How Streaming & Second Screens Are Rewiring Asia’s Attention

Southeast Asia’s premium VOD users spend only 8% of their digital life actually watching premium content, while the rest of their time is spent on social, messaging, gaming and short video,” said Media Partners Asia’s Head of Insights Dhivya T. in a presentation at APOS today. 

When the TV screen is added to their mobile viewing, premium content still only gets about an hour a day on average. And it doesn’t dominate any particular time slot. “Consumers graze across everything: social, messaging, video, premium, microdrama, every hour, side by side. And the mix barely changes: morning, noon, night, even pre-dawn, the ratio of usage doesn’t shift significantly. No category owns a slot,” Dhivya explained. 

“Even premium video, the one thing you’d expect to own the evening, sits flat at 7–8% in every daypart. There’s no primetime anymore.”

Consumers also spend around one third of the time they’re watching premium content looking at a second screen. “But the nuance matters: it’s not that the phone is beating premium. The two run at once, often additive, rather than not zero-sum. The committed screen and the restless screen, stacked.”

Rather than thinking in terms of time slots, Dhivya suggested defining attention in terms of fast and slow. Fast attention is served in quick hits, infinite scroll and the algorithm choosing what is being consumed. Slow attention is when the consumer is in control, making decisions and committed to giving the content longer, but less frequent, sessions. 

Fast attention is where audiences and brands are being built. But attention is then funnelled into the premium platforms where committed engagement has to be earned. Dhivya used the example of recent box office hit Backrooms as the perfect example of how this phenomenon plays out – a horror hit pulled straight from a 4chan meme, directed by a 20-year-old YouTuber, that has now given A24 its biggest box office opening ever. 

A similar story is playing out with local content in Southeast Asia. Netflix’s Thai-language movie My Dearest Assassin became a hit on the platform partly because of the popularity of Thai actress Baifern who has 13 million followers on Instagram. 

In Indonesia, viral X threads have resulted in a string of hit streaming and theatrical movies including Dusun Mayit and KKN di Desa Penari.

Of course, microdrama is now emerging as a format that bridges the two types of attention – premium stories told in fast TikTok-style behavior. “Microdrama is the first format that builds and banks in the fast layer at once. It collapses the funnel,” Dhivya said. 

“That’s why the streamers are signing the deals you’ve heard about all week: microdrama is the new top-of-funnel for premium: capture attention with premium-quality stories, monetize it directly, then funnel the most engaged toward the longer-form, engagement catalogue. The fast layer stops being only where you build awareness; it becomes where you start to earn.”

The presentation also looked at what kind of premium content is winning market by market across Southeast Asia. Dhivya noted that in markets with a strong content industry and investment – i.e. Indonesia and Thailand – local stories are out-performing Korean dramas. However, Korean content and other imports are still taking a larger market share in Malaysia and the Philippines. 

As for Southeast Asian stories that are crossing borders – Thai content is currently travelling the widest – reaching 6.4 millions users across Southeast Asia outside of Thailand and hitting all markets. And the Thai content that travels reflect a wide range of genres: crime & thriller (39%), sci-fi & fantasy (25%), drama & romance (18%), BL/GL (15% overlapping with other genres) and horror (10%).

Meanwhile, Indonesia’s travelability hinges on horror. “The exception is travelability to Malaysia – with language and cultural proximity – genres like drama do cross over,” Dhivya said. Likewise some Malaysian children’s and family content is travelling to Indonesia, in particular recent animated feature Papa Zola.