Global viewing of over-the-top (OTT) video services content more than doubled to 12.6 billion hours in 2017, according to a study by Conviva, a measurement and analytics services provider.
Conviva provides services for seven of the top 10 US SVOD publishers, and its data set is composed of viewers from about 180 countries connected to the internet by more than 1,200 internet services providers (ISPs).
The increase in 2017 OTT streaming hours reflects the ongoing shift away from linear TV. Over 1 million consumers cut the cord in the first three quarters of 2017 alone, and the vast majority of Americans aged 18-59 watch at least some of their TV online, according to PwC, per Business Insider. Further contributing to this shift, video streaming services aggressively pushed out content offerings in 2017 — Netflix produced 1,000 hours of original programming last year, up from 600 hours in 2016, for example.
Below are two top takeaways from Conviva’s study that shed light on consumer behaviors toward OTT streaming:
- Among streaming video player devices, Roku drove the highest level of video consumption. Globally, Roku accounted for 24% of viewer hours, well ahead of Fire TV (9%), Apple TV (8%), and Chromecast (2%). This isn’t the first indication of Roku’s dominance among video streaming devices — Parks Associates found that Roku was the most popular video streaming device in Q1 2017, commanding a 37% market share in the US. And streaming OTT devices like Roku and game consoles drove higher video consumption than mobile devices and traditional computers, according to Conviva.
- Consumers preferred to stream video through video apps rather than browsers.By December 2017, 64% of traffic on Conviva’s platform came from video apps, while 36% was attributable to in-browser video. The preference to stream video through apps could be driven by the popularity of streaming video on devices like Roku and game consoles, where using native apps for OTT content is more common.
Source: Business Insider