TikTok Surge in Southeast Asia Halts Premium Video Growth in First Half – Report

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Short-form video platform TikTok enjoyed a huge increase in viewership in the first six months of the year in Southeast Asia, contributing to a sudden halt to the overall growth of premium (SVOD) video, according to a new report.
Data from AMPD and analysis from consultancy firm Media Partners Asia show that TikTok is increasingly a major driver of viewership growth on mobile and web platforms in the region, responsible for over 70% of growth in streaming minutes over the past two years.
In the January-June period, TikTok captured 42% of video streaming minutes, a massive 20-percentage point increase over the first half of 2021 and a seven percentage point increase from the first half of last year. While overall engagement is growing, TikTok’s rise has cut into the dominance of YouTube (-4%) and time spent watching premium VOD (-2%) year-on-year, according to the firms’ Southeast Asia Online Video Consumer Insights & Analytics report.
The overall SVOD market flattened dramatically, with the measured region (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand) adding only a net 7,000 new subscribers.

That represents a marked slowdown from more than 7.0 million net new additions in the second half of 2022 and 3.7 million net adds in the first half of 2022. Southeast Asia had 47.6 million SVOD subscriptions at the end of 1H 2023.
The overall figures masked significantly different performance between countries and platforms.
There was net subscriber growth in Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines, but contraction in Indonesia, the region’s most populous country.