While consumers are increasingly using tablets and smartphones to access video content, they're still not taking full advantage of their pay TV service provider's TV Everywhere offering, a pair of reports issued this week indicated.
Ooyala's fourth quarter 2014 "Global Video Index" noted that 34 percent of video plays in the quarter were on tablets and smartphones, double the number from the same period in the past year and five times the number from 2012. On the other hand, a "Video Trends Report" from TiVo's Digitalsmiths for the fourth quarter concluded that consumers aren't rushing to use TV Everywhere applications from their pay TV providers. Only 25.2 percent have downloaded the app, the report said, and 52.1 percent of those who did used it less than once a week.
The two reports also showed an apparent schism between how consumers access the content they're watching outside the home. According to Ooyala, about 70 percent of tablet users watch video longer than 10 minutes, and connected TV users spent 41 percent of their time watching videos longer than 60 minutes.
Those views were coming more from OTT than traditional pay TV sources, the Digitalsmiths report said. The number of pay TV households renting one or more paid VOD titles per month jumped 3.1 percent jump quarter-to-quarter and 3.4 percent year-to-year. OTT subscriptions, however, grew 8 percent year-over-year--so cord cutting continues to be a real threat.
The bottom line of both reports is that, while non-traditional viewing methods are taking hold, "traditional TV is still the primary form of viewing … but it is evolving daily and becoming more blended with over-the-top services, with intensifying focus on mobile phones and tablets," the Ooyala report stated.
As part of that equation, however, those same consumers are not really moving around the available platform of channels, the Digitalsmiths report said, noting that "81.1 percent watch the same channels over and over." On the positive side for content providers, 3.1 percent more said they do not watch the same channels repeatedly.
"This year-to-year trend proves consumers are slowly expanding upon the 8 to 10 channels they typically watch, which could ultimately lead to increased satisfaction and engagement with their pay TV service," Digitalsmiths concluded.
For more:
- Ooyala released this report
- Digitalsmiths released this report
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