Why has the penetration of CTV been an excellent catalyst for FAST?

The penetration of CTV has been an excellent catalyst for FAST. The United States and the United Kingdom show similar numbers in CTV penetration – 81% and 85%, respectively. Looking at penetration of FAST, 42% of households had a FAST service in the United States, while that percentage rises to 44% in the UK, according to a new report from Amagi.

Amagi asked consumers, both in the United States and the United Kingdom, what they would give up first as a cost-cutting measure in an economic downturn. In both countries, travel was the first item on the proverbial chopping block for most people (38-47%), but in both countries, it is paid TV subscription that about a third of consumers would eliminate first.

Digging deeper to understand how consumers would behave, Amagi interrogated people willing to give up their paid TV subscription to better map the behavioral shifts that an economic downturn would bring and found that a vast majority of them would cancel their paid TV subscription, but do so to switch to FAST.

Moreover, Amagi completed its comparison of the United States and the United Kingdom markets by inquiring on the FAST genres people gravitate towards. To that end, the company asked respondents about the type of channels they would want to have more of. Consistently across both territories, general entertainment turned out to be the star, with an even higher concentration in the UK (67%) than in the United States (52%).