Development of User Numbers

ProSiebenSat.1 Group is consistently pursuing a digital entertainment strategy and increased its market presence in all relevant areas in 2016. The Company diversifies its offerings and exploits its program content on various platforms (Fig. 45).

Utilization of program content (Fig. 45)

The Web offerings under the aegis of ProSiebenSat.1 advertising sales company SevenOne Media reached around 34 million unique users based on the most recently published data from November (previous year: around 33 million unique users). These include the ProSiebenSat.1 station websites, the weather platform wetter.com and the sports site sport1.de. The direct competitor IP Deutschland reached around 31 million unique users (previous year: around 29 million unique users) with its internet offerings. This information is based on data from Arbeitsgemeinschaft Online Forschung (AGOF).

In addition, the Group offers its advertising customers new marketing environments via mobile applications. In August 2016, ProSiebenSat.1 launched new apps for its German free TV stations. They can be used to watch TV programs on smartphones and tablets at any time and at no cost. Since their launch, these apps reported more than 11 million downloads on smartphones and tablets.

In addition, ProSiebenSat.1 Group expanded its global, advertising-financed video-streaming offer and in 2016 invested in the US video-streaming provider Pluto TV. Pluto TV operates more than 100 linear live television channels and reaches 5 million active users per month. At the same time, we merged the German Internet television site Quazer with Pluto TV as part of the transaction. It offers its users more than 60 special-interest stations. Together, they broadcast linear television offerings beyond traditional TV programming internationally. The market for this advertising-financed video streaming amounts to EUR 4 billion in the US.

A further essential component of ProSiebenSat.1’s digital portfolio is the multi-channel network (MCN) Studio71, which was established in fall 2013. The Group internationalized its MCN in 2015 by purchasing the US network CDS (Collective Digital Studio), which is also funded primarily via advertising and is continuously increasing its video views. In 2016, Studio71 had 60 billion video views (previous year: 27 billion video views) and over 420 million subscribers. In Germany alone, video views increased by 74 %. Thus, Studio71 is number one in Germany and one of the four largest MCNs in the world.

In addition to these advertising-financed online platforms, the Group also operates the VoD portal maxdome. The online video library generates revenues via pay-per-view and subscriptions and is available via traditional TV sets and PCs as well as mobile devices. In 2016, maxdome reached 1 million subscription video-on-demand (SVoD) users and ranked among the top-3-providers. With over 50,000 titles, maxdome offers the most extensive range of VoD content in Germany.

In addition, we are extending our successful station brands onto social networks in order to increase the availability and name recognition of our TV content via all channels and to reinforce viewers’ loyalty to our programs. On social media, ProSiebenSat.1 Group is the media company with the widest reach in Germany. At the end of financial year 2016, ProSiebenSat.1’s 32 most important Facebook pages had around 18 million fans (previous year: 15.6 million). Once again the most popular were the general knowledge magazine “Galileo” and the station and program pages of ProSieben (Fig. 46 – 47) — the largest growth in fans was enjoyed by the ProSieben show “Circus HalliGalli;” which grew by nearly 11 % with around 197,000 new fans.

Top five station pages in Germany on Facebook (Fig. 46)

Top five formats of ProSiebenSat.1 Group on Facebook (Fig. 47)

ProSieben’s Twitter account reached over 1.8 million followers at the end of 2016. This equates to an increase of 19.7 % year-on-year. This underscores ProSieben’s top position in social media communication. No other TV station has used Twitter so successfully. By way of comparison, RTL’s Twitter account has around 515,000 followers.