OTT Hits 51 Million U.S. Homes, Streaming Rises In Popularity

by Wayne Friedman , June 21, 2017

OTT now has 51 million TV viewing households -- and 3.1 million of those have so-called “skinny” digital TV packages of networks, according to a comScore April survey.

In homes with those digital TV service bundles of networks -- from Sling TV, DirecTV Now, or PlayStation Vue -- viewing amounts to more than half (54%) of all OTT viewing time.

Netflix is next at 17%, followed by Hulu with 9%, YouTube at 7.1% and Amazon with 3.2%.

Some 40% of all TV homes get OTT services through set-top boxes (38 million homes), while 30% of TV homes have smart TV (28 million homes).

Roku has the greatest penetration of OTT set-top boxes in U.S. TV homes at 16%. Other stats are: Amazon Fire TV, 14%, Chromecast, 8%; and Apple TV, 6%. Looking at smart TVs, Samsung has a 33% share in the U.S. In WiFi homes, Vizio is at 30%; LG, 10%; Sony, 7%; Alcatel, 5%; Sharp, 5%; and Panasonic, 3%.

Total OTT homes were up to 51 million in April, from 44 million in October 2016.

Nearly three-quarters of all OTT homes watch three or fewer services -- with Netflix the dominant channel at 74%.

Of those 26% of OTT homes that do not watch Netflix, YouTube gets the best results, at 31%, followed by Amazon prime video at 26%; Sling TV, 25%; HBO Go, 15%; and Hulu, 15%.

As with live TV viewing, OTT's greatest share comes in prime time -- with weekend viewing spiking to the highest levels, which includes binge watching.

The results come from measuring 12,500 homes and more than 150,000 devices in the U.S. Results are weighted to U.S. homes with WiFi -- 93 million homes. The research looked at 52 OTT services.

ott, streaming, tv

2 comments about "OTT Hits 51 Million U.S. Homes, Streaming Rises In Popularity".

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Michael Greeson from TDG, June 21, 2017 at 2:59 p.m.
Netflix alone has 50 million households under US service, so this number is very conservative. According to TDG's data, approximately 70 million US households use an SVOD streaming service. And we're not the only firm with numbers in this much higher range.
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Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, June 21, 2017 at 5:24 p.m.

We, too, have SVOD households at a higher figure, Michael, however, in defense of Wayne's report, he seems to be referring to SVOD "viewing" homes, presumably using some time frame like a typical week or month as the basis. Since there is strong evidence that somewhere between 10-25% of SVOD capable homes do not use these services in a week or month, that may account for the difference.