The consultancy’s media, tech, and telecoms predictions for the coming year include ad-supported video on demand taking one in every 10 pounds of ad revenue in the UK next year.

According to a statement released by the company, it predicts that AVOD revenues will reach £500 million in the UK in 2020, which would represent a 20% year-on-year growth in the channel, far beyond the growth expected across the rest of the advertising industry.

These figures indicate more optimistic conclusions than those made in WARC’s Global Ad Trends report on OTT from last year, in which AVOD adspend was expected to post a 14.3% five-year annual growth rate. However, the UK is a highly developed market with significant internet penetration and maturity in the space.

“TV viewers are being spoilt with an ever-widening array of some of the best television content ever made. Generating advertising revenue will allow streaming platforms to maintain spend on hit shows and major rights, for both traditional broadcasters and online-only providers,” says Dan Ison, lead partner for telecoms, media and entertainment at Deloitte.

“As production costs grow and competitor platforms continue to launch, streaming services must look for new sources of revenue to invest in making stand-out, quality content.”

Interestingly, even some subscription-based services have shown a tendency to resort to advertising. For Amazon’s recent screenings of Premier League football games, the e-commerce and streaming company played a select number of ads in the breaks, as reports had predicted.

Elsewhere, the promise of 5G networks are predicted to come to businesses first, with as many as 100 of the world’s largest companies experimenting and evaluating the use of the ultra-low-latency wireless technology. “While it’s likely to be a long time until we see autonomous cars on the open road, factories will be full of 5G-enabled autonomous machines from next year,” says Dan Adams, head of telecommunications at Deloitte.

Sourced from Deloitte, WARC