Internet TV in Australia: the pioneers

Internet TV: the future of home entertainment, a space with endless access to content and an opportunity to control when and what you watch right?

We’ve been researching what makes Internet TV tick. In an ongoing study, we’ve used our panel Caféstudy to find out who is watching it, what people think about it and what consumers see as the pros and cons of using it.

Of the 64% of respondents who have tried watching online TV, 56% of respondents can be considered as ‘adopters’ of Internet TV. Our adopters either declare that they watch TV online all the time or they’ve watched before and are likely to do so again. The remaining 44% of viewers are divided almost evenly as either: ‘passives’ (20%) those who are open to trying online TV out in the future; and ‘rejectors’ (23%) those who have either tried online telly: and decided to never use it again and those who: have no interest in trying it out at all.

Although our adopters do enjoy a good watch of online TV, over half of them still do most of their TV viewing through the TV set, largely using the Internet to take advantage of convenient timing to catch up on shows they missed on the TV set. This suggests that many still are interested in using the traditional TV model and are: using Internet TV to compensate for TV’s rigid program schedules by catching up in their own time.This perhaps suggests that Internet TV amongst most Australians plays a complementary role to TV, being: used as a back up when TV programming : doesn’t quite fit in with their busy lives.

However, we did find that within our group of adopters a subgroup who take their online TV watching a whole lot more seriously. This group have gone to lengths to acquire Netflix or Hulu, services not freely available in Australia as access to these US streaming platforms requires additional effort in creating a location blocker. Therefore these people have gone to extensive lengths to enjoy everything internet TV has to offer. Dubbing this group the ‘Internet TV Pioneers’ we took a look into what types of people belong in this group and what makes them love Internet TV.

Internet TV Pioneers tend to be younger with 48% aged 18-29, compared to just 20% of non-pioneers. Only 4% of Pioneers are aged 50 or over. They are skewed male and 87% of them live in metro areas. So our pioneers are predominantly young, male and live in cities.

Our Pioneers like the convenience of online viewing, watching what they want when it suits them, and believe Internet TV offers a choice not available on regular TV. 68% of our pioneers watch at least as much TV online as they do on TV, comparing to just 22% of non-pioneers. They have a much higher propensity to online media; 77% have watched TV online compared to 34% of non viewers, and 52% have read a magazine online, compared to 19% of non-viewers.

Although Internet TV Pioneers consist of just a slither of the total group sampled (just over 6%), perhaps we will see this group growing as we carry out further research in the future. It seems certain that Internet TV is not going away, and whether it will continue to be used for catching up on missed shows or instead develop into the main way people watch TV will be an interesting thing to find out.