“In 2007 I watched the “X Files” on YouTube. That changed my consumer experience!” said analyst firm Ampere Analysis’s Research Manager Olivia Deane, invited to discuss audience’s shift in the last 20 years, structural adaptations and new business models in kids’ content at MipJunior’s opening session Oct. 18.
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From the boom of on-demand to peak and post-peak TV, kids content creators have been on a rollercoaster in the last two decades, as explained by Deane in her presentation ‘Mapping out a New Era of Kids TV & Entertainment’ at the Grand Theatre of the JW Marriot Cannes.
First the good news. During the years 2004-2014 defined by Dean as “the first age of on-demand,” “children had the ability to access media at any time, and were more likely to have more than one TV connected device than households without,” noted the expert.
To adapt to this trend and surge in demand, “streaming companies acquired volumes of kids content, channelling funding back into the children’s commissioning market,” said Dean, about the years 2014 to nowadays, which she tagged as ‘the OTT golden years and Peak TV.
Quickly, kids titles became a priority for commissioners over other genres, as shown by 2021 figures, whereby kids and family content were third after docs and reality shows in acquisition volume from streamers (18,000 titles versus 25,000 and 23,000 respectively) and fifth in global numbers of VOD commissions (294) after docs (797), reality (639), comedy (509) and crime/thrillers (450).
The boom in kids content commissioning that nearly doubled between 2020 to 2022 (from 293 titles the first six months of 2020 to 448 the same period 2022) eventually led to a saturation on the market. “In the second quarter of 2024, there were 43 years-worth of children’s titles available to watch across streaming and broadcast platforms…not accounting for sleep!” Dean underlined.
Then a new reality hit. Despite an uplift of streamers’ customer base in 2024 with the introduction of ad tiers, OTT’s growth of revenue generating units (RGUs) that had been growing steadily since 2015 are due to reach a maturity point in the next couple of years, and net adds by 2026 will be lower than a decade ago, according to Ampere.
This subsequently affected commissions that suffered what Deane called an unprecedented downturn: from 5,079 to 8,090 titles ordered between 2020-2021 (up 59%), and 9,843 in 2022 (up 22% year on year), numbers fell 12% to 8,706 in 2023 and a further 5% to 8,291 in 2024.
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Kids and family titles – together with reality programs – were the most affected, according to Ampere, dropping 13% between the first half 2024, compared to same period a year before. Reversely, drama increased 3% and documentary 4% during that period.
Looking at kids’ consumption post-peak TV, Deane said “children today like to be able to watch the content they want when they want to watch it. Citing consumption model on Netflix, the analyst said children and family fare were the second most-popular genre in the second half of 2023, after crime & thriller, ahead of comedy and romance.
“This means that kids do play an important role in subscription behaviour, and while children aren’t driving subscription growth for streamers [unlike sport], they do help to reduce churn,” Deane observed.
As a result, she continued, “although streamers aren’t funding a high volume of new commissions, they are still spending on high volumes of acquired children’s content,” she said, pointing at a 42% drop in commissions from Netflix and 58% from Apple between the first half 2023-2024, counterbalanced by a 7% increase in acquisitions from Netflix and 16% from Apple in the same period.
The very good news as well for indie producers is that although the kids content market is still highly saturated, public broadcasters continue to heavily invest, although their focus is on existing popular content (TV renewals from pubcasters increased steadily between 2020 from 38% to 59% in 2024).
Citing the success stories of the French video game and animation studio Ankama that used kickstarting campaigns to boost the relaunch of their IP “Wakfu,” and the “Lukas the Spider” YouTube sensation, Deane said: “There is still a wealth of opportunities for creators who can find alternative ways to fund their projects, and those that can find ways to engage with popular brands or IP, will have the competitive advantage in a busy acquisition market.”
MipJunior runs Oct. 18-20 in Cannes.
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