• by Alex Weprin , March 28, 2018

Use of over-the-top streaming video options is growing at a steady clip, but is not necessarily replacing traditional video subscriptions, according to a new report from the Video Advertising Bureau.

The report found that while the number of households using OTT services has tripled since 2013, only 14.1 million homes are OTT-only. More than 90 million homes subscribe to a traditional multichannel video package.

More than 70% of OTT households also had a multichannel video subscription, suggesting that OTT viewership was not serving as a replacement for those traditional services.

“It’s important to note that the math of OTT is a formula of addition, not subtraction,” Jason Wiese, VAB’s vice president of strategic insights, tells Digital News Daily.

“The average TV household continues to collectively watch almost eight hours of ad-supported TV every day, but people have a voracious appetite for even more video content, evident in the fact that a large majority of OTT households also have an MVPD subscription," he says. "Interestingly, some of the most popular content on the major SVOD platforms is TV network series, both current and prior seasons.”

The VAB report also outlines ways marketers and agencies can invest in OTT opportunities. 

Advertising accounts for about 45% of online video revenue today and will grow to 60% over the next 10 years, the report predicts. In addition, viewers increasingly consume content on mobile devices while they watch programming, opening up other opportunities to reach them. The report found that 65% of consumers looked up products advertised during programming.

“As the ecosystem evolves and online video advertising grows, greater ad opportunities will exist on both the service and device side,” Wiese says. “With more TV networks now developing their own direct-to-consumer offerings, advertising opportunities will increase in this space as these services act as a conduit to connect consumers directly with brands.”