Nielsen: Video Streaming Continues To Surge

Copyright 2020 The Nielsen Company, LLC

Consumers love streamed TV and film and want content providers to keep it coming, a new survey from U.S. data and measurement firm Nielsen suggests.

In a survey it conducted for its latest Total Audience Report, Nielsen found that, even as the number of streaming services rise, 93% of respondents would keep paying for the ones they have or subscribe to others.

According to a special Streaming Wars edition of the Nielsen Total Audience Report people and devices, consumers in OTT-capable homes are spending nearly one-fifth (19%) of their TV time streaming content, be it through ad-supported or paid subscription models.

The report also notes that 60% of Americans subscribe to more than one paid video streaming service. Better still—especially for platforms entering the streaming market—is that 93% of U.S. consumers say they will either increase or keep their existing streaming services.

A consumer that doesn’t place cost as an important virtue is rare, and that’s no different in the streaming world. According to survey respondents, price is the most vital attribute for a quality streaming service. This puts the impetus on platforms to satisfy customers’ return on investment while being affordable enough for the rest of their media habits. In fact, when asked about what made them cancel a paid video subscription service, 42% said they didn’t use it enough to justify the cost.

User-friendly interactivity plays a key role for streaming services and ranked second in consumer importance. Frustrating user experiences or hard to navigate interfaces may not bode well when it comes to subscriber retention, especially when the internet has cultivated a culture of convenience and consumers have a bevy of other media choices available to them. Of course, content is also of major importance for consumers, as the variety and availability of it placed in the top three of video streaming attributes.

Content has always been king, but with the growth of streaming, content creators and rights owners are effectively given more power. Platforms must be able to maintain the programs that audiences want while offering compelling new ones to keep them interested. Wherever good content goes, subscribers will follow. When that content runs out, don’t be surprised when some of the subscribers do too: 20% of consumers said they canceled a service after watching all the content that they were interested in.