BBC iPlayer takes more than half of UK's digital audience

iPlayer only accounts for 9% of the BBC's web traffic whilst 4oD makes up 60.7% of Channel 4's

Friday 18 October 2013 15:34 BST

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New viewing figures for video-on-demand in the UK shows that the BBC dominates rival broadcasters, with iPlayer accounting for more than half of all web traffic for streaming TV.

The research – which covered the BBC, Sky, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 – tracked more than 24 million visits to digital TV services, with iPlayer attracting 13.4m or 55.1 per cent of this total.

Channel 4 was the second most popular service, with 4.8m or 19.8 per cent of the online viewing audience. They were followed by ITV (3.2m), Sky (1.8m) and Channel 5 (1m).

The statistics, collected by web analytics company SimilarWeb or the month of September, also show the breakdown between visits to broadcasters’ websites and their media players.

Looking at this metric we can see that iPlayer only accounts for 9.9 per cent of visits to the BBC’s website, whilst 4oD makes up 60.7 per cent of visits to Channel 4 online.

"Channel 4 is doing an impressive job in bringing viewers to their site to watch shows - the number of visits to 4oD is a third of that of iPlayer but it could be seen a success online given their significantly smaller resources to commission new original content,” SimilarWeb’s Daniel Buchuk told The Independent.

"Given the scale and reach of ITV on air, the amount of visits to ITV player is surprisingly low. However, it is important to take into consideration that they are using other platforms such as YouTube, which successfully engage their younger audience for TV shows such as The X factor or Britain’s Got Talent."

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