Indeed the analyst found that in every country except China where it lagged behind iQIYI, the Google-owned online video service was the most-watched. In all other territories in the study, Netflix was second placed with, some may regard as surprisingly, Facebook was the third most popular service for watching online video.

Drilling deeper with Netflix, South Africa leads the way in terms of highest percentage of subscribers who viewed the service in the last month, at 83% in Q3 2019. Turkey saw the highest increase in viewership in 2019, with 63% of Netflix subscribers watching the service in the last month in Q1. This rose to 77% in the third quarter of 2019. Although the US has the second highest penetration of Netflix subscribers (68%), it ranks fourth lowest in terms of the proportion of subscribers who viewed the service in the last month.

The report also showed the underlying strength of the social video industry. It showed that 70% of Internet users in the US and Europe have watched a video on a social video service in the last month - an increase of four percentage points since the same quarter in 2018. Although the proportion who have watched a video on an SVOD service is lower, at 55%, this represents an eight point increase over the last year.

Commenting on the report, Minal Modha, consumer research lead at Ampere Analysis said: “The strength of short-form video is evident in YouTube’s dominant position as the most viewed in each market surveyed outside of China. Looking at the top five, three of them are social video platforms which highlights its importance in the viewing mix for consumers.”