Worldwide OTT Viewers Will Top 1.3 Billion by 2019, Says Parks Research
An estimated 900 million people access TV programming and movies online today, a figure that's expected to jump to more than 1.3 billion by 2019, said a white paper from Parks Associates on interactive over-the-top services.
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The content-rich U.S. OTT market has more than 65 video services available now or due by year end, said Parks. Content is the key driver for consumer adoption with 70 percent of service subscribers reporting they chose Amazon, Hulu Plus and Netflix based on specific titles available through the service. More than a third of consumers subscribe to the services for access to original content, following the size of the video library and the amount of recent content available, said Parks.
Fewer subscribers chose services based on personalized recommendations. In the category of “bundled with other services,” Amazon stood alone for its Prime offering that offers instant video and free shipping with well over half of respondents saying the bundle was a driver in their subscription.
Nearly half of consumers who watch video on connected devices want to be able to use four or more different connected platforms to access OTT video content, said Parks. Despite the popularity of watching video on mobile devices, though, most consumers prefer to watch on the largest screen available, said Parks. Television-based viewing is generally preferred to watching video on a PC, which is preferable to viewing on a tablet, it said. Even as smartphones are getting larger, the percentage of TV show and movie viewing is bigger on tablets than on smartphones. Among the four viewing options, smartphones had less than 10 percent engagement for video content longer than 10 minutes in length, according to Ooyala’s Q4 2014 Video Index.
OTT video services need to continually monitor the fickle consumption habits of consumers, which can shift fast, said Parks. “They must be prepared to quickly adjust or create service offerings to meet current trends,” it said. Promotion and content discovery are important to drive engagement and “stickiness,” but capturing user attention is increasingly difficult, it said. Large players can use TV advertising to spread the word, and smaller players typically take to social media to increase exposure, it said. Detailed, actionable analytics are important in helping OTT services spend marketing budgets efficiently, it said.