Commentary

ComScore Data Takes A Look Inside Your Home

A comScore presentation of data from its Total Home Panel hints at something I’ve wondered about for awhile: What are the viewing habits of a cable/satellite subscriber who also buys into a streaming service?

Here’s part of the answer. According to a comScore presentation earlier this month, the have-it-all viewer with both cable and a streaming subscription consumes about 142 gigabytes of data in a month.

But, comScore says, the cord-cutter or cable-never with a streaming subscription alone consumes 147.5 gb.

That means that for at least a portion of cable + streamers, they’re spending a lot for cable/satellite service they don’t use much. And so how does that play itself out?   

To Mike Rich, comScore’s senior director who made the slide presentation, “It will be interesting to see what happens in the marketplace as these people continue to use their streaming subscriptions and continue to pay for cable to see if they decide to make the switch” and unhook from cable.  

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Rich doesn’t say it, but those use statistics may play a role in why cable networks are becoming increasingly at home with OTT applications. The drift is going that way.

The comScore run-through of some of what is going in viewing households is based on a panel of 3,600 homes with a total of 19,000 devices within--a pretty interesting stat in itself.

The average home has 10 connected devices. They add up depending on the household, and rises with the number of kids in the home, which isn’t surprising at all.  That percentage slows down though in home with older kids, though, which is offered as proof that many children 12 years old or younger already have smartphones.

The comScore data does unearth some fascinating viewing habits and trends--like only 16% of streaming viewing comes via a smart TV in a given month. That’s the statistical fact, even though the presence of smart TVs is much higher than that, an indication that consumers either don’t really know or care that their TV is (or can be) connected.

Instead, 40% are connecting to a streaming device and 49% are using some “streaming-first” device.

Based on its data, comScore says 49% rely on Roku, 22% on Chromecast, 16% on Amazon and just 12% on Apple, and Rich says in his opinion, Amazon’s performance is a kind of market “sleeper hit.”  Apple TV, which has been around a lot longer, is the laggard in the bunch.

Roku is the device of choice, not surprisingly, among cord cutters and nevers because it offers so many content options. Game consoles, the comScore data says, are more dominant in lower income homes, and at this point, while newer versions are catching on, the old Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 are still the most used.

The comScore data spill--small as this one might seem to be--does show how the content environment is now more capable of figuring out everything about viewers--when they watch, what they watch and what they watch it on. The anonymous consumer has never been more exposed.  

pj@mediapost.com

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