Tuesdata: Foxtel Group outspends its rivals in the battle of the streamers

BY Tim Burrowes

March 27, 2023 9:17

Tuesdata: Foxtel Group outspends its rivals in the battle of the streamers

Welcome to Tuesdata, our weekly data-led analysis just for Unmade’s paying members.

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Today: How the subscription TV services are doing battle for share of advertising voice. And The Unmade Index slumps at the start of the week.

The brands featured today are Binge, Kayo, Foxtel, Stan, Apple TV+, Paramount+, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+.

How Foxtel Group is outspending its streaming rivals

With three days until the end of the quarter, we look today at how the streaming services have been investing in TV advertising since the start of the year.

The data comes from monitoring service Canda Media Intelligence.

Canda tracks advertising activity across the country. It estimates that the streamers have spent nearly $8m on promoting their offerings to TV viewers in the quarter just ending.

January was busiest, with about $2.9m of activity. February saw roughly $2.7m of spend. And March has so far seen $2.2m.

Putting the spend on a pie chart helps demonstrate that Foxtel Group is significantly outspending its rivals.

Of that $8m pie, nearly 22% of the spend comes from Foxtel Group’s Entertainment streaming service Binge. Foxtel Group’s sport streaming service Kayo takes another 12.5% of the pie. And marketing of the main Foxtel offering, delivered via satellite, cable and streaming makes up another 10.75%.

In total, Foxtel Group accounts for about 45% of the TV advertising activity in the market.

The next biggest TV advertiser for the quarter was Nine’s Stan, which accounted for about 20% of the an-air activity, or roughly $1.2m.

The data comes with one caveat – because Canda monitors the broadcast activity, it can only estimate the real amount spent. This is particularly difficult to calculate when the streaming services are aligned with the channels where they are running – for instance Stan ads on Nine, Paramount+ ads on Ten, or Binge and Kayo ads on Foxtel.

That means that brands like Apple, which had about 15% of the activity around its streaming service Apple TV+ may have paid more in real terms.

At a monthly level, the top spender during March was Nine’s Stan, ahead of Foxtel’s Kayo. Foxtel’s main brand was the biggest spender in February. And Binge was easily the most active in January.