Attention Reports from MIDiA Research

Social audiences are fragmenting
Social platform user profile

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Hanna Kahlert

May 2025

The social marketplace has been growing – but attention is a finite resource, as is consumer time. As a result, audience attention is fragmenting across many different apps, with the biggest – YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok –still dominating.

The audio creator opportunity
Audio creator behaviours and monetisation potential

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Rutger Rosenborg

March 2025

Creators

Subscriptions

Spotify

Historically, YouTubers and TikTok influencers have received the lion’s share of mainstream attention as a creator class – but audio creators are increasingly active on the same digital platforms and operating within the same formats. As a result, the audio creator has become a jack of all trades, moving between copyediting, audio editing, and ...

Streaming TV’s fight on social’s stage
Tactics for a short-form video future

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Ben Woods

February 2025

Streaming

live

YouTube

Streaming TV and social platforms have long competed for audience attention but from separate lanes. Now, these roads are merging in the social platforms’ favour as the likes of YouTube and TikTok evolve into kaleidoscopes of entertainment content, from vlogs and music videos to live sport and TV series.

MIDiA's gamer segmentation
Prioritise why – not just how – players engage with games

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Rhys Elliott

February 2025

Amazon

Netflix

Gaming

The games landscape is more dynamic and interconnected than ever, demanding a deeper understanding of why players engage with games – not just how. We are proud to introduce MIDiA’s gamer segmentation, which focuses on motivations, attitudes, and underlying reasons behind gaming behaviours.

MIDiA Research global games forecasts 2025–2031
The market is mature, so double-digit growth is a fantasy

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Perry Gresham, Mark Qi and Rhys Elliott

January 2025

US

Global

Gaming

Interested in ' MIDiA Research global games forecasts 2025–2031' ? Access the free version here . Recent years have been tough for the games market. Like many industries, gaming overextended itself following the black swan event that was the COVID-19 pandemic.

Music’s podcast potential
Focus on branding over discovery

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Annie Langston

August 2023

Labels

Streaming

Artists

In this hyper-fragmented entertainment consumption space, artists and labels must use every tool available to break out above the noise. Artists must diversify their content to not only promote their music, but to develop their personal brand. Podcasts are an effective vessel to target niche audiences and build a brand, both within and outside of m...

Closing the background gap
Focused versus background audio listening

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Kriss Thakrar, Tatiana Cirisano and Annie Langston

November 2022

Spotify

Radio

YouTube

The rise of attention inflation means that consumers are maximising their limited time by multitasking between various formats, spurring a rise in background consumption. This creates a “new” space for platforms to compete for consumers’ time. Among entertainment formats, audio is best placed to conquer background listening, but music streami...

Audio ad opportunity
Niche targeting unlocks attention

Annie Langston

May 2022

Apple

Spotify

YouTube

Podcast advertising is one of the key income sources for both audio platforms and creators alike. Ad agencies and platforms must go ever deeper with targeting capabilities by learning more about the other entertainment habits of audio consumers. Social...

Attention economy
After the lockdown boom

Mark Mulligan

November 2021

Consumer behaviour

Streaming Music

Radio

The pandemic-triggered change in everyday life resulted in a boom in entertainment consumption, which, in turn, saw growth in emerging formats as well as a temporary rebound for traditional formats. As the world starts to ease back into pre-pandemic routines, much of this newly found entertainment time will go – but the declines will not be evenl...

Media consumption
Lockdown’s attention boom

Mark Mulligan

February 2021

Consumer behaviour

Spotify

2020 was a year like no other. With large swathes of the population confined to their homes for portions of the year, audiences had more time on their hands and more money in their pockets. These conditions created a boom in entertainment consumption, throwing up a mixture of intuitive trends and unexpected winners.

Peak Attention
Competing in a Saturated Attention Economy

Mark Mulligan and Karol Severin

March 2020

Apple

Spotify

Amazon

Smartphones have made media consumption more interconnected than ever and are still increasing audiences time spent with entertainment. Filling the residual audience downtime from the analogue era was the fuel in the engine of the digital content economy.

US and UK Sports Fans
Reaching Digital Natives

Alistair Taylor

December 2019

YouTube

Amazon

revenue

Sports as a product is feeling the squeeze of the peak attention economy. Sports fans in the traditional sense are ageing, and appealing to a younger digitally-native audience is a fundamental issue that rights holders can no longer ignore. Sports rights holders have realised the importance of their virtual (gaming) counterparts, acknowledging that...

Reports: Attention