TV Everywhere Gets So Popular Many Now Watch It. . . On TV

• by P.J. Bednarski , Staff Writer @pjbtweet, April 1, 2015

The 2014 Adobe Inaugural Report, released a few days ago, has some intriguing data points. The one getting some headlines is Adobe’s prediction that mobile device viewing will overtake desktop viewing by the end of next year. The one not getting as much attention is that TV Everywhere is apparently being increasingly enjoyed by viewers watching TV Right Where It Always Was.

Isn’t that amazing? as Ron Popeil used to say, slicing an onion without tears.

Here’s another hmmmm-making stat, remarked upon by The Diffusion Group’s Joel Espelien. According to this report, despite all the talk about mobile, the average individual smartphone video view event was 22 seconds in Q4 of 2014, and with tablets, the big brother as it were, the average session was just 44 seconds.

The average PC video, that thing that’s going away, was nearly six minutes--that’s 16 times more than a smartphone.

“This is kind of depressing,” Espelien remarks.  “It is 2015, and we still can’t get the average person to watch small-screen video for a single (continuous) minute.”

But clearly, the trend to mobile is there, especially as the screens on smartphones have increased. In the fiscal quarter that manufacturers began offering bigger screens, there was a 7% increase in the number of videos watched until at least the halfway point.

This report is a little different, filled with weird nooks and crannies that explains, and then seemingly questions, what in the world is going on.

Adobe’s report really concentrates on the growth of TV Everywhere. While TV Everywhere is all about watching television on alternative screens--or so you’d think--that train has been a long time a’coming and now it’s coming into the station on an unusual track.

The Adobe report says now "the progression of this product has picked up a lot of steam in 2014 and in 2015, we expect that TV Everywhere should cross the chasm into the early majority stage."

But, Adobe points out, “Apple TV, Roku, and other OTT devices, are taking share of authenticated videos away from the iOS access type. Gaming Console & OTT share is up 50% year over year and iOS share is down 21% year over year.” Who would have guessed that?  

Comments Adobe: “TV Everywhere viewers were once referred to as cord cutters, using the service to take their different forms of content on the go and stream it through a mobile device. It now appears as if that behavior is coming full circle, and viewers are returning to the living room.

The report continue: “In fact, when it comes to watching TV Everywhere content, 16% of viewers have traded in the mobile device for a more-enhanced living room experience. Rather than just watching content through the set top box, these viewers are watching through TV Everywhere apps and are enjoying a more-enriched interactive viewing experience.”

Is that crazy? Or what?

The report says a lot of TV Everywhere video starts on mobile phones are the video equivalent of pocket calls and that to some degree accounts for those piddling viewing time averages. “Often, links designed to automatically launch and start videos are accidentally clicked, which produces undesirable metrics like high bounce rates and low viewing time per video start,” the report says. “These links often irritate consumers who become more annoyed with the advertising that is embedded in these video launches.”  

pj@mediapost.com