The weekly reach of ad-supported SVOD services in the UK has almost tripled since last year, according to the IPA’s latest TouchPoints study, and is now three times higher than cinema’s weekly reach. The report, Making sense: The commercial media landscape, found that 30 percent of UK adults now use ad-funded SVOD services each week, up from 11 percent in 2024 and 10 percent in 2023.
The threefold increase coincides with the introduction of ads on Amazon Prime Video, and Netflix’s ongoing push for customers onto its ad tier by raising the price of its ad-free subscription. The report’s author, Simon Frazier, Head of Marketing and Data Innovation at the IPA, said the results of these strategies demonstrate that people “don’t mind an ad or two in exchange for great content at an affordable price.”
“I only anticipate this figure growing further as more and more platforms embrace these revenue models, providing more choices for consumers, often reduced pricing packages, while providing greater opportunities for marketers to reach audiences, and, ultimately, meaning more secure revenue for the platforms, resulting in greater content development,” he added.
The trend is helping advertisers make up lost ground in the declining reach of commercial TV (which combines live, recorded and BVOD viewing), according to the report. Although commercial TV “no longer surpasses that magical 90 percent weekly reach figure for all adults”, ad-supported SVOD and BVOD services are picking up those opportunities to reach audiences, while other online video services are used by 46 percent of UK adults each week.
Amid these shifts in consumption patterns, the report emphasised that advertisers can still reach the same audiences through video, “but the fragmentation of the video landscape means great AV planning is more vital than it has ever been in order to have any hope of achieving the same scale as 10 years ago.”
Devices and demographics
The other significant shift in this year’s data is in device usage for consuming ad-supported media. For the first time, curated commercial media time taken by smartphones (35 percent) has exceeded that of the TV Set (34 percent) among UK adults, with tablets taking the total mobile share to 40 percent. Smartphones’ share rises to 50 percent among 16-34 year-olds, while the TV Set drops to 22 percent.
But the report noted that “the desire for TV content hasn’t declined,” it is simply being delivered in new device environments, leaving it up to planners and strategists to align advertising content with the device in question.
“In the past there was often a perspective that all video is created equal, and you only need one video ad for all video-led platforms, which created a misconception that video on mobile didn’t perform as well as video on a TV,” said Frazier. “However, recent years have resulted in a much more device- led approach to video, whereby video treatments are far better aligned with the screen size, and messaging and video length are optimised for the environment.”
Meanwhile new advertising opportunities are arising from the shifting consumption habits of the 55+ age group, according to Frazier. The report observed that although these changes have emerged at a slower pace than younger generations, the older audience represents “the most scope for new media opportunities of any of the audiences” covered in the study, and that “the categorisation of audiences aged 55+ as an afterthought still represents the biggest missed opportunity in advertising today.”
The study found that ad-supported BVOD services now have 37 percent weekly reach among the 55+ group, while ad-funded SVOD is up to 21 percent. And the top five media properties by weekly reach for this demographic comprises a mix of broadcasters, social media and online video services.
“If advertising truly shapes culture, then the way we treat age today is nothing short of cultural betrayal,” commented Zehra Chatoo, Founder of Code For Good Now, a consultancy specialising in representation in advertising. “For decades, the industry has obsessed over youth, chasing Gen Z. Yet the data tells a very different story. Adults over 50 are not a niche audience on the margins of culture; they are the economic mainstream. They control more than half of global consumer spending. Women over 50 alone command $15 trillion in buying power. To ignore them isn’t just exclusion – it’s commercial negligence.”
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