Consumers Seem to Want "Real" OTT Video, Not Half Measures

Half measures do not work, one might conclude from an Adobe report on consumer use of “TV Everywhere” services that allow cable TV subscribers to stream some content to their own devices, within their own homes.

The study finds slow growth of TV Everywhere, while mobile video grows rapidly. Where smartphone video viewing grew 33 percent, year over year, TV Everywhere viewing grew just one percent, year over year.

TV Everywhere essentially is an effort to add some “streaming-style” access to a linear service. It hasn’t worked very well, one might argue, because it does not add enough value. Mobile video viewing, on the other hand, is going bonkers.

There is a good reason why Verizon, AT&T and other tier-one mobile service providers believe mobile video is an attractive opportunity.

Mobile video views have increased 616 percent since the third quarter of  2012, and now make up 45 percent of all video views globally and more than half of all views in some regions, Ooyala reports.

For content less than 10 minutes in length, mobile gets 69 percent of views.

Despite mobile growth, consumers still trend toward larger screens for longer-form content.

For content longer than 30 minutes, connected TV share of time watched was 61 percent, almost doubling since the first quarter of 2015.

Over the past nine months, for video over 10 minutes long, the share of time watched on connected TVs (CTV) has increased from 43 percent to 71 percent.

In the third quarter of 2015,  mobile video share was up 50 percent, year over year.

Smartphone views made up 88 percent of mobile video views during the quarter, compared to just 12 percent for tablets, according to Ooyala.