For years, the industry has repeated the same old December cliché: Come the unofficial start of the summer holidays with the long weekend of the 16th, expect all audiences to pack up, head out and ‘switch off’, leaving their screens behind in favour of gazing at the gentle ocean swell.
Yet the data – and anyone who has been cooped up in a holiday home when it’s raining – tells a different story. Holidays loosen the schedule in all the best ways, with kids staying up later, teens streaming movies when not swimming, parents finally settling in with that binge-watch they missed earlier in the year, and families getting together to watch their festive favourites.
Viewing shifts
And since everyone is more relaxed, with fewer distractions and no rigid routines and bedtimes, viewing doesn’t slow down during the festive season; it just shifts.
While data in South Africa is admittedly limited, the global numbers point to the fact that over the holiday period, streaming actually surges. According to Nielsen, streaming consumption continues to climb over the holiday period, with December 2024 viewership rising 9% compared to November and accounting for 43.4% of all TV watch time.
Over the peak holiday interval (from Thanksgiving through Christmas) audiences drove four separate days of more than 100 billion minutes viewed. Industry reports echo the trend, highlighting that platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and YouTube hit record-high viewership in November and December last year, fueled by festive programming and major live events.
Strong digital backbone
Now consider that from a South African perspective, the country’s digital backbone has never been stronger, making a strong argument for our nation following suit with our global peers. As of early 2025, South Africa counts around 50.8 million internet users – roughly 78.9% of the population – and a staggering 124 million mobile connections, which shows that we stay connected wherever we go.
Streaming behaviour is well established too: by October 2024, nearly half of South Africans with internet access were subscribing to a streaming service.
This is the setup families take with them down the N1 and N3 as they shift from office and school hours to holiday mode. Screens come along for the ride, packed into cars along with the padkos to keep the kids entertained in the back. They get plugged in wherever families settle in, from the caravan resort to the family holiday cottage, with all the cousins sharing a room and a tablet.
No more ‘dinner prime time’
And once the pace slows, viewing becomes simple: people watch when they feel like it, without the usual rush of the week. There’s no more “dinner time prime time”, with morning cartoons helping Mom and Dad enjoy a lie-in and afternoon movies giving everyone a time to chill. With fewer demands and no fixed schedule, viewers are more relaxed and more open to what they’re watching – which matters for advertisers.
December spending proves it. Online retail sales rose 23.3% year-on-year during the 2024 festive season, and cash orders hit R87.7 billion over the same period. This is when wallets loosen a little, when we all have more time (and the bonus money!) to spoil our families.
Put that alongside Connected TV (CTV), which offers premium content and precise targeting, and it becomes one of the most effective places a brand can show up at this time of year. Another advantage is that CTV adapts to wherever the audience goes. Whether a family is watching on a TV in a rented apartment, a tablet on the road or a phone between beach trips, the experience stays consistent.
SA doesn’t switch off over holidays
It remains high-quality, brand-safe and fully measurable. Even when people scatter across the country, CTV keeps them reachable in one place.
For brands, the takeaway is straightforward. December isn’t downtime; it’s a high-attention, high-spend stretch where viewers finally have the headspace to notice the products in front of them, consider what they want and decided what to buy. The brands that stay present now are the ones that hold attention going into the new year.
South Africans don’t switch off over the holidays. They just change scenery – and their screens go with them. For advertisers who lean into CTV, the audience is right there: engaged, connected and primed to buy.
Leslie Adams is a seasoned media executive with a career spanning print, broadcasting, cinema and digital platforms. He has held senior commercial roles across leading media brands, including CNBC Africa and Forbes Africa, Ster-Kinekor and now, Reach Africa. In 2021, he joined Reach Africa as sales director. Reach Africa is a leading specialist in Connected TV (CTV), Advertising Video on Demand (AVOD), and Free Ad-Supported TV (FAST) monetisation, helping brands engage high-value audiences while enabling content owners to maximise revenue across the continent.
