Fifth of US video consumers SVOD-only

Fifth of US video consumers SVOD-only
Joseph O'Halloran
| 01 August 2018

Even though the majority of video consumers in the US view content from a variety of sources, in both physical and digital formats, 17% relied solely on SVOD services to view video content in the twelve-months ending in March 2018, according to the NPD Group.
Netflix Q4 23Jan2018
This is a six-percentage point yearly rise in the number of people using only subscription video-on-demand services such as Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video and the survey also found that just under a quarter of consumers rely only on transactional methods; that is renting and buying videos on physical discs or in digital formats. Nearly a third used a combination of transactional and subscription video.

The study revealed with an increasing number of subscription-video options, consumers were continuing to expand their monthly services. It found that in March 2018, two-fifths of SVOD consumers subscribed to only one service, 37% subscribed to two services, and 24% subscribed to three or more services.

Not surprisingly, millennial consumers, aged 25–34, were the age demographic most likely to subscribe to three or more streaming video services (42%). Yet year-over-year growth for this age demographic was flat. Generation Z consumers, age 18 to 24, who subscribed to three or more services actually declined by five percentage points, year-on-year, while Generation X, age 45–55, grew three percentage points.

“As the technology gets older and less novel, as smart TVs become more common, and as more streaming content becomes available, older consumers with more disposable income are coming on board with streaming video services,” said Ricardo Solar, president of media entertainment for NPD. “Although Millennials were the first to adopt SVOD, GenX and Boomers are now driving the growth among those subscribing to multiple services.”