iWorld
Streaming video services fuel consumers’ appetite for bingeing: survey
MUMBAI: Streaming video services, now used by more than 42 per cent of American households, are heavily changing media consumption habits across generations, according to the ninth edition of the Deloitte Digital Democracy survey.
The study reveals that streaming content has overtaken live programming as the viewing method-of-choice, with 56 per cent of consumers now streaming movies and 53 per cent streaming television on a monthly basis, as compared to 45 per cent of consumers preferring to watch television programs live. Moreover, younger viewers have moved to watching TV shows on mobile devices rather than on television. Among Trailing Millennials (age 14-25), nearly 60 per cent of time spent watching movies occurs on computers, tablets and smartphones, making movie viewing habits decidedly age-dependent.
The report also finds that the trend of binge-watching – viewing three or more program episodes at one sitting – is prevalent with 68 per cent of consumers doing so today. In fact, 31 per cent of Americans who binge-watch, do so at least once a week, led by Trailing Millennials, who binge watch more frequently than any other generation at 42 per cent. The survey also notes that TV-dramas are the most popular television genre to binge-watch, commanding 54 per cent of binge-watchers’ attention; a characteristic more pronounced among females. Additionally, 20 per cent of Americans binge-watch comedies, with more being male.
Deloitte’s Digital Democracy survey compares and contrasts generational preferences of more than 2,000 consumers, ages 14 and older in the US, revealing significant technology, media, and telecommunications consumption trends, including attitudes and behaviour toward advertising and social networks, mobile technologies, the Internet, and consumption preferences across platforms and devices.
“Personal viewing experiences and the ability to consume media at your own pace is significantly impacting how U.S. consumers value their content devices and services. Today, binge-watching, and the ability to watch what we want, when we want, and where we want, is an exciting cultural phenomenon that is shifting consumer behaviors and attitudes towards curating an individual experience,” said Deloitte LLP vice chairman and US Media & Entertainment sector leader Gerald Belson.
At home, multitasking commands attention
The growing ubiquity of digital devices and corresponding engagement activities among the American consumer is profound, with 90 per cent of consumers now multitasking while watching TV. Among Millennials and Generation X (age 32-48), both engage in an average of three additional activities while watching television, including internet browsing, reading email and text messaging.
Other interesting findings include:
* Multitasking activities, while abundant, are not usually tied to television programs being watched. Less than one-quarter of those watching television are engaging in multitasking activities that correlate with the ongoing program.
* Consumers tend to pay more attention to digital (online) ads as compared to traditional TV advertising, with nearly 75 per cent of consumers saying that they tend to multitask more during television ads than during digital ads.
* Consumers are willing to endure advertisements in exchange for discounted services. Nearly two-thirds (62 per cent) agreed that they would be willing to view advertising during their streaming video programming if it significantly reduced the cost of their subscription.
Personalization of gaming
With mobile device ownership continuing to grow, gamers are now spending one-third of their time playing games via mobile platforms. The survey also reveals that:
* Almost 40 per cent of consumers and 54 per cent of Trailing Millennials play at least some video games on a daily or weekly basis.
* Of the time spent on playing games, 24 per cent of consumers play on gaming consoles, 21 per cent on a smartphone and 11 per cent on tablet devices
* Gaming consoles are no longer being used solely for gaming anymore, with 38 per cent of consumers using them to stream movies and television online, and 29 per cent using their consoles to view online content.
“While gaming continues to be influenced by mobile technology, consoles are expanding in functionality, and in doing so, are helping to feed the consumption needs of a larger consumer base. Gaming devices are not just geared to satiate the appetite of avid gamers, but of those who require devices capable of providing a full package of quality entertainment services, coupled with the speeds to deliver them,” added Belson.
State of the Millennial Buyer
Millennials, which the survey divides into Leading Millennials (age 26-31) and Trailing Millennials (age 14-25) for this study, are increasingly influencing product and service functionalities and are eager to adopt, even model, the next big thing.
The survey reveals that 13 per cent of Trailing Millennials who don’t already have smart watches intend to buy one in the next 12 months, and 12 per cent of the same age group who don’t already own fitness bands intend to buy a fitness band within the same period. Among Leading Millennials, 17 per cent intend to buy a smartwatch in the next 12 months, and 14 per cent intend to buy a fitness band within the same time frame.
The value that Millennials place on devices and services was also examined, with home Internet overwhelmingly the most valued service among subscribers according to 93 per cent of Millennials. Furthermore, more than half (58 per cent) of Trailing Millennial subscribers still value Pay TV, with 22 per cent of those consumers who don’t currently own a television planning to purchase a new television within the next 12 months. Among Leading Millennials, 75 per cent of subscribers were shown to value Pay TV, with 25 per cent of non-owners planning to purchase a new television in the next 12 months.
According to the survey, there was a decrease in the number of Pay TV subscribers that say they have no plans to change providers or cut the cord this year. A quarter of Trailing Millennials either cancelled their Pay TV subscriptions in the last 12 months or haven’t had Pay TV for more than a year. Among Leading Millennials, it was shown that 16 per cent indicated they had either cancelled their Pay TV subscription in the last 12 months or haven’t had Pay TV for more than a year.
eNews
How short, addictive story videos quietly colonised the Indian smartphone
A landmark Meta-Ormax study of 2,000 viewers reveals a format that is growing fast, paying slowly and consumed almost entirely in secret
CALIFORNIA, MUMBAI: India has a new entertainment habit, and it arrived without anyone really noticing. Micro dramas, those short, cliffhanger-driven episodic stories built for the smartphone screen, have quietly embedded themselves into the daily routines of millions of Indians, discovered not by design but by algorithmic accident, watched not in living rooms but in bedrooms, on commutes and in the five minutes before sleep.
