Research by AVoD business WildBrain Spark shows how lockdown accelerated the trend for family co-viewing on ad-supported platforms.

WildBrain Spark claims the report shows a return to primetime family viewing

UK-based WildBrain Spark, which distributes and creates entertainment content for children and families on behalf of its parent WildBrain (fka DHX Media) in Canada, offers more than 220,000 videos on over 800 online kids’ channels.

The network generates about four billion views per month on YouTube and YouTube Kids, with content also distributed across other major AVoD platforms, including Roku, Tubi, PlutoTV and Amazon Fire.

Overall, one-third of the world’s kids who have access to YouTube watch content from WildBrain Spark each quarter, including its brands Teletubbies, Strawberry Shortcake, Peanuts, Caillou, Inspector Gadget, Yo Gabba Gabba!, Degrassi, Fireman Sam, Spookiz and Polly Pocket.

Independent digital TV analyst nScreenMedia, which offers research, commentary and analysis on the world of OTT delivery, was commissioned by WildBrain Spark to examine just how families’ viewing habits have changed while in lockdown.

Its report Making Screen Time Family Time was drawn from a survey of around 3,000 families in the US, which found 75% of parents are watching video with their children several times a week. Moreover, the activity cuts across gender, children’s ages, household income levels and marital status.

nScreenMedia independently surveyed 2,500 parents in the US during the last week of October about the viewing behaviour of their children and families, followed by an additional 500 one week later. To qualify for the survey, participants had to be weekly streamers and have at least one child below the age of 12, while the study was fielded by Lucid.

Meanwhile, supporting data from WildBrain Spark points to longer viewing sessions on YouTube and the YouTube Kids app coming via connected TVs, compared with mobile, tablets and computers.

In addition, the child is often in charge of the co-viewing session with half of the parents saying their child mostly chooses what they are going to watch together. Two-thirds (66%) expect time spent with their kids watching TV or movies to stay the same or increase once the pandemic is over.

“If you put two and two together, more families are at home in front of a connected TV that they might have not quite figured out how to use before,” says Jon Gisby, WildBrain Spark’s executive VP and MD.

Jon Gisby

“They now have a bit more time because everyone is at home. It sounds slightly superficial, but there has been a ton of extra consumption time available and time to work out how the kit works. It’s why we have now hit the tipping point.”

For Gisby, connected TV has become the “single most important” device that YouTube is viewed on. “But I don’t think this is at the expense of other devices at all,” he says. “Services are just coming of age and lockdown has fuelled that – simply because you’ve had a greater concentration of families than ever sitting in front of the TV in the evenings and there has been much more opportunity to experiment with connected TVs.”

Both the surge in connected TV viewing and families co-viewing resemble past viewing habits. Or as Gisby puts it: “It is what we used to call primetime family viewing, with parents and their kids watching the TV on a big screen.

“Just on the stats alone, essentially this is just TV. Think about it from a child’s point of view, because they don’t necessarily differentiate between the source of the content. If they have a particular piece of content they want to watch and it’s available on YouTube and other platforms, they can watch it on a big screen. It is what we all used to think of as TV and I see no signs of it going back in the box.”

Looking at connected TV viewing, around 73% involves content which is at least 30 minutes long, according to the research. Viewing is also spread throughout the day, but with a particular concentration in the evenings.

YouTube Kids and PBS Kids dominate the world of free streaming for children, being almost twice as popular as any other free children’s service the survey asked about.

As for YouTube, 94% of parents said they monitor their children’s usage of the platform and 61% said they monitor use all the time. Ninety percent of parents also said that AVoD platforms are now an important source of content for their children.

Parents that allow their children to watch ad-supported content were asked how the kids react when the ads come on. Half said their children pay at least as much attention to the ads as they do to the shows they are watching and only 13% said their children did not pay any attention.

“We wanted to ask to what extent kids respond to adverts and to what extent this influences purchasing decisions,” Gisby says. “If we forget what the technology is, this is essentially ad-funded commercial TV as it has always been.”

As a result, Gisby says advertisers are more willing to spend more of their budgets away from linear TV. “Advertisers can see the audience is on AVoD. It’s on a big screen and they want their brand associated with it.”

Gisby says the figures show children are also “clearly influencing” parental spend based on what they are watching. Seven out of 10 parents said they buy products or services for their children related to a favourite show or character they watch fairly often, according to the research.

Unsurprisingly, lockdown resulted in a jump in viewing figures for WildBrain Spark, with Gisby saying the impact of government announcements was felt overnight. “What we have seen over the course of the six months is a massive increase in viewing,” he says. “We’re up about 55% year-on-year in terms of viewing. Viewing patterns are not going to go backwards and now people have access to this wealth of content on a big-screen TV.”

All that is left, according to Gisby, is for the industry to get its head around the fact that consumers are behaving in new ways.

“These independent findings support our own data that AVoD platforms, in particular YouTube and YouTube Kids, are increasingly the go-to destination for families looking for premium longform children’s content,” he says.

“Furthermore, the increasing penetration of connected TVs in the home, coupled with new family habits during the pandemic, is accelerating this trend. Parents and kids are going ‘back to the future’ by watching premium longform kids’ shows that are streamed to their connected TVs from ad-funded platforms.”