Streaming surge sustained but overall video viewership dips in Q2

The Video Trends Report: Q2 2022 from the Xperi Holding Corporation subsidiary, entitled The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same, surveyed 4,503 adults aged 18 and over in the US and Canada. It fundamentally found that the percentage of primetime viewing was down across all service types, with the most significant declines happening in live TV streaming services, vMVPDs, and also subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services.

Respondents reported watching an average of 4.3 hours of content per day overall, compared to 4.5 hours for the last quarter of 2021. The biggest dip in viewing came from millennials, whose total viewing time dropped more than a half hour, from 5.3 to 4.7 hours per day.

When asked to separate total viewing time by business model, TiVo noted a significant uptick in the usage of advertising VOD (AVOD)/ free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) services. Linear services, however, such as pay-TV and Live TV streaming still remained by a wide margin the overall preferred method when consumers watch video.

Looking at streaming in particular, respondents averaged a total of 9.86 services, up from 8.88 a year earlier. TiVo stressed that as that number approaches double digits, the share of AVOD services has gone up. In 2022, non-paid services accounted for about 32% of the overall share, compared with 26% in Q4 2021. The perceived quality of AVOD/FAST content also increased slightly at the expense of all other service types, driven mostly by the perceptions of pay-TV subscribers who are increasingly turning to AVOD services as a supplement.

Yet as consumers sampled free services, The Video Trends Report: Q2 2022 also found thar viewer loyalty was suffering. While 61% noted actively watching at least one AVOD/FAST service and 80% wished their paid services offered a free ad-supported option, 24.3% of AVOD users only spend three months actively watching a new AVOD service until moving on to a new option; pay-TV subscribers admitted to hopping between AVOD services at more than twice the rate of broadband-only respondents. In a specific indication of this trend, 30% of Disney+ users said they will stop paying for their current subscription once an ad supported version had been released. Rapid TV News