TV Viewership in South Africa Rebounds as Loadshedding Pauses
The latest data from the Marketing Research Foundation’s Marketing All Product Survey (MAPS™) first quarter figures of 2024 reveals a slight recovery in Television viewership as the lights stay on.
We’re encouraged by TV viewership in South Africa as the numbers from the MAPS™ survey indicate an upward move for the first quarter of 2024 after Loadshedding was called off at the beginning of the year.
Johann Koster, CEO, Marketing Research Foundation (MRF)
The MAPS™ quarterly data paints an interesting picture of TV’s performance over the past few years. While the numbers are still down from an average of 73% in 2021 to 54% in 2023 the quarterly views show an increase of 6% from Q4 2023 (54%) to Q1 2024 (60%).
Our upcoming MAPS™ release (fieldwork period of July 2023 to June 2024) will show whether TV is able to maintain the gains following the pause in load shedding.
Johann Koster, CEO, Marketing Research Foundation (MRF)
MAPS™ data also sheds light on the streaming landscape and rise in streaming across all platforms from 2021:
- Netflix leads the pack with a 12-month average in 2023 of 14.6% of the population having access, followed by Showmax at 8.3% in 2023.
- Netflix up by 4%. 10.6% in 2021 to 14.6% in 2023.
- Showmax up by 3.9%. 4.4% in 2021 to 8.3% in 2023.
- However, taking a quarter-on-quarter view Netflix shows a slight dip in Q1 of 2024 while Showmax had a slight increase, suggesting that Showmax may be making some inroads.
- Amazon Prime, Apple TV and Disney+ have all shown small but steady increases over the three years, albeit from a much smaller base.
An interesting point in the streaming numbers is that only about half of the people, that access Netflix and Showmax, do so with their own login indicating that the sharing of login details is clearly prevalent.
Johann Koster, CEO, Marketing Research Foundation (MRF)
