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Women, small-town residents, and people over 35 years of age have significant digital influence driving their content discovery and consumption choices.

As per a report by Boston Consulting Group and Meta, before watching something on OTT, 81% of people from smaller towns use the internet for content discovery, while only 74% of people from large towns look for recommendations online.

This study—commissioned by Meta—was conducted with over 2,600 consumers across 15 towns and cities and included in-depth interviews with consumers and industry leaders from linear TV (LTV), OTT platforms, and movie studios.

This study found that assumptions around digital influence being limited to metros, men and English content viewers did not hold true. It suggests that for LTV viewers, women are more digitally influenced than men when it comes to making a choice on what to watch.

Digital discovery is on the rise, as per the study, even for LTV. Particularly with linear TV, viewers increasingly seeking information and engagement online for the content they watch.

The role of digital

The study also highlights the role of digital in content discovery, sharing, and engagement before and after viewing content. Up to 50% of the discovery of content happens off the platform or network for both TV and OTT. Before watching something on OTT, 60% of consumers look for information about the content, with 80% of this research occurring online across OTT, LTV, and movies.

Between content discovery and consumption, an average viewer experiences three digital touchpoints. Furthermore, digital engagement increases watch times for viewers by up to 35%, with the highest engagement-to-time spent ratio being among sports fans.

The report recommends that media and entertainment companies should focus on the end-to-end media consumption journey, generate interest, and fuel engagement to maximise watch time. Digital marketing is a game-changing addition to existing marketing efforts, and companies need to build capabilities to maximise value generation, it said.

This includes developing in-house capability for content creation, user engagement, measurement strategy, and impact attribution. Media and entertainment leaders should sharpen their focus on digital-forward organizational, technological, and data capabilities, and build a full-stack digital growth team with new-age skills, it suggested.