American AVOD adopted faster than SVOD

Comscore’s 2022 State of Streaming analysis – which examined the current state of streaming adoption, growth trends, services and solutions – found a 29% increase in US households streaming AVODs in 2022 compared with 2020 compared with a 21% increase during the same period for SVODs.

Overall, the study showed that households watched 5.4 streaming services per month as of March 2022, compared with 4.7 in March 2021, as the so-called “Big Five” streaming services became 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%).

Diverse audiences, including African American, Asian, American Indian, and Hispanic populations, are a key driver of streaming growth, now accounting for more than 40% of Wifi-enabled households watching connected TV (CTV) in the US. In terms of the streaming platforms viewing days per household, African Americans over indexed for Amazon, fuboTV, YouTube and Pluto TV, while Asians over index for HBO Max, Hulu, YouTube, and Sling. Accounting for the largest segment of diverse homes that stream, the Hispanic audience over indexes for Netflix, YouTube, fuboTV and Sling.

Smart TVs were found to be the fastest-growing segment of streaming devices with 48% growth year-on-year. Samsung continued its domination of the smart TV arena with 26% market share, but this was down from 31% in 2021 as other players gained momentum. Alcatel/TCL now accounts for 15% and Vizio 14%.

Almost four in five of Wi-Fi-enabled homes were found to be 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 captured the most hours per month watched at 43, followed closely by YouTube at 39 hours and Hulu at 33 hours.

“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 Comscore vice president, product management James Muldrow commenting on the State of Streaming report. “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.” Rapid TV News