Do I see or not? A study on the impact of placement on program consumption in an on-demand environment

Abstract

The European Union (2018) stipulates that Member States can implement rules to ensure the findability and visibility of local content in video- ondemand environments. Indeed, several countries are concerned that their own audiovisual programs or journalistic products will be consumed less in such environments. It is argued that, in such environments, media users completely decide themselves about their consumption agency, but such statements are also contested. In this research we analyze the impact of placement on the consumption of audiovisual programs in the video-on-demand environments of the Flemish broadcasters VRT and DPG. From experimental research we conclude that there is indeed a significant impact of placement on consumption behavior and that, in other words, manipulations by intermediary gatekeepers can have potentially negative and positive effects on the consumption of local content. Government regulation would therefore be a useful tool to safeguard the importance of proximity of content.