Fatigue with subscription services is paving the way for rapidly increasing advertising video-on-demand (AVOD) viewership, now more closely reflecting US general population demographics says a study from Tubi.
The Stream: 2022 Audience Insights for Brands study from the FOX-owned free streaming service aimed to better understand streamers’ preferences, habits and perspective on the state of streaming today. The online survey of 6,003 adult streamers over 18 years of age was conducted in Q4 2021. It is said to highlight the changing demographics of a free streaming universe that remains young and multicultural while becoming more reflective of national audience averages in education and affluence.
A key finding was that free streaming’s audience is set to grow larger than paid streaming by mid-2022. AVOD audiences grew twice as fast, up 16% annually, as SVOD (8%) in 2021. The survey projects the current ~5% gap in market penetration to close in 2022 with the number of AVOD users surpassing SVOD. This said Tubi was attributable to a variety of factors, including subscription fatigue, ubiquitous hardware, cord cutting and increased broadband access. While it accepts total view time (TVT) is still led by SVOD, Tubi believes the opportunity for AVOD to expand TVT has never been greater.
Looking as to who was switching on, the research revealed that free streaming viewership was expanding rapidly among educated and higher-income earners and becoming more reflective of national audience averages. AVOD adoption was led by the young, still over-indexing compared with the general population, but mature, educated and affluent audiences were found to be growing rapidly.
Free streaming platforms were found to be garnering distinct, loyal audiences, while maintaining audience overlap with SVOD. Streamers continued to gravitate to specific AVOD services as their “television of choice,” while being selective about which services they pay a premium for. Factors that determined AVOD selection in a crowded marketplace included ease of use, content, personalisation and user experience.
Streaming is set to become the fastest growing video format in both viewership and media investment. Connected TV and over-the-top (CTV/OTT) ad spend grew 34% in 2021, compared to 7.4% for national broadcast and cable. The Stream projects that half of all internet users will use free streaming services by 2024, and by 2026, AVOD revenues will triple 2021 levels, reaching $31.5 billion.
Streaming viewers were also becoming more receptive to ads. In maintaining quality ad load, 82% of marketers state ad frequency management is an important factor when partnering with streaming television. The Stream illustrates advanced frequency management’s (AFM) value for advertisers.
The study also reported that Tubi had 3.6 billion hours streamed in 2021, a 40% YoY increase in total viewing time (TVT) across its largest-in-streaming library of more than 40,000 titles. Revealing more insight into the streamer’s incremental audience, the study also found that 71% of the Tubi audience are unreachable on cable, 56% unreachable on linear TV, and 27% unreachable on any other major free streaming platform. In addition, Currently, over a quarter (27%) of Tubi streamers can’t be reached on any other major AVOD service: 78% aren’t on Peacock, and 62% aren’t on Hulu; however, 71% subscribe to Netflix, currently unreachable by ads.
“Our findings in The Stream bring AVOD to the forefront of streaming investment planning for brands in 2022, as well as a necessary complement to existing linear TV strategy,” said Natalie Bastian, senior vice president, marketing, Tubi, commenting on The Stream: 2022 Audience Insights for Brands study. “At Tubi, we've focused on connecting with new communities -- both by accessing FOX's desirable audience as well as partnering with next generation platforms to reach audiences not found on linear television -- and it's paid off with rapid growth among key audience segments.”