While Netflix, Amazon Instant Video and Hulu held on to their top-three rankings among viewers in a new Digitalsmiths survey, other subscription video on demand services landed squarely in the top 10 – including a new entrant, YouTube Red.
HBO Now, Shomi, and YouTube Red took the fourth through sixth spots in the provider’s annual viewer survey, followed by CBS All Access, Sling TV, PlayStation Vue, and Blockbuster.
Digitalsmiths surveyed 3,114 adults aged 18 and higher in the United States and Canada during the second quarter of 2016, revealing some interesting changes in how online video viewers are accessing their content.
Perhaps most significant is the amount of money consumers are willing to spend on OTT video services – both SVOD and transactional VOD, which includes online rentals and purchases. Well over half, or 56 percent of respondents said that they currently spend $6 to $14 per month on SVOD services like Netflix. Those spending in the highest tier, $21 to $30 per month on SVOD, went up 2.2 percent year over year, to 11.3 percent of respondents.
Furthermore, 39.1 percent of respondents said they would pay as much as $12-$15 a month for Netflix, although another huge percentage, 29.3 percent, refuse to pay one cent more – suggesting that there may be a split in perceived value of SVOD services compared to pay-TV among viewers.
When it came to TVOD, Amazon Prime Video – its rental and purchasing option – beat out Redbox’s storefront kiosks for the first time, with 16.3 percent of viewers renting or buying movies from the online video service and just 15 percent from Redbox kiosks.
The number-one reason viewers use Netflix and other SVOD services, as well as online TVOD was obvious: convenience, followed by “no commercials or ads,” and a cheaper price for content.
While cord cutting appears to have leveled off, rising just slightly year over year, the ways that viewers watch content – whether on pay-TV, online, or over the air – are really getting interesting. For example, 18 percent of respondents said they cut cable service in the past year. At the same time, those who still have pay-TV said they feel “overwhelmed” by the number of channels. And 83 percent of respondents said they watch 10 or fewer TV channels regularly.
Just over half of cord cutters noted that they use an over-the-air (OTA) antenna to watch broadcast channels, a figure that rose 17.7 percent compared to the same period a year ago.
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