How the Digital Media and Content Sector Has Been Affected by COVID-19

The pandemic that has been caused by COVID-19 has affected the UK in regard to prosperity and public health. However, it’s dramatic impact on society has also affected the technological sector, and also areas of digital marketing, such as a video production agency, and media.

The Connected Home

There were certain circumstances where substantial growth was detected in smart home devices, those that were monitored during the latter half of 2017, all the way through to the beginning of 2020: it was during this time that uptake had more than doubled, reaching over 30%, which tallies at nearly 10 million homes.

There were specific devices, specifically 27%, of UK householders that utilized what are called smart speakers during the beginning of 2020, compared to just 10% when looking back at the first half of 2018 during the same period of time, the adoption of smart security had doubled, reaching 6%, plus smart lighting had gone up to nearly 7% from 4%. The use of popular smart domestic appliances also became very popular, hitting 6%, during H1 2020.

Internet performance levels dipped during the lockdown

When you are thinking of the cornerstone of any home today, the Internet certainly is regarded as such, especially when looking at how data, 87% of UK consumers, were utilizing broadband connections and the same exact amount were also using mobile connections to the Internet as well. Around 63% were still using a regular landline: this is actually a prerequisite for some ISP packages that use broadband Internet.

Roughly 36% of all consumers stated that they were having issues related to buffering, and that their download speeds were much worse, at 33%, prior to the lockdown, and only 26% had mentioned that their Internet connection was worse than ever before.

Subscriptions During Lockdown

The webinar moved forward, discussing the subscription ecosystem as it occurred during the pandemic.

There were findings that revealed that 75% were using some type of streaming video subscription in the month of April, 53% were subscribed and using pay-TV, 48% utilized an audio or music streaming service, 15% participated in online gaming such as using Xbox Live or PlayStation Plus, 12% watched sports channels, and just one in nine people, roughly 11% of all subscribers, were watching news media in some capacity.

These subscriptions, on average, began to taper off by July, coming down from April levels, and those that were in the demographic of 18 to 34 were primarily responsible for this: people under the age of 35 reduced the number of subscriptions that they had from 2.45 to 2.35, and this was beneficial toward helping the overall average come down from 2.20 all the way to 2.11.

All of this is comprehensive, yet it wasn’t really bad news, especially for the gaming industry: 36% had said they had purchased more games during the month of April, which means that four out of every 10 people, or 39%, were participating in the gaming industry during July.

Many More British People Watched Movies, Watched the News and Also Watched TV During Lockdown

Media consumption rose, according to data that we studied, over a large range of different formats while the COVID-19 lockdown was occurring – this was unsurprising, especially since most people were spending the vast majority of their time inside. The webinar actually showed that people were making a much larger effort to stay informed: in the month of April, 54% of consumers stated that they had watched the news more often, and 20% of those consumers had watched more documentaries. One out of every 10 individuals said that they were watching educational programming or 9% of those who were interviewed, and 8% were watching scientific television shows. It was this appetite for the latest news that began to decrease quite significantly by the month of July: those that were able to offer this information clearly showed that people watching the news diminished from 54% to 41%.

What is also of interest is that, despite more people watching the news than before, many of them did not believe what they were watching. Consumers in the UK said that they couldn’t rely upon the news, and this rose dramatically during the lockdown going from 35% to 46%. Seven out of 10 people, or 72%, agreed that they were not happy with news programming and 55% stated that it was far too negative.

In regard to entertainment, four out of every 10 people, or 37%, stated that during the month of April they watched more films, and 1/5 of those that were interviewed stated that they watched more traumas, coming in at 22%. As the lockdown seemed to get worse, so also did the mood of the nation, and that’s why 13% of British people were watching more comedies and even 7% were watching kids programming. It is clear that a little bit of light entertainment can go a considerable distance.