Colombia. The consumption of Over the Top, OTT, services by Colombians continues to grow, without neglecting the consumption of traditional services. In the case of audiovisual content, households have more than one streaming application without leaving their TV service by subscription.
These are some of the results of the Study "The role of OTT services in the communications sector in Colombia- year 2021", developed by the Communications Regulation Commission, CRC, with the support of the National Consulting Center, CNC.
Since 2018, the CRC has conducted 3 measurements through nationwide user surveys (2018, 2019, 2021) to identify consumer habits and user preferences and the likelihood of application use in relation to traditional voice, messaging, and audiovisual services. In 2021, for the first time, measurements on broadcasting, postal and fixed telephony services were included.
In this regard, Sergio Martínez Medina, Executive Director of the CRC, said: "From the CRC we will continue to monitor the phenomenon and we are committed to taking the pulse of the growth of OTT and offering periodic reports on the evolution in consumption and user preferences. In this type of studies we are pioneers at the level of regulators in Latin America."
It is important to note that OTT services consist of the transmission of audio, video, text and other content over the Internet without the intervention of traditional operators. This study identifies trends in the use of applications and allows us to recognize the evolution of the digital ecosystem.
Figures highlighted by services:
In voice services:
• The declared preference of 50% of users is to make a call through their mobile operator as their first communication option, although it decreased by 11% compared to 2019. In 26% of cases they prefer to send one message per application, which represents an increase of 10%.
• The use by Colombians of platforms or applications of audiovisual content or to make calls increases, while the consumption of traditional services is maintained. In fact, calls per app went from 74% in 2019 to 78% in 2021; however, they are still below the level of traditional call usage, which remain at 87%.
• WhatsApp remains the most used application for calls or video calls, maintaining its penetration of 98% among smartphone users. In addition, it is the most common application among users of all age ranges.
In courier services:
• In 2021, the use of messaging services, both by operator and through applications, approached 2018 levels. Messages per operator (SMS sent and received) went from 44% in 2019 to 58% in 2021, while messaging through applications increased by 5 percentage points compared to 2019, reaching 82%.
• However, 77% of Colombians indicate that they stopped sending traditional text messages (SMS) in the last year to do so through online applications. This perception grows significantly compared to the previous two measurements.
• WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger remain the most used messaging applications in Colombia, reaching 98% and 54%, respectively; however, Instagram chat (16%) and Telegram (11%) have gained participation, which presented considerable growth compared to 2019, according to user preferences.
In audiovisual services:
• 57% of households have subscription TV service, while 25% have a television signal through DTT (7% more than in 2019). One in 3 households (36%) in the country consume audiovisual applications and 29% have paid audiovisual applications.
The percentage of households that don't have access to an AV app dropped by 2 percentage points, while several apps gained far more share than that amount between 2019 and 2021. This behavior indicates that households are having access to multiple applications, compared to the previous measurement.
As for the consumption of content according to the time used, it is very close in national and international channels; however, there are preferences in content: in subscription TV, the most watched content corresponds to news (73%), novels (50%) and movies (35%), while through applications the most popular are movies (30%), series (34%) and sports (20%).
The young population is the one that makes the most use of applications to consume audiovisual content, especially those under 25 years of age (approximately 51%), while in older age groups this percentage varies between 21% and 39%
In Audio/Radio services:
Among radio listeners, the most frequent means of listening to national stations is AM/FM radio: 6.2 out of 10 listeners are made using a traditional radio. Audiences that rely on streaming services still have a distant use compared to the traditional medium.
In music consumption there is a more balanced relationship between the number of sessions between audio applications (paid or free) and the times this type of content is searched for on AM or FM stations. For users who use apps, the combined use of free (3.9) and paid (0.8) apps is slightly higher than their AM/FM (4.3) radio consumption.
Paid audio apps have a reach of 10% in the country's population and the most popular are Spotify and YouTube Premium.
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