Access to OTT-delivered live TV playing big role in rise of consumer adoption, study finds.

January 29, 2019

2 Min Read

FOSTER CITY, CALIF. -- Conviva, the real-time measurement and intelligence platform for streaming TV, today released its 2018 Annual State of the Streaming TV Industry report. The report sheds new light on market dynamics and challenges in context of skyrocketing consumption, growing consumer impatience, spikes in global live viewership, and shifting device preference.

Skyrocketing Expectations and Viewership: Across Conviva’s customer base, 2018 saw 89% growth in overall viewing hours for the year, including 165% growth in Q4. With this growth, Conviva observed the convergence of heightened viewer expectations and waning patience.

A global 7% year-over-year increase in the rate of abandonment translated to 14.6% of viewers leaving before their video started. The effect was amplified when viewers faced delays in situations where they expected the experience of traditional TV viewing, such as on connected TVs, watching live content, and via content aggregators (vMVPDs such as Hulu, Sling, PlayStation Vue, and DirecTV Now). As the number of viewing hours increases in this progressively more complex landscape, this is a trend that will be critical to watch and address. Global Spikes in Live: Live content, up 65% in viewing hours, drove significant growth in global streaming. While not growing on the scale of video on demand, up 111% in the same time period, live content accounted for the largest global surges in viewership throughout 2018.

Among connected TV devices, Roku continued to lead the way in viewing hours, commanding 41% share of the growing overall viewership. The biggest gain year-over-year was achieved by Amazon Fire TV, which jumped to second place with 18% share, a 240% increase from their 7th place position the previous year. With heightened quality expectations in 2018, notable achievements included PlayStation with the least buffering and Apple TV with the best picture quality in addition to the shortest time for the video to start.

Data for Conviva’s Annual State of the Streaming TV Industry report is collected using the company’s proprietary sensor technology, which is embedded directly within 3 billion video applications streaming on devices globally. Conviva currently measures 1 trillion data events per day for top streaming TV providers worldwide, across 180 countries and five continents. In this report, the year-over-year data was normalized for a consistent set of Conviva customers in both 2017 and 2018.

Conviva Inc.

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