Global viewing of streaming over-the-top video content more than doubled last year to 12.6 billion hours, according to a new report by Conviva.
Viewing was done on more than 2.4 billion devices, up nine per cent. The US accounts for 58 per cent of OTT viewing, followed by Europe with 21 per cent, Asia with 19 per cent and the rest of the world with two per cent
“Conviva has seen the viewing hour growth rate accelerate over the past several years as more consumers move their TV-watching from traditional linear pay TV services to a very wide variety of OTT services offered by both pure play OTT publishers and MVPDs as well as pay TV providers diversifying their service offerings,” the company said in its Streaming Market Year in Review. “Conviva expects to see continued accelerated growth over the course of 2018 across both existing and new customers.”
The number of view plays initiated in 2017 rose 74 per cent to 38.8 billion, with 54 per cent of those from the US.
In home devices, such as Xbox and Roku, showed the highest completion rate for video programming at 46 per cent, with a 71 per cent growth in viewing time per device.. Streaming video programming was more likely to be interrupted when viewed on a mobile device.
In terms of quality of OTT video, Conviva said that of the 47.1 billion attempts to start watching a video, 38.8 billion were successful. It took on average 4.84 seconds for a video to start, a 23 per vent improvement from the previous year.
Buffering issues improved slightly. While watching a half-hour show, the average viewer spent 0.95 per cent of their time, or less than 18 seconds, waiting for video to rebuffer.
“The OTT market continues to see explosive growth not only in the number of viewers, but the amount of time spent viewing as well,” Conviva said.
