 24-year-olds), more than 91% said they listened to audio accessed via digital platforms. Usage had grown in almost all demographic groups but still correlated with rising age; penetration among seniors 55 to 64 was just 45.8%.
• Over 80% of web users surveyed had listened to broadcast radio in the prior month. Nearly two-thirds had read a print newspaper, and 59.1% had read a print magazine. All those values were essentially unchanged since H1 2019. Time spent with both radio and print press had declined slightly, however.