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Enders Analysis provides a subscription research service covering the media, entertainment, mobile and fixed telecommunications industries in Europe, with a special focus on new technologies and media.

Our research is independent and evidence-based, covering all sides of the market: consumers, leading companies, industry trends, forecasts and public policy & regulation. A complete list of our research can be found here.

 

Rigorous Fearless Independent

UK news publishers have rushed to distribute content on TikTok. They are drawn by its enormous young audience, but poor monetisation and data sharing, a lack of referrals to their own sites, and data security concerns are frustrating a full embrace of the platform.

TikTok is increasingly identified as a ‘news source’ by young people: a risk to publishers distributing content on the platform is that their brands may get lost in user feeds.

Publishers should view activity on TikTok as a strategic cost instead of a revenue source: an investment in brand awareness, and development in content and delivery formats that are becoming more widespread across platforms. Brand visibility is key to success here.

Headline inflation-busting price increases of 14% mask effective increases averaging a sub-inflation 8%, due to their limited scope across the customer base and over time.

The high headline increases have led to attacks from political and consumer groups, we would argue unfairly, and may yet drive reputational damage.

Looking forward, inflationary increases may be banned, but we would expect higher fixed increases to replace them, and micro-regulating pricing structures does tend to result in unintended consequences.

Jamie said "The single biggest reason agency groups have grown quicker than tech over the past few quarters is they had a very slow pandemic. Right when agencies hit a nadir in late 2020, big tech was enjoying bumper revenue increases as demand for their services and ecommerce went through the roof."

"Agencies may have caught up a bit last year, but since 2019 the tech companies have grown about four times faster. The major holding groups are forecasting organic revenue growth to halve this year, which will pull them back below the online platforms. It's also notable that the media and creative side of the agency groups lagged their headline growth rates by two percentage points in 2022: they are pivoting towards business transformation and technology services such as first-party data management for future growth."

Mobile service revenue growth remained strong at 5% this quarter, albeit 1ppt lower than Q3 as boosts from roaming and the spring price rises diminished.

The cost-of-living crisis is becoming evident in weak net adds in the consumer segment while the B2B market remains quite robust for now.

Although the operators will implement in-contract price rises of 14-17% in April, the revenue impact will be much more muted (+4-9% for 2023), and transient (disappearing as customers recontract)—unlike their rising costs.

Broadcaster decline accelerated in 2022, with record drops in reach and time spent. This was primarily driven by the lightest and youngest viewers leaving broadcast television while over-65s also reduced their viewing for the first time.

Loss of lighter viewers threatens the future viewing base of broadcasters and relevance to a new generation. Further, broadcaster status as the home of mass audiences becomes compromised.

However, retention of lighter viewers is not yet a lost cause. They are amongst the heaviest Netflix viewers, and the very lightest are spending more time in front of the TV set than previously—suggesting enduring appetite for TV-like content.

Joseph Teasdale, the head of technology at Enders, said Twitter’s cuts were being closely scrutinised for their impact: “The big public tech companies . . . want to know: how deeply can you cut without damaging the core product? At minimum, outages at Twitter suggest that firing two thirds of your staff in a matter of months maybe comes with some negative side effects.”

He added that other failures degraded user experience. “In April last year, Musk promised, ‘If our Twitter bid succeeds, we will defeat the spam bots or die trying!’ Which sounds like a bad joke to Twitter users given the proliferation of spam since the takeover. Musk has neither defeated the spam bots, nor yet died trying.”

Disney+ owner Walt Disney, for example, has a powerful North American sports business in the shape of ABC/ESPN. At present, this is a successful linear channel operation, so Disney is not in a hurry to pivot all of it to streaming. There is an ESPN+ streaming offer, sold alongside Disney+ or as part of a discounted bundle. In theory, this could be subsumed into Disney+ but Francois Godard, senior media and telecoms analyst at Enders Analysis says this is unlikely. “ESPN is a powerful brand which speaks to a male demo. In the same way Disney uses Star for its scripted series, there’s no rationale to close or sell the ESPN brand.”