Over 60% of US viewers watch SVOD daily

Some 61.1% of viewers watch over-the-top or subscription video-on-demand content as part of their daily viewing behaviour, according to TiVo-owned Digitalsmiths.

The 15th edition of Digitalsmiths’ Video Trends Report, which polled viewers in the US and Canada, claims that on a daily basis 69.5% of viewers watch previously recorded TV and 85.7% watch live TV from their channel guide.

According to the research, SVOD growth has been trending up with increases of 5.6% year-on-year, 9.2% over two years and 13.7% over three years.

The top three subscription services were Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu, with 56.6% of those polled spending between US$6 and US$14 a month on SVOD services.

Investigating the pricing of Netflix, the report said: “In Q3 2016, for the second quarter in a row, the largest group (39.4%) selected the US$12 to US$15 range as the most they would pay for Netflix service. Same as last quarter, the second largest group (30.4%) will not pay any more than they currently do.”

Asked whether they would use a free version of Netflix or Hulu that required viewers to watch commercials, 69% of respondents answered yes. Some 83.3% of respondents said they would be willing to watch one to four commercials in a 30-minute period.

In Q3 some 82.4% of total respondents had a pay TV subscription. However, of those that didn’t, 17.9% said they had cut their cable or satellite service in the last 12 months.

Price was the top reason given by 82.9% of cord-cutters, while 59.5% cited using a service such as Netflic, Hulu or Amazon as a reason to churn away from their pay TV package.

The Q3 2016 Video Trends Report is based on a survey of more than 3,100 Digitalsmiths customers. Digitalsmiths offers personalised video discovery that is designed to drive higher viewer engagement.