Cross-platform storytelling now reaches audiences through broadcast television, streaming services, social feeds, connected TV, and video podcasts. Recent measurements show that audience engagement depends heavily on age, platform, device, and market: UK in-home viewing patterns differ from U.S. survey findings, while platform analytics use their own definitions and populations.
Contents
- Cross-screen video distribution in UK homes
- Age-based platform paths for video storytelling
- YouTube as a cross-platform storytelling surface
- Social platforms, creators, and story discovery
- Video podcasts and audio-visual storytelling
- Creator participation and platform pathways
Cross-screen video distribution in UK homes
Ofcom’s Media Nations 2025 – UK Report, using Barb-measured in-home viewing, found that broadcaster content represented 56% of UK in-home video viewing in 2024. Subscription- and advertising-supported video-on-demand (SVoD/AVoD) averaged 40 minutes per day, equal to 15% of in-home video viewing. Video-sharing platforms averaged 51 minutes per day, a 5% year-over-year increase. These measures describe UK home viewing over home Wi-Fi and should not be treated as universal audience standards. Ofcom, Media Nations 2025 – UK Report
The device layer is important for stories designed to move between screens. TV sets carried 84% of all UK in-home video viewing across devices in 2024. The share of in-home YouTube viewing occurring through a TV set increased from 34% in 2023 to 41% in 2024. SVoD/AVoD viewing through TV sets rose from 85% to 88% over the same period.
Minority-ethnic UK audiences showed a different daily mix in 2024: 1 hour 22 minutes on video-sharing platforms, 1 hour 18 minutes on broadcast TV, and 37 minutes on SVoD/AVoD. The figures indicate why a cross-platform story may need both creator-led distribution and familiar broadcast or streaming contexts, while keeping the audience definition and measurement unit explicit.
| UK in-home viewing measure | 2024 result | Measurement period or comparison |
|---|---|---|
| Broadcaster content share | 56% | 2024 |
| TV-set share of all in-home video | 84% | 2024 |
| Video-sharing platforms | 51 minutes/day | 2024; 5% year over year |
| SVoD/AVoD | 40 minutes/day | 2024; 15% of viewing |
| Minority-ethnic audience video-sharing use | 1 hour 22 minutes/day | 2024 |
Age-based platform paths for video storytelling
Age strongly shaped how UK viewers encountered video stories in 2024. Less than one-quarter of 16–24-year-olds’ in-home video viewing was broadcaster content, compared with 90% for people aged 75 and over. For 16–24-year-olds, SVoD/AVoD and video-sharing platforms together represented two-thirds of in-home video viewing. Their average total in-home video use was 3 hours 19 minutes per day.
The older audience had both higher total viewing and a more broadcaster-centered path. People aged 75 and over averaged 6 hours 26 minutes of in-home video per day. Live TV accounted for about three-quarters of their in-home video consumption, and broadcaster content made up 90%. Among 65–74-year-olds, broadcaster content represented 82% of in-home video consumption.
The figures also show movement inside older audiences’ established viewing habits. Average daily broadcaster video-on-demand (BVoD) viewing among over-74s rose 67%, from 12 minutes in 2023 to 20 minutes in 2024. For adults aged 35–44, video-sharing platforms averaged 52 minutes per day in 2024, six minutes more than in 2023. A story intended to travel across generations therefore faces different entry points: broadcast and live TV remain central for older groups, while video-sharing and on-demand platforms are much more prominent for younger viewers.
YouTube as a cross-platform storytelling surface
YouTube’s UK use was not confined to small screens in the Ofcom measurement. Average total in-home YouTube use rose from 35 minutes per person per day at the beginning of 2023 to 39 minutes in December 2024, a 13% increase. Average viewing on TV sets rose 57%, from 11 minutes to 18 minutes per person per day over the same period. Across 2024, TV sets accounted for 41% of all in-home YouTube viewing.
The shift was visible among younger viewers as well. UK 16–34-year-olds’ average YouTube viewing on TV sets rose 47%, from 14 minutes to 21 minutes per day between the beginning of 2023 and December 2024. TV sets accounted for 35% of this group’s in-home YouTube viewing in 2024, up from 29% in 2023. Among children aged 4–15, TV sets accounted for 50% of in-home YouTube viewing in 2024, up from 45% in 2023.
Older adults also increased their TV-based YouTube use. Adults aged 55 and over rose from 6 minutes of average daily YouTube viewing on TV at the beginning of 2023 to 11 minutes by December 2024, a 97% increase. TV sets accounted for 42% of their in-home YouTube viewing in 2024, compared with 33% in 2023.
YouTube’s role also appeared in the first destination of TV journeys. It was the first TV destination for 20% of UK children’s TV journeys in 2024, compared with 18% for Netflix. Among adults aged 16–34, Netflix was the first destination for 18% of journeys and YouTube for 13%. These percentages describe first destinations, not total time or preference across every viewing session.
