Episodic content flourishes as quality becomes the key for online video streaming


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| 02 January 2016




2015 was the year when OTT services became core for leading service providers, but if content is still king, experience is everything says the latest state of the industry report from streaming optimisation firm Conviva.



The company’s Viewer Experience Report for 2015 also showed that new consumer usage patterns were emerging, highlighting viewer demand for TV-quality experiences when streaming media across the Internet. It revealed new ways in which viewers consume over-the-top video, including a pronounced shift towards premium content, growth in available online capacity to enable high fidelity streams and a growing preference for larger screens.

More specific findings included the fact that consumption of episodic content increased by over 20%, diverting attention from short-form assets with two-fifths of consumers in the US now having access to high quality streams — defined as over 2Mbps — compared with fewer than three-tenths of such viewers in 2014.

In keeping with other surveys, Conviva found that even usage has increased across all device types, connected TV devices now rule the roost, tallying more or less as many minutes per month as mobile phones, and four times more than tablets.

Experience metrics vary wildly, with the worst start-up times more than three times longer than the shortest.

"As viewers increase their consumption of premium content on larger devices, experience will be the factor that distinguishes the top services," said Conviva CEO Hui Zhang. "The Viewer Experience Report clearly shows a gathering tsunami of consumer demand, which will drive billions of dollars of revenue to the streaming media marketplace. The big story of 2016 will be the ability of providers in a highly competitive space to differentiate their offering by optimising the consumer experience."