SVOD

Consumers are most loyal to the sources they go to first, and SVODs and smart TV apps are showing rapid gains as the default launching point, according to a new Hub study.

The U.S. subscription video on demand (SVOD) business grew total revenue by 22.22% to over $8.7 billion in the first quarter, the biggest rate of quarterly expansion since the go-go streaming days of the 2020 pandemic. The data comes courtesy of Informa-owned research company Omdia, which delivers SVOD data as a third party in the Digital Entertainment Group’s quarterly “Home Entertainment Spending” reports.

This latest year-over-year growth, reported by the Digital Entertainment Group (DEG), comes after domestic SVOD spending expanded by nearly 20% in 2021 and 37% in 2020. Where does $30 billion plus rank a sector in terms of the overall domestic entertainment business pie? Consider that North American theatrical releasing generated $7.36 billion last year, according to Box Office Mojo.

Barclays’ Kannan Venkateshwar says as free ad-supported TV proliferates, even old content will compete with newer SVOD titles.

Smart TV maker Samsung has unveiled a new version of its TV Plus streaming offering. The free, ad-supported TV service has reach to 24 countries and 465 million devices globally across TV and mobile, the company said. (Photo: Samsung)

Executives from NBCUniversal, Fox Television Stations, E.W. Scripps, Gray Television and Estrella Media told a TVNewsCheck webinar last week they’ve needed to embrace a wide range of tools and tactics to grow audience and revenue for their streaming channels. Ubiquity and flexibility, they said, are key.

With the streaming industry becoming increasingly saturated, making sense of viewer data and consumption habits is key. According to TiVo’s most recent video trends survey, consumers’ average number of streaming services peaked to about nine apps in 4Q 2021. And Chris Ambrozic, SVP of product management for TiVo Discovery Solutions, hints that the average number of apps continues to tick up in TiVo’s upcoming consumer survey — scheduled for release in September.

Amazon’s Prime Video holds onto No. 2 and Disney moves into the top three for the first time according to a new ranking from Parks Associates.

As more people stream their television programming, the use of ad-supported video has surpassed the use of the higher profile subscription video services.

AT&T moves further away from the video biz with the divestment of the thriving anime-focused niche SVOD service.

Demand for adding subscription streaming services in the U.S. is slowing down, according to new data from Kantar. In the second quarter just 3.9% of U.S. homes took a new subscription to a streaming service, Kantar said, down from 12.9% a year ago. The drop was the largest since Kantar started measuring. Kantar says 74.6% of U.S. households now have an SVOD subscription.

Think your SVOD streaming experience is completely ad-free? Non-traditional ads, “sponsored by” positions and dynamic product placement put the lie to that.

Video streaming is in an increasingly serious post-pandemic slump as far as original series hits … except for maybe Mare of Easttown on HBO Max, which Nielsen still refuses to measure.

Ad dollars will flow to streaming, but are there enough eyeballs available for sale? Above, CBS’s The Equalizer will also have its episodes streamed over Paramount+.

To tap into the burgeoning online video streaming marketplace, Facebook today introduced a new advertising unit formatted specifically to promote subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services via Facebook’s feeds. The new units, dubbed “Dynamic Ads for Streaming,” or DAS, are aimed at film and/or TV streaming advertisers, enabling them to automatically generate unique ads for each of their titles without the need to configure individual ads.

WarneMedia parent AT&T is selling its Crunchyroll anime business to Funimation Global Group — a venture of Sony Pictures Entertainment and Sony Music Entertainment, for $1.175 billion in cash. Fast-growing Crunchyroll is a premier anime direct-to-consumer service within AT&T’s WarnerMedia segment with over 3 million SVOD subscribers. It serves 90 million registered users across more than 200 countries and territories offering AVOD, mobile games, manga, events merchandise and distribution.

The technology comes amid industry fears that Nielsen’s fingerprint-based Dynamic Advertising Insertion technology, debuting in new TVs this quarter, will insert ads or measure content on Netflix, Hulu and others without permission.

Beneath the headlines and social media commotion about high-profile subscription video on demand (SVOD) titles like Tiger King, Upload and Ozark, a new form of digital streaming is gaining traction: those that are ad-supported.

AT&T’s WarnerMedia has added some big distribution partners as the May 27 launch of HBO Max, its new super-sized SVoD service, approaches. The new $14.99-a-month service has struck new distribution agreements with Altice USA, Cox Communications, Microsoft, Samsung, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Verizon and the National Cable Television Cooperative, an organization that works with hundreds of independent cable operators and telcos, including WideOpenWest, Atlantic Broadband, RCN, Grande Communications and MCTV. Comcast and Dish Network still are not on board, however.

Working to stand out in an increasingly competitive — and commoditized — market for advanced video advertising, marketers should turn to a familiar playbook, said Amy Baker, EVP of strategy and insight for A+E Networks, speaking on a CES panel on digital advertising.

ZypMedia’s Aman Sareen says OTT advertising is poised to overtake ads on linear TV given a perfect storm of proliferating services, audience receptivity to streaming ads and better targetability.

Looking ahead to big streaming service launches this year from Apple, Disney and WarnerMedia, a panel of providers at the NAB Show said the overall market will likely keep growing but everyone competing in it had better be at the top of their game.

Subscription video on demand (SVoD) is projected to pull even with broadcast TV globally in hours viewing per day by 2023, according to a new report from Rethink Technology Research, with Netflix getting a big chunk of that influx.

WarnerMedia’s nascent streaming service will launch in beta form by the end of 2019 with three tiers of programming options: an “entry-level” package focused on movies; a premium service with “original programming and blockbuster movies” and a third “that bundles content from the first two plus an extensive library of WarnerMedia and licensed content.”