Streaming TV Doubles During Second Quarter, Report Says

by stockboardasset

As a result of the larger cord-cutting trend, streaming TV increased in the second quarter, according to a new report from Conviva, a real-time measurement and intelligence platform for many of the world’s largest streaming TV publishers, which found content consumption more than doubled over the last 12 months.

The Conviva sensor is installed in 3 billion streaming video applications for over 200 brands. This represents the largest, independent census data collection and measurement network in the world. The data is a fully anonymized census measuring every stream from Conviva’s customer base between April 01 and June 30, 2018, and cross-referencing it with datasets from the same period last year.

In Q2 2018, viewing hours increased by 115 percent as compared to the same period last year indicative of a surge in growth, as represented by Conviva’s customer base.

Another indication of growth in streaming is the massive increase Conviva saw in peak concurrent plays (the peak number of simultaneous active sessions at any given second. This is a real-time measure of the audience scale (concurrency)), as 7.9 million people watched the World Cup, which resulted in 118 percent spike in peak concurrency from the same period last year.

France and Croatia on July 15 drove a peak concurrency of 9.12 million plays, shattering previous records. 

The report specified when excluding the World Cup, peak concurrency in Q2 2018 was still elevated by more than 45 percent y/y, surge to 5.3 million concurrent plays during the NBA Western Conference Finals.

“These spikes demonstrate that sports continue to drive ‘appointment TV’ – even in the streaming TV space,” the report said. “They create opportunities, but they also create massive load on the video delivery ecosystem, which much continues to improve in order to meet growing demand.”

Conviva finds that North America remains the most robust growth market, showing y/y growth in both plays up 124 percent and viewing hours up 139 percent. Asia’s growth in plays soared y/y by 63 percent, but with modest growth of 22 percent in viewing hours.

Different types of content is being viewed on various devices, the report determined. Streaming TV is shifting away from PCs (24 percent of plays) to mobile devices (49 percent of plays), particularly for content that is of short-form, including TV series, sports, and live broadcasts. Connected TVs (51 percent of viewing hours) are favored for long-form content, such as movies.

“The shift away from PCs and to mobile is unmistakable when comparing this data to Q2 2017 when mobile had a 39 percent share of plays while PCs had a 38 percent share. Among connected TV platforms, Roku continues to emerge as a leader with nearly 8 percent of all plays, while Sony’s PlayStation and Google’s Chromecast experienced the fastest YoY growth, both north of 150 percent YoY,” said Conviva.

Overall, cord-cutters continue to prefer smartphones as consuming devices for short-form content and TVs for consuming long-form movies. The newest trend spotted in the research is that PCs are losing dramatic share to mobile devices, while among connected TV platforms, Samsung and other TV platforms are losing ground to Roku, Google’s Chromecast, Sony’s PlayStation, and Amazon’s Fire TV.