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Study: TV Everywhere Doubles, Tablets Drive Usage

TV Everywhere is taking off.

So says the early data. The number of authenticated TV Everywhere streams doubled in 2013 to 574.2 million, up from 222.5 million in 2012, according to a just-released report from Adobe benchmarking the service. Adobe powers many of the TV Everywhere rollouts from cablers.

Most of those TV Everywhere streams are watched on mobile devices -- about 73%. That’s not surprising because the purpose of TV Everywhere is to extend a video subscription across screens. Tablets seem to be the mobile device of choice, however, with the most views at 42%. Tablet’s share of TV Everywhere viewing has more than doubled year-over-year.

Viewers rely on the TV Everywhere service primarily for sports. Adobe said 37% of TV Everywhere streams are sports and 28% are TV shows. Apple users also take advantage of the service more than PC users – nearly 50% of TV Everywhere views comes from iPads, iPhones and iPods. Adobe noted in its report that advertisers can use this insight to target ads to Apple users.

Specifically, iPad and iPod users watch more than 10 videos per visitor each month, twice that of PC users. “Advertisers and publishers can look to provide more engaging ad packages to those on iPads and iPods, since they are viewing the most video clips per month,” the report said.

Adobe revealed other interesting tidbits about video viewing. While tablets are driving TV Everywhere, smartphones are outpacing them for online video. Smartphone usage for viewing online video is up 86% year over year. Sports video streaming is booming and has grown more than seven times in 2013, with more than 25% of video streams for “large annual and biannual sporting events” coming from mobile devices.

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