Americans continue to fuel growth in subscriptions to streaming video-on-demand (SVOD) services. According to Nielsen’s “Total Audience Report,” 41 percent of U.S. homes had access to an SVOD service in 4Q 2014.
Breaking down its research demographically, Nielsen’s latest SVOD report reveals that 71 percent of U.S. SVOD homes are white, 12 percent Hispanic, 10 percent are Black and 5 percent are Asian-American. That’s stands in contrast to the distribution in homes without broadband, of which 56 percent are white, 18 percent Hispanic, 22 percent Black and just 2 percent are Asian-American, Nielsen highlights in a news release.
Homes with Multiple OTT Video Subscriptions
However, Nielsen found that both broadband Internet and SVOD access are strongly correlated with income level. About 13 percent of homes “boast multiple streaming services in their homes and nearly half of homes with SVOD access have a yearly household income of more than $75,000,” Nielsen points out. In two-thirds of U.S. homes without broadband access, annual household incomes total less than $40,000.
“It’s not an ‘all SVOD’ or nothing proposition to homes with these services, however,” Nielsen continues. “Actually, it’s quite the contrary.”
According to Dounia Turrill, SVP Insights at Nielsen: “When looking at how homes with access to subscription-based streaming services compare to a typical TV home, homes with broadband and no SVOD — and even homes with no broadband at all — we see that SVOD homes really go ‘all in’ in terms of the devices that they are using through their traditional televisions.
“From DVRs to video game console usage, these homes — perhaps because of their income level — both adopt and rely on these devices at a much higher rate. Technology begets technology.”
Households with SVOD subscriptions not only tend to have greater affinity for TV-connected technology, they also tend to use it more, according to Nielsen. U.S. households with SVOD subscriptions spend nearly 50 minutes more per day using TV-connected technology than does the typical U.S. household. They also “average 10 more minutes daily watching time-shifted TV and double that in terms of time spent using a multimedia device (such as Apple TV and Roku) than a typical TV home,” Nielsen notes.
