With the start of another year, we thought it would be a good idea to take stock of the television content provider landscape. Over the past few years, the television landscape has become awash with acronyms.
Some key terms to be familiar with to understand this dataset can be found below:
Advertising-based Video on Demand (AVOD)
These are streaming subscriptions that rely on showing consumers advertising to fund their services.
Subscription-based Video on Demand (SVOD)
These are streaming subscriptions that rely on monthly fees to fund their services.
Linear
These are traditional television services such as Cable TV, Satellite TV, and Broadcast/Antenna.
To complicate matters, some streaming services, like Hulu, have both SVOD and AVOD offerings for consumers. We will dive into this more later.
Breakdown of AVOD, SVOD and Linear
So, what does the breakdown between AVOD, SVOD, and Linear look like? SVOD services are the most popular among US Adults with 84% of adults subscribing to at least one. While SVOD is very popular among all consumers, its popularity increases for younger generations with Gen Z at a 97% subscription rate and Millennials at a 91% subscription rate. 29% of Gen Z exclusively use SVOD services. AVOD is second in popularity for US adults with 70% subscribing to a service that shows commercials. AVOD is most popular with Millennials (81%) and least popular among Baby Boomers (60%). Baby Boomers were the only generation where Linear has more users than AVOD. 37% of Baby Boomers exclusively use Linear services.
Top Services of U.S. Adults
When it comes to the services that U.S. Adults use, it will come as no surprise that Netflix is #1 with 65% using the platform. Amazon Prime (51%), Hulu (42%), and Disney+ (33%) all came in ahead of Cable TV (29%). Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Max and Disney+ are all much more popular among Gen Z and Millennials. For US Adults, Peacock (23%) and the Roku Channel (20%) are in the middle of the pack, but interestingly they are much more popular among Gen X, with 29% using Peacock and 25% using The Roku Channel. Linear services were all much more popular among Baby Boomers than other generations of US Adults. Among Baby Boomers, 38% use Cable TV, 16% use Satellite TV, and 15% use Broadcast TV/Antenna.
Services with AVOD and SVOD
As mentioned earlier, some services have both AVOD and SVOD offerings. The major services that offer both are Hulu, HBO Max, Peacock, Paramount+, and Discovery+. For each of these services, we asked respondents what plan they had. We then aggregated plans into either AVOD or SVOD, which revealed some major differences between platforms. Peacock sets itself apart as being primarily an AVOD service with 90% of its users having an AVOD plan. HBO Max is on the opposite side of the spectrum with 58% of users on their SVOD offering. The largest of these services, Hulu, is 65% AVOD with only 6% of that coming from their Live TV offering and 58% coming from their standard streaming offering.
Changes in TV Services and Subscriptions
Overall, US Adults are not looking to expand the number of services they subscribe to in the next 12 months. Millennials (28%) are the most likely to increase the number of subscription services they subscribe to while Gen X (20%) is most likely to reduce their number of subscriptions.
As for Linear, the future is predictably bleak. Among respondents that have a linear service, 26% said they were likely to cancel in the next 12 months. Millennials (40%) are even more likely to cancel their service especially compared to Baby Boomers (15%). The data suggests that the continuing trend of cord cutting will continue.
* There was not enough data from Gen Z to include in the analysis.
Most Important Elements of Streaming Services
When asked about what the most important elements are when it comes to streaming/television services, consumers said that High Quality Content (83%), Price (83%), and Easy to use app/interface (79%) were the most important. Price was notably less important though to Gen Z (72%), and more important to Baby Boomers (89%). The availability of popular television series (e.g., The Office, Friends, Cheers) is much more important to Gen Z (72%) and Millennials (72%) than it is to Gen X (58%) and Baby Boomers (44%). For Gen Z, local news (44%) and national news (37%) programming were of little importance. For Baby Boomers, local news (60%) and national news (60%) programming were of much greater importance.
Written by Jake Kelley, Director, Reporting at Big Village Insights.
Methodology
This Online CARAVAN® omnibus survey was conducted on January 31-February 1, 2022. Approximately 1,000 adults selected from opt-in panels were surveyed. The results are also weighted to U.S. Census data to be demographically representative. Written by the CARAVAN team at Big Village Insights. Learn more about our Online CARAVAN® omnibus surveys here. Contact us at caravaninfo@big-village.com for more information.