Social platforms, creators, and story discovery
Deloitte’s 2025 Digital Media Trends reported on a U.S. consumer survey fielded in October 2024. Respondents reported an average of six hours per day spent on media and entertainment. SVoD services were the paid media and entertainment services used most frequently by 53% of surveyed U.S. consumers. Among surveyed SVoD subscribers, 54% said at least one paid service they used was ad-supported.
The survey’s Gen Z and millennial findings connect discovery with perceived relevance. Social-media ads or product reviews were the most influential purchasing factor for 63% of surveyed Gen Z respondents, compared with 49% of millennials. Overall, 54% of surveyed Gen Z and millennial respondents said social-media ads were more relevant to them than advertising on streaming video services or cable TV.
Social content also competed with traditional screen storytelling on relevance. Among surveyed U.S. Gen Z respondents, 56% said social-media content was more relevant to them than traditional TV shows and movies; the figure was 43% among millennials. Gen Z respondents spent 54% more time—about 50 minutes more per day—on social platforms and user-generated content than the average consumer. They spent 26% less time—about 44 minutes less per day—watching TV and movies than the average consumer. Deloitte, 2025 Digital Media Trends
Creator identity was another part of engagement. Roughly 50% of surveyed U.S. Gen Z and millennial respondents felt a stronger personal connection to social-media creators than to TV personalities or actors. Twenty-nine percent of surveyed U.S. consumers said they would be more willing to watch a TV show or movie starring a favorite creator, while 30% said creators lose social-media authenticity on TV. The two responses point to a cross-platform tension: a creator can bring attention to a larger-screen story, but the audience may evaluate the new format against the creator’s established authenticity.
Video podcasts and audio-visual storytelling
Spotify’s platform reporting offers a view of video podcasts as a bridge between audio habits and visual storytelling. Spotify reported more than 250,000 video-podcast shows in June 2024, up from 100,000 in 2023. More than 170 million Spotify users had watched a video podcast by June 2024.
Engagement was not limited to background listening. More than 70% of Spotify users consuming video podcasts watched them in the foreground in 2024. Nearly one-third of U.S. Spotify podcast monthly active users engaged with video podcasts, while nearly one-quarter of global Spotify podcast monthly active users did so. Spotify’s global video-podcast monthly active users grew 40% year over year in 2024, and the number of creators actively publishing video on Spotify grew nearly 70% year over year. Spotify, “250,000 Video Podcasts and Counting”
The market-level figures varied. Video represented one-quarter of total podcast consumption hours in Chile on Spotify in 2024 and more than 15% in Brazil. These are Spotify-specific consumption-hour measures for the stated markets, not estimates of all podcast listening.
Edison Research’s The Infinite Dial 2025 reported that 73% of Americans aged 12 and over had consumed a podcast in audio or video format in its January 2025 survey, an estimated 210 million people. Because Edison’s figure covers audio or video podcast consumption and Spotify’s figures focus on Spotify video-podcast activity, the measures describe related but different audiences. Edison Research, The Infinite Dial 2025
Creator participation and platform pathways
Pew Research Center’s August 2023 survey found that about 52% of U.S. adult TikTok users had ever posted a video. Pew’s observed-account analysis found that 40% had posted a publicly visible video. The distinction matters for participation estimates: an account may have posted at some point, while public visibility describes what could be observed in the analysis.
Posting activity was concentrated among a smaller group. The top 25% of U.S. adult TikTok users ranked by posting volume produced 98% of publicly accessible videos in Pew’s 2023 analysis. At the same time, 40% of surveyed U.S. adult TikTok users said their algorithmically curated For You page was extremely or very interesting. Discovery can therefore be broad even when public production is highly concentrated. Pew Research Center, How U.S. Adults Use TikTok
Pew’s 2024 account analysis adds detail about the creator accounts U.S. adults followed. Content-creator accounts represented 52% of followed TikTok accounts. Only 10% of creator accounts followed by U.S. adults had more than 1 million followers, while creators with 50,000 to 499,999 followers represented 42% of creator accounts followed.
Posting volume differed sharply by creator size. The typical TikTok creator with at least 1 million followers had 777 lifetime posts, compared with 154 for the typical creator with fewer than 10,000 followers. These figures describe observed TikTok account behavior and account-following patterns, not a universal model of creator success. Pew Research Center, What we know about TikTok content creators
For cross-platform storytellers, the combined evidence describes several distinct pathways: broadcaster-led viewing on large screens, on-demand discovery among younger audiences, YouTube journeys that increasingly begin or continue on TV sets, social feeds that influence relevance and purchasing, video podcasts that add visual engagement to audio formats, and creator ecosystems where a minority of highly active accounts supplies most public output. Each statistic belongs to its stated population, geography, platform definition, and measurement period.