Video, particularly regarding over the top content providers, is a growing field. Many investors have their eyes on the Asia Pacific, as not only a growing market but the home to the majority of the world’s population. Nevertheless, each context comes with its own set of challenges and it proves key to understanding the particularities of each country or region. This is part of why data-driven approaches are key.
Taiwan proves an interesting example, in that there remains a relative lack of English-language resources available about the Taiwanese market in English. There is often very little available about even hit local dramas in English, in spite of attempts to promote by the government, media, or other actors.
Hit Taiwanese historical drama SEQALU is one example, with availability being a difference between Netflix, MyVideo, and other platforms. To this extent, data analytics can draw out the differences between platforms and their growth, such as how lack of exclusivity led to lower subscriber growth in Q3 for MyVideo.
What is also key to note is the association of different countries with different platforms, such as the obvious association of American drama with Netflix, China with iQiyi, or the presence of Korean and Japanese dramas on other platforms. Apart from dramas, Japanese anime is a strong driver for growth.
This, however, proves difficult to know without local analysis and data-gathering, combined with a perspective that can understand why certain platforms benefit from the availability of certain hits or not. It proves difficult to quantify pure data without local perspectives that can discern trends, even if one is able to gather data in the income bracket or age demographic of consumers of video content–or even at a more granular level, how the popularity of certain hits may be linked to certain actors and their fanbases.
Political considerations also enter into the picture regarding Chinese platforms such as iQiyi, and Taiwan’s inability to regulate them domestically. The growth of Chinese drama in Southeast Asia proves another quandary, particularly given geopolitical tensions between Taiwan and China, as well as between China and many Southeast Asian countries over fraught issues such as the South China Seas. This still has not prevented the growth of many Chinese dramas in such places.
With Chinese-produced dramas having larger budgets and production values than many Taiwanese dramas, owing to the relative size of Taiwan to China, this will prove another hurdle. Yet tracking this proves difficult externally.
Taiwanese dramas constitute 37% of the market for Mandarin dramas in Singapore, which is higher than in other countries. For instance, Taiwanese dramas only constitute 15% of the 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. In this way, analyzing and deciphering trends are beneficial for investors in understanding the Asian market.
Methodology
Passive Measurement. The AMPD Vision® platform uses a permission-based panel of consumers who consent to the collection of their session-based activity. For Taiwan report, the platform leveraged ShareParty ©, a fast growing research panel serivice and passively measured real consumption on mobile devices in Taiwan in Q3 2021 with sample size of 1,000+. The data reported is anonymized and conforms to 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. Data from AMPD Vision® informs key metrics reported in Sections I & II of this study.
TNL Editor: Wen Huang
