Viewer engagement for each streaming service, measured in Average Daily Playtime per user, in hours, was down for all devices and almost all regions in 2021 compared with 2020. Only Latin America saw a small increase in daily consumption versus the previous year, according to the NPAW “Video Streaming Industry Report”.
The study says that, rather than this downward trend reflecting a loss of appetite for video on demand among consumers, it shows the effects of increasingly fierce industry competition and an abundance of content. More and more services are being launched as traditional content providers and newcomers alike move to capitalize on the postpandemic streaming boom.
As a result, consumers continue stacking up subscriptions to access all the content they want to watch. In the United States, for example, the average household now uses about five different streaming services — almost double compared with prepandemic numbers. While the total amount of attention given to VOD content per household is on the rise, each individual service is getting less of it.
However, the study indicates that there may be reason for hope for VOD providers. Engagement picked up across all regions in the second half of 2021, which could signal an upward trend for VOD consumption per user and service in 2022. This would make sense in a context of content and services saturation that leaves consumers wanting for fewer options from which to choose, but it’s still too soon to tell.
When looking at the metrics for each Play, Completion Rate continues to drop in nearly all regions except for the Pacific and North America. Meanwhile, the Average Effective Playtime has stayed more or less the same or is going down across regions, which shows zapping-like user behavior — viewers tend to explore new content and change to other options when what they settled on does not suit their taste.
The report also revealed that, in 2021, the Average Effective Playtime per Play and service for Linear TV was up 3% on a global level. However, this upward trend is exclusively driven by Asia and, in particular, North America, with 7.4% and 19.9% increases respectively. Average Effective Playtime per Play fell the most in Latin America (-6.4%). Meanwhile, the Average Daily Consumption per user and service went up in every region except for Europe and the Middle East.
Regarding devices, smartphones remained the device where users showed the lowest Average Daily Consumption per user and service for both Linear TV and VOD. They also experienced the sharpest decline in terms of Average Effective Playtime for VOD (-74%) and Linear TV (-61.9%) — all while remaining the most popular device in terms of user reach with 5.31 billion unique users globally (67.1% of the world’s population).
“The global streaming industry experienced further expansion in 2021 as consumers consolidated the new behavior patterns that emerged with the pandemic. Yet competition is becoming increasingly fiercer, with established providers and newcomers alike bidding for the viewers’ attention and experimenting with new monetization models,” commented Ferran G. Vilaró, CEO & Co-founder of NPAW.