With More Streaming Video Devices Than Ever, Consumers Flock Back to the Living Room for the Connected TV

The report offers valuable insights for OTT video publishers competing in a rapidly evolving and competitive marketplace, where content choices and pricing are becoming increasingly important to their overall strategy. Understanding exactly what viewers are consuming on which device, at what time of the day, is the key to delivering a competitive OTT service – and delivering it successfully. Viewer experience, content, and monetization have become the three pillars of the next generation of TV, and the industry needs accurate data to make competitive business decisions.

The data behind The Secret Life of Streamers, Part II research study was meticulously reviewed and analyzed by OTT industry veteran, Colin Dixon, founder and principal analyst at nScreenMedia. Dixon created nScreenMedia to be a resource for the Digital Media Industry as it transitions to a new infrastructure for multi-screen delivery.

"Conviva has a unique census-level data set capturing detailed viewing habits of billions of streaming video applications and devices across the globe," Dixon said. "Our most recent independent analysis shows connected TV dominating all devices 24/7, with plays increasing 75%, highlighting the rise of this platform at the expense of other screens. The transition from traditional television to streaming television has become more prominent, and viewers are binge-watching multiple shows via connected TV during primetime."

Globally, the share of plays by country shows connected TV is up in the UK, US, Norway, Germany, and Australia, while PC usage is down. When it comes to quality, the report found that mobile picture quality (as measured by bitrate) has improved worldwide, and rebuffering ratio is also improving (with a few exceptions, see full report).

"The insights found in these studies have allowed our publishers to leverage industry-first data to better understand their consumers' content consumption behaviors, daypart trends by device, and screen preferences," says Dr. Hui Zhang, Co-Founder & CEO of Conviva. "Data-driven insights that help OTT decision-makers understand in-home versus out-of-home viewing habits, for instance, can inform cost-saving encoding decisions as well as revenue-generating advertising decisions."

Other key findings of the report include:

• Connected TV streaming in the home has tripled since 2015 and has replaced the PC as the platform of choice for binge-watching.
• The average viewing session on connected TVs, 77 minutes, is twice the amount of time viewers spend watching streaming video on personal computers and mobile devices.
• The way people in the US and the UK stream on mobile devices, PCs, and connected TVs is very similar. Both countries favor connected TV, accounting for 46% of premium video plays in the US and 43% in the UK.
• The UK, US, and Norway prefer longer episodic content on their mobile devices, while Canadians prefer short videos on mobile.

The Secret Life of Streamers, Part II follows a similar study done in 2016. Conviva monitors over 14 billion streaming video hours per year from over three billion video viewing applications and devices around the globe. The data used in this research study came from nearly two billion streaming sessions in North America from April 2016 to April 2017. A second global data set from October 2016 and October 2017 was also used to complement the original 2015-2016 study. Data was analyzed from connected TV devices, smartphones, tablets, and many other video viewing devices.

The report is launching today at TV Connect in London. For the full report, visit here.

About Conviva
Conviva powers every internet-connected screen with the most engaging viewing experiences imaginable by elevating the way OTT businesses use data-driven intelligence. For years, HBO, Sky, Turner, and the like have been using Conviva's Video AI Platform to enlighten, reveal, and inform with important insights around consumer in-screen viewing experience, helping them connect those metrics to important business outcomes. This allows customers to not only maximize subscriber retention and growth but also understand content and viewing trends so they can deliver more personalized viewing experiences. We make engagement a data-driven outcome based on actionable quality of experience (QoE) analytics. Conviva is privately held and headquartered in Silicon Valley, California, with offices in New York and London. For more information, please visit us at www.conviva.com.

SOURCE Conviva

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