Video, especially when it comes to major content providers, is a growing area. Many investors have their eyes set on Asia-Pacific, not just as a growth market, but as home to the majority of the world’s population. However, each context has its own challenges and is essential to understanding the particularities of each country or region. This is partly why data-driven approaches are essential.
Taiwan is an interesting example, as there remains a relative lack of English language resources available in the Taiwanese market in English. There are often very few dramas available even successful ones in English, despite attempts to promote them by the government, media or other actors.
The hit Taiwanese historical drama SEQALU is an example of this, with availability being a difference between Netflix, MyVideo and other platforms. To that extent, analyzing the data can highlight differences between platforms and their growth, such as how lack of exclusivity led to lower Q3 subscriber growth for MyVideo.
It is also important to note the association of different countries with different platforms, such as the obvious association of American series with Netflix, China with iQiyi, or the presence of Korean and Japanese series on other platforms. Besides dramas, Japanese anime is a strong growth driver.
This, however, proves difficult to know without local analysis and data collection, combined with insight into why certain platforms do or do not benefit from the availability of certain hits. It proves difficult to quantify pure data without local insights that can discern trends, even if one is able to collect data within the income bracket or age demographic of video content consumers – or even at on a more granular level, how the popularity of certain hits can be tied to certain actors and their fanbases.
Political considerations also come into play regarding Chinese platforms such as iQiyi and Taiwan’s inability to regulate them domestically. The growth of Chinese drama in Southeast Asia is proving another dilemma, especially given the geopolitical tensions between Taiwan and China, as well as between China and many Southeast Asian countries over difficult issues such as the South China Seas. This still hasn’t stopped many Chinese dramas from growing in such places.
With China-produced dramas having larger production budgets and values than many Taiwanese dramas, due to Taiwan’s relative size to China, this will be another hurdle. Yet tracking this proves difficult externally.
Taiwanese dramas constitute 37% of the Mandarin drama market in Singapore, which is higher than in other countries. For example, Taiwanese dramas have only 15% market share in the Philippines, 11% in Malaysia, 8% in Indonesia and 4% in Thailand. However, despite this, the Thai market has the longest average viewing time for Taiwanese dramas. Thus, analyzing and deciphering trends is beneficial for investors in understanding the Asian market.
Methodology
Passive measurement. The AMPD Vision® platform uses a consent-based panel of consumers who consent to the collection of their session-based activity. For the Taiwan report, the platform leveraged ShareParty©, a fast-growing research panel service, and passively measured actual consumption on mobile devices in Taiwan in Q3 2021 with a sample size of over 1,000 people. The data reported is anonymized and compliant with data privacy legislation in Taiwan. AMPD Vision® was used by MPA to provide a consolidated granular view of streaming media consumption across global and regional VOD services on mobile devices. AMPD Vision® data informs the key metrics reported in Sections I and II of this study.
LNL Editor: Wen Huang
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