Live TV Reigns as King Supreme

Live TV Reigns as King Supreme

Despite the rise and rise of subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) and over-the-top (OTT) services, traditional TV still rules the roost in the US, commanding 91% of consumers' total video time among the P2+ audience, says the Video Advertising Bureau (VAB).
In its State of Video, Multiscreen Insights report the analyst also found that TV’s dominance was clear across all ethnicities and among both young and old. Moreover, even though computer and smartphone video consumption was not surprisingly high among teens and young adults, TV still accounted for nearly four-fifths of video minutes and the majority of their viewing is with live television content. This latter trend was not lost on those charged with monetising consumption.
Indeed, when looking at the average monthly usage by device for the US P2+ audience in 2015, 285 million viewers spent 147 hours and 47 minutes watching TV. This compared with 127 million watching video on a computer (for 13:35 hours) and 139 million watching video on a smartphone (2:12). This gave the latter two content consumption forms a share of total video time of just 8% and 1% respectively compared with the 91% for traditional TV.
As one would expect, computer and smartphone video consumption was high among teens and young adults, yet even among this demographic TV still accounted for the vast majority of viewing. The VAB survey showed that among the T12-17 age group, 87% of viewing time was spent with traditional TV while this was 78% for the younger millennials and rising back to 84% for the P25-34 category.
Live TV programming comprised the majority of consumers’ TV viewing even among the younger audiences. The survey revealed that the P2+ P18-24 group watched on average live TV for 28:04 hours but video playback for just 3:24. In the 18-24 group this was spilt 15:11/3:24 and for older millennials 15:11/1:36.