ICYMI, Amagi's Latest FAST Report Came Out and Feaures Some Pretty Cool Stats
(It also features a wonderful introduction penned by a lovely FASTMaster)
Amagi’s 11th Global FAST Report recently came out (you can find it here) and it is worth a special mention based on the data that’s included in it. Before you ask, I would say that even if I were not on the cover and writing the introduction.
The reason why I think it’s special is that Amagi are letting us peer into the trends behind the scenes, unlike pretty much all other companies within FAST who have similar data. Now, it’s important to realize that this data is only for channels Amagi carries, so it’s not like you can read it and say “this is the trend in FAST worldwide,” and that there are some areas that Amagi has a stronger than average presence in, such as live news, which naturally then over-represents in their data than total data.
But there’s still a fascinating story to be told here. I’ve taken some highlights, which I will feature below, but if you want to dive deeper, or simply don’t want to read, I would encourage you to listen to the latest Amagi Airtime webinar where Amagi SVP Siva Natarajan interviewed me on key points from the latest report and my perspective on them.
Let’s get into it. Two key stats stand out to me with this first chart: that ad impressions growth is growing faster than hours of viewing across the world, and that FAST is growing massively in the APAC and LATAM regions. Of course, this is to be expected versus the most mature FAST market in the U.S. and Canada, and Europe/Middle East/Africa (featuring the maturer European market alongside MEA countries), but does show how audiences are finding value in FAST across the world.
When looking at the U.S. & Canada, Amagi found a very interesting trend: news viewing accounts for a significantly lower total proportion of HOV this year than in last. I think that this means:
People are not watching less news on FAST, instead…
People are watching more FAST in general.
Think how in the first chart, there’s been a 14% total increase in HOV across Amagi channels in North America. Then think about the big media brands who went HAM on FAST in the last year (MGM, NBCUniversal, Warner Bros. Discovery, A+E Networks all significantly upped their channel offerings as an example). More recognizable things to watch, coupled with more TV sets in homes with FAST access means more viewing of content other than news (outside of power users, do most people have the news on for more than a set time each day?).
The theory that premium brands are helping to grow FAST viewership is backed up by the chart above. Ad Impressions grew by 4 % points for the Entertainment genre, double the growth for HOV (2 % points). Entertainment happens to be the chief genre where the brands I mentioned operate so… maybe it is a coincidence, but maybe not.
Given that the Amagi report breaks this out for the other global regions as well as interesting consumer insights for the U.S., it is well worth a download.