That, in essence, is the finding of a sweeping new audience study released by Meta and media insights firm Ormax Media at Meta’s inaugural Marketing Summit: Micro-Drama Edition. Titled “Micro Dramas: The India Story” and based on 2,000 personal interviews and 50 depth interviews conducted between November 2025 and January 2026 across 14 states, it is the most comprehensive study of the category in India to date, and its findings are striking.
Sixty-five per cent of viewers discovered micro dramas within the last year. Of those, 89 per cent stumbled upon the format through social media feeds, primarily Instagram and Facebook, without ever searching for it. The algorithm did the heavy lifting. Discovery, as the report puts it bluntly, is algorithm-led, not intent-led.
The typical viewer journey begins with accidental exposure while scrolling, moves through a cliffhanger-driven incompletion hook that makes stopping feel unfinished, and is reinforced by algorithmic repetition until habitual consumption sets in. Only then, when a platform asks for an app download or a payment, does the viewer pause. Trust, not content quality, determines what happens next, and many simply return to the free feed rather than pay. It is a funnel with a wide mouth and a narrow neck.
The numbers on consumption tell their own story. Viewers spend a median of 3.5 hours per week watching micro dramas, spread across seven to eight sessions of roughly 30 minutes each, peaking sharply between 8pm and midnight. Daytime viewing is snackable and low-commitment, squeezed into morning commutes, work breaks and coffee pauses. Night-time is where the format truly lives: private, uninterrupted and, for many viewers, socially invisible. Ninety per cent watch alone, compared to just 43 per cent for long-form OTT content. Half the audience watches during their commute, well above the 37 per cent figure for streaming platforms, a direct reflection of the format’s low time investment advantage.
The audience itself breaks into three segments. Incidental viewers, comprising 39 per cent of the total, are passive consumers who stumble in and rarely seek content actively. Intent-building viewers, the largest group at 43 per cent, are beginning to form habits and seek out episodes but remain cautious. High-intent viewers, just 18 per cent, are the ones who download apps, tolerate ads and occasionally pay: skewing male, younger and urban.
What audiences want from the content is revealing. The top three genres are romance at 72 per cent, family drama at 64 per cent and comedy at 63 per cent, precisely the same top three as Hindi general entertainment television. The format rewards emotional familiarity over complexity. Romance in particular thrives because it demands low cognitive investment, needs no elaborate world-building and plays naturally into the private, pre-sleep viewing window where inhibitions lower and emotional intimacy feels safe.
The most-recalled shows, led by Kuku TV titles such as The Lady Boss Returns, The Billionaire Husband and Kiss My Luck, share a common narrative DNA: rich-poor conflict, hidden identities, power imbalances, melodrama and cliffhangers that make stopping feel physically uncomfortable. Predictability, the research warns, is fatal. Each episode must re-earn attention from scratch.
The terminology question is telling. Despite the industry’s embrace of the phrase “micro drama,” viewers have not adopted it. They call the content “short story videos,” “short dramas,” “reels with stories” or simply “serials.” One respondent from Chennai said bluntly that “micro sounds like a scientific word.” The category is at the stage that OTT occupied in 2019 and podcasts in the same year: widely consumed, poorly named and not yet crystallised in the public imagination.
Platform awareness remains alarmingly thin. Only three platforms, Kuku TV at 78 per cent, Story TV at 46 per cent and Quick TV at 28 per cent, have crossed the 20 per cent awareness threshold. The rest languish in single digits. This creates a trust deficit that directly throttles monetisation: viewers who cannot remember which app they used are hardly primed to enter their payment details.
Yet the appetite is clearly there. Sixty-five per cent of viewers watch only Indian content, drawn by the TV-serial familiarity of the storytelling, the comfort of Hindi as a shared language and the sight of actors they half-recognise from decades of television. South languages are rising fast: Tamil, Telugu and Kannada together account for 24 per cent of first-choice viewing. And AI-generated content, still a novelty, has landed better than expected: 47 per cent of viewers call it creative and unique, with only 6 per cent actively rejecting it.
Shweta Bajpai, director, media and entertainment (India) at Meta, called micro drama “a category that is rewriting the rules of Indian entertainment,” adding that the discovery engine being social distinguishes this wave from previous content formats. Shailesh Kapoor, founder and chief executive of Ormax Media, was characteristically measured: the format, he said, is showing “the early signs of becoming a distinct content category” and, given how closely it aligns with natural mobile behaviour, “has the potential to scale very quickly.”
The format’s fundamental mechanics are working. It enters lives quietly, through boredom and a scrolling thumb, and burrows in through incompletion and habit. The challenge now is monetisation: converting a category of highly engaged but deeply anonymous viewers into paying customers who trust the platform enough to hand over their UPI credentials. The story, as any micro-drama writer knows, is only as good as the next cliffhanger. India’s platforms had better have one ready.
