SE Asia Premium Video Gets Just 8% of Digital Time
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- Media Partners Asia's Dhivya T. said at APOS that Southeast Asia's premium VOD users spend only 8% of their digital life on premium content, with the rest on social, messaging, gaming and short video.
- Premium video captures roughly one hour a day across TV and mobile combined but sits flat at 7-8% in every daypart, leading Dhivya to declare: "There's no primetime anymore."
- Second-screen use accounts for about one-third of premium viewing time and runs alongside — not against — the primary screen, which Dhivya framed as "the committed screen and the restless screen, stacked."
- Microdrama is the first format that both builds audiences and earns revenue in the fast-attention layer at once, "collapsing the funnel" from discovery to monetization, and is driving the week's streamer deal-making.
- Local content out-performs Korean dramas in Indonesia and Thailand, while Korean and other imports still dominate market share in Malaysia and the Philippines.
- Thai content travels furthest across the region, reaching 6.4 million users outside Thailand, led by crime/thriller (39%), sci-fi/fantasy (25%), drama/romance (18%), BL/GL (15%) and horror (10%).
- Indonesian titles cross borders primarily through horror, with drama additionally traveling to Malaysia thanks to language and cultural proximity; Malaysian kids' content like animated feature Papa Zola is moving the other way into Indonesia.
Why it matters: The streaming playbook of capturing evening primetime is dead in Southeast Asia — premium video sits flat at 7-8% in every daypart, shifting the battle to fast-attention formats like microdrama that funnel viewers into longer-form catalogues. In markets with strong local industries like Indonesia and Thailand, homegrown stories now out-perform Korean imports, so streamers without local-language bets risk losing both the funnel and the conversion.
