Consumers' Appetite for Streaming Services Remains High
As a number of powerful media companies enter the streaming video marketplace in a very big way, consumers love streamed TV and film and want content providers to keep it coming, a survey from U.S. data and measurement firm Nielsen suggests.
According to a special Streaming Wars edition of the Nielsen Total Audience Report, people and devices, consumers in OTT-capable homes are spending nearly one-fifth (19%) of their TV time streaming content, be it through ad-supported or paid subscription models.
In 2019, the U.S. audience could choose from over 646,000 different titles across traditional broadcast TV and streaming platforms, up nearly 10% from 2018, according to Nielsen. Of those, about 9% were only available on a streaming service such as Netflix, Walt Disney Co’s Disney+, Apple Inc’s Apple TV+ or ViacomCBS’s CBS All Access.
Streaming is particularly popular among young adults. Among 18- to 34-year-olds who participated in the Nielsen survey, 96% subscribe to a paid streaming video service, compared to 91% among all consumers of all ages.
Nearly one-third of all respondents and almost half of respondents aged 18 to 34 say they subscribe to three or more paid services - leaving plenty of room for AT&T- owned WarnerMedia’s HBO Max and Comcast’s Peacock streaming services, which are launching this year.
The report also notes that 60% of Americans subscribe to more than one paid video streaming service. Better still—especially for platforms entering the streaming market—is that 93% of U.S. consumers say they will either increase or keep their existing streaming services.
According to survey respondents, price is the most vital attribute for a quality streaming service. In fact, when asked about what made them cancel a paid video subscription service, 42% said they didn’t use it enough to justify the cost.
User-friendly interactivity plays a key role for streaming services and ranked second in consumer importance. Frustrating user experiences or hard to navigate interfaces may not bode well when it comes to subscriber retention, especially when the internet has cultivated a culture of convenience and consumers have a bevy of other media choices available to them. Of course, content is also of major importance for consumers, as the variety and availability of it placed in the top three of video streaming attributes.
The content is what ultimately gets them to type out their credit card number and hit “Enter.” The top four reasons as to why survey participants decided to subscribe to additional streaming services were all content-based, with the top reason being to expand the content that they had available.
When compelling content runs out, don’t be surprised when some of the subscribers do too: 20% of consumers said they canceled a service after watching all the content that they were interested in.