Executive Summary
Consumers have reached a media consumption limit in the UK. People are now shifting certain traditional habits onto digital platforms, and consuming media more than ever on smartphones.
How much time do UK adults spend consuming media each day?
Time spent with media will inch up by 1 minute this year, to 9 hours and 38 minutes (For simplicity’s sake, our style for expressing such a number in the text that follows will be 9:38.). That will increase by 2 minutes in 2020, to 9:40, when it will then plateau.
What proportion of time will be spent consuming media via digital means?
The shares of time spent watching broadcast TV on a TV set or reading print newspapers, are declining, and digital media consumption is picking up the slack. In 2019, such consumption will account for 54.7% of time spent with media, up from 52.4% last year.
What’s mobile’s influence on the digital total?
Mobile will be a significant driver of digital growth. And within mobile itself, daily time spent with media on smartphones will be the only category in our forecast to experience persistent growth, up 11.3% this year.
How much video are UK adults consuming, and how are they consuming it?
Video is emblematic of some of the larger trends present in our time spent forecast—traditional may be declining, but digital consumption of similar content is offsetting those declines. Overall video time will remain largely static across our forecast.