• by Daisy Whitney , Op-Ed Contributor, September 16, 2016

The number of over-the-top subscriptions has ramped up by 12% over the last two years. That’s the finding of a new research study from Parks Associates reporting that consumer adoption of services like Netflix and Hulu has increased since the third quarter of 2014, even though password sharing is also up.

Some of this growth comes from Hulu’s change to a subscription-only service, but even the number of OTT video subscriptions is expected to continue to jump through the end of 2016, Parks says.

The researcher also found that many OTT services are benefiting from positive word-of-mouth. Consumers are quite likely to recommend Netflix, WWE Network, and Hulu to a friend, the report said.

A related report from Digitalsmiths finds that 64% of the U.S now has access to at least one SVOD service, an increase of 13% from about two years ago. Some of the rise is coming from defections from pay TV.

Digitalsmiths reports that in the second quarter of this year about 8.2% of survey respondents — from a field of more than 3,000 adults in the United States and Canada — had said they switched their cable and satellite provider in the last three months, which is relatively flat quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year. Looking ahead, about 7.2% of consumers plan to cut their pay TV service in the next six months, while 7% plan to change to another provider, and less than 4% plan to switch to an online service.

When consumers switch to OTT, many rely on Netflix. About 54% of those surveyed said they use Netflix, while 24% use Amazon and about 12% use Hulu, with HBO Now growing as an over-the-top service.

Also, Digitalsmiths surveyed awareness of TV Everywhere and found it is now at about 48.2%, nearly the same as last quarter.

About one quarter of respondents said they have TV Everywhere applications from cable operators on their devices, a 2% jump over last year. Meanwhile, 30% have installed programmer TV Everywhere apps on their devices, about 2% higher than a year ago. CNN, ABC, and HBO are the most popular.