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News Roundup: Pay TV Still Thrives, comScore To Measure OTT Viewing

Here's a round-up of recent news in the TV Everywhere space, culled from previous editions of Television News Daily:

Cord-Cutting? Pay TV Business Mostly Unchanged 

Although cord-cutting continues to climb — with new digital TV services rising — the overall health of pay TV industry is relatively unchanged.

A recent study says 88% of viewers with broadband have a pay TV subscription — statistically unchanged from 90% in 2014, according to Hub Entertainment Research.

Additionally, it says 68% of those with a pay TV service also have at least one subscription video on demand service in 2017, the same level as in 2016. But way up from the 47% number in 2014.

Offering a somewhat different perspective, 31% have two SVOD services in 2017, down from 34% a year ago. Those with three or more SVOD services have climbed — now 32%, up from 21%.

TV content delivered to the TV screen — from all sources, set-top box, TV connection devices and/or smart TV apps — is at 74%. Some 55% comes from a TV set-top box, 15% from a TV connection device; and 4% from a smart TV app.

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Viewing on other devices: 9%, laptops; 5% tablets; and 4% each for desktops, smartphones and other.

Among pay TV subscribers, 42% of viewing comes from live TV; 17% DVRs; 14%, Netflix; 6%, video on demand; 4%, TV Everywhere apps; 3% each for Amazon and Hulu. Research says also says 11% goes into an ‘other’ category.

Hub’s online research came from 2,024 U.S. TV viewers, age 16-74.

comScore To Measure OTT Viewing

A new viewing metric for over-the-top content (OTT) is coming from comScore.

The media research company announced it will measure U.S. household viewing of over-the-top (OTT) content on TV screens. The service is based on the company’s Total Home Panel, which measures consumer behavior across home network-connected devices.

“With very limited insight into viewing behavior across providers, the OTT market has largely been a black box,” stated Mike Rich, comScore vice president of emerging products.

The new product will measure dozens of OTT content providers, including Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and YouTube.

It will enable advertising clients to find household reach, audience size and demographics, along with a variety of usage metrics. Data can be segmented for cord-cutting and cord-never homes, as well as those with a cable or satellite subscription.

The company’s Total Home Panel measures media consumption across more than 12,500 households and 150,000 active devices per month.

In 2015, Nielsen partnered with Roku to measure OTT viewing. Last September, Nielsen launched Digital Content Ratings, a service providing daily measurement of audiences across digital content, including video and text -- activities that include OTT platforms.


TV Everywhere Via OTT Devices Rises

Viewing of traditional TV content via TV Everywhere keeps growing on OTT devices, albeit with a slight decline in mobile share of viewing.

An Adobe study says the mobile share of viewing of TVE content dropped to 46% in January from 54% (in 2015) -- the first time a drop has been recorded for that month in the history of TV Everywhere.

At the same time, viewing on TV-connected devices -- set-top-box devices like Apple TV , Roku, and Chromecast -- has climbed among viewers of TV Everywhere content. This viewing now accounts for 32% of the viewing activity, up from 20% two years ago.

The cost for advertisers when it comes to buying video commercials for traditional TVE content on set-top-box sets has increased 13% -- the cost per thousands (CPMs) for video ads is two times the cost of mobile.

Adobe says it has noted an estimated 4 billion TVE authentications coming from more than 300 apps/access points.

Consumers' increasing purchases of OTT set-top devices has driven total revenue of set-top devices to climb 37% this year, from 17% a year ago.

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