Comscore announced that ad-supported streaming services (AVOD) are seeing adoption faster than subscription-based services (SVOD), with a 29% increase in the United States. households streaming AVODs in 2022 compared to 2020 vs a 21% increase during the same period for SVODs. That’s according to Comscore’s 2022 State of Streaming analysis, which examines the current state of streaming adoption, growth trends, services, and solutions.
“While both ad-supported and subscription-based streaming services are growing in the U.S., we’re seeing that consumers are being more mindful of their budgets and leaning towards ad-supported services,” said James Muldrow, Vice President, Product Management at Comscore. “This makes sense as inflation continues to hit consumers’ wallets. The time is ripe for traditionally subscription-based streaming services like Netflix to consider launching an ad-supported tier to enhance their growth trajectory,” he added.
American households watched 5.4 streaming services per month as of March 2022, compared to 4.7 in March 2021, as “The Big Five” streaming services became “The Big Six” with the rise of HBO Max. Regarding audience overlap, Netflix has an 82% overlap with the other top six streaming services, especially Amazon (66%) and YouTube (66%). Diverse audiences, including African American, Asian, American Indian, and Hispanic populations, are a crucial driver of streaming growth, now accounting for more than 40% of Wifi-enabled households watching connected TV (CTV) in the U.S. Regarding the streaming platforms viewing days per household, African Americans over-index for Amazon, FuboTV, YouTube, and Pluto.TV while Asians over-index for HBO Max, Hulu, YouTube, and Sling. Accounting for the largest segment of diverse homes that stream, the Hispanic audience over indexes for Netflix, YouTube, FuboTV, and Sling.
Smart TVs are the fastest-growing segment of streaming devices with a 48% growth YOY. Samsung still dominates the Smart TV arena with a 26% market share but is down from 31% in 2021 as other players gain momentum: Alcatel/TCL now accounts for 15% and Vizio 14%. But with the lack of a unified measurement for all players, the rise of Smart TVs is ripe for viewability fraud. Comscore has data from 13 million Smart TV devices in-house from two major ACR providers. While this data set contains high-quality return path data, it also unlocks new reporting challenges from a standards perspective.
79% of Wifi-enabled homes are watching streaming content on CTV devices, and each such household is spending about 122 hours per month doing so, a 19% growth from March 2021. Netflix captures the most hours per month watched at 43, followed closely by YouTube at 39 hours and Hulu at 33 hours.
Amazon Prime Video has the highest resonance with the younger TikTok, Twitter, Snapchat & Twitch engagers, showcasing its strength in driving engagement with content & social marketing.
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