Consumer research from Parks Associates shows 53 per cent of US broadband households subscribe to both a pay-TV service and at least one OTT video service. OTT Video & TV Everywhere: Partners, Alternatives, and Competition reports more than 200 OTT video services are active in the US market as of Q3 2017, with more than 100 active in the Canadian market. The report notes that 60 players introduced OTT video services during 2016 and 2017, while only seven services closed during that same period.

“Many OTT services are evolving to be complementary to the market’s largest players, instead of trying to compete directly against Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu,” said Brett Sappington, Senior Director of Research, Parks Associates. “Also, consumers are increasingly self-aggregating their OTT and entertainment services—they are adopting primary entertainment content sources and supplementing those sources with complementary video options.”

“Several factors are driving an increase in partnerships with and among OTT video services, including fragmentation of content, the success of bundling, polarisation in the OTT subscription market, a low threshold for OTT service survival, and low awareness of many OTT service brands,” Sappington said.

Additional research the report shows:

• Over 87 per cent of OTT video services in the US and 86 per cent in Canada offer some type of subscription options today, including freemium, ad-free premium tiers, and other blended business models.
• Awareness and use of TV Everywhere features have slowly increased over the past few years, reaching 34 per cent by late 2016.

Categories: Articles, Consumer Behaviour, Markets, OTT, Pay TV, Research, VOD