As per data released by comScore, over half of Wi-Fi powered US households now rely upon a streaming service to fulfill their video watching needs. Interestingly, Netflix managed to ace the lists and was a clear leader with YouTube and Amazon a distant second and third with regards to being the most popular streaming service.
As per the report, Netflix marked a presence in 75 percent of the households. In comparison, YouTube and Amazon registered their presence in just 53 and 33 percent of homes respectively. Hulu was also present inn the top 4 and registered use in 17 percent of all homes. The data stemmed from a December 2016 survey, which also saw the total number of households using a video streaming service cross 49 million.
Another very important takeaway from the report is the fact that streaming services were no longer playing second fiddle to the traditional television. On an average, subscribers were watching content for as many as 9 days per month, for 2.2 hours per day. If that isn’t engagement, I don’t know what is. What’s more, the highest concentration of viewing took place during the traditional prime time hours — again reinforcing the notion that households were totally open to the idea of using streaming services as their primary channel of content delivery.
However, users still prefer a streaming service if it is reminiscent of the old cable TV experience, as opposed to unadulterated streaming. Dish’s live TV service Sling TV, which offers a more traditional viewing experience to its users, managed to top the engagement charts with 47 viewing hours per month. This was well ahead of Netflix, which managed merely 47 viewing hours a month.
Amazon TV has also managed to reach a greater audience, thanks to the fact its Fire TV platform his now gaining some serious leverage. On the Fire TV Stick and Fire TV streaming player, Amazon has become the top service which is good since any other outcome would have been kind of embarrassing to the company. However, all other streaming devices have Netflix as the number one user’s choice.
Meanwhile, there is plenty of room for growth. As per the comScore report, over half of the household with Wi-Fi connection still didn’t rely on over the top streaming services. There is a pretty huge market right there and with company to cater to these, will likely emerge as the victor in the US streaming arena.
