Parks Associates: U.S. Households Consuming 43.5 Hours Of Video Per Week Across All Viewing Devices

At NAB Show today, Parks Associates released new research, The Viewer Journey: Navigating Streaming Options, revealing U.S. Internet households now consume 43.5 hours of video per week on average across all viewing devices, an increase of more than six hours from 37.2 hours in 2020. Additionally, 61% of households watch paid streaming services on a TV set, consuming an average of 7.5 hours per week of content from these services.

The Viewer Journey: Navigating Streaming Options examines how viewers navigate to video content across broadcast, traditional pay TV, and streaming video models, including SVOD, AVOD/FAST, TVOD, and vMVPD (streaming TV) services. The research finds 50% of people who consume video on a viewing device (TV, computer, tablet, or phone) watch a free, ad-supported service (FAST) or ad-based video on-demand service (AVOD) at least once a week.

“Video-viewing households report watching on average more than 21 hours per week on a TV, accounting for half of their viewing hours,” said Sarah Lee, Parks Associates research analyst. “Video consumption on a cell phone continues to rise — excluding social video sources, U.S. internet households spend 6.5 hours per week watching video a smartphone and 3.9 hours on a tablet. TVs are still the main video-viewing device, but platform usage continues to diversify.”

The Viewer Journey reports that paid streaming services are the most popular content type consumed across TV, mobile, computers, and tablets, but households watch several different types of services across their devices over the week. Seventy-eight percent of households report watching an SVOD service weekly, followed by 67% of households who watch user-generated content such as that from YouTube.

“The flexibility and convenience that on-demand services offer is highly appealing to viewers, but many households enjoy a balance between finding something to watch and watching what they find,” Lee said. “Given the popularity of FAST and user-generated content, consumers may soon decide they do not need to subscribe to as many services as they do now.”

The Viewer Journey: Navigating Streaming Options includes analysis and insight from consumer surveys of 8,000 and 10,000 internet households in the US and addresses how households view content, how households prioritize and spend money, and how decisions are made to pay for some services over others.