Advertising supported streaming services are seeing US adoption at a faster rate than subscription-based options.
According to Comscore, there’s been a 29% increase in US households streaming AVODs in 2022 compared to 2020 vs a 21% increase during the same period for SVODs. The data has is found in Comscore’s 2022 State of Streaming analysis, which examines the current state of streaming adoption, growth trends, services and solutions.
“While both ad-supported and subscription-based streaming services are growing in the US, we’re seeing that consumers are being more mindful of their budgets and leaning towards ad-supported services,” said James Muldrow, Vice President, Product Management at Comscore. “This makes sense as inflation continues to hit consumer’s wallets. The time is ripe for traditionally subscription-based streaming services like Netflix to consider launching an ad-supported tier to enhance their growth trajectory.”
In other findings, households watched 5.4 streaming services per month as of March 2022, compared to 4.7 in March 2021, as The Big Five streaming services became The Big Six with the rise of HBO Max. In terms of audience overlap, Netflix has an 82% overlap with the other top six streaming services, especially Amazon (66%) and YouTube (66%).
Smart TVs are the fastest-growing segment of streaming devices with 48% growth YOY. Samsung still dominates the Smart TV arena with 26% market share but is down from 31% in 2021 as other players gain momentum: Alcatel/TCL now accounts for 15% and Vizio 14%. But with the lack of a unified measurement for all players, the rise of Smart TVs is ripe for viewability fraud.
Comscore has data from 13 million Smart TV devices in-house from two major ACR providers. While this data set contains high-quality return path data, it also unlocks new reporting challenges from a standards perspective. 79% of Wifi-enabled homes are watching streaming content on connected TV devices and each such household is spending about 122 hours per month doing so, a 19% growth from March 2021. Netflix captures the most hours per month watched at 43, followed closely by YouTube at 39 hours and Hulu at 33 hours.
Amazon Prime Video has the highest resonance with the younger TikTok, Twitter, Snapchat & Twitch engagers, showcasing its strength in driving engagement with content & social marketing.