Quarterly State of Streaming Report Shows Streaming Ad Resurgence, Falling Social Engagement Rates and Audiences Migrating to YouTube

Conviva, the intelligence cloud for streaming media, released its State of Streaming report for Q4 2020, showing a 44% increase in time spent streaming this quarter as compared to Q4 2019 – punctuating a significant year for the streaming industry. Big screens captured more than 75% of all viewing time in Q4, led by Roku with a 31% share of all TV viewing and followed by Amazon Fire TV (19%) and Samsung TV (10%).

“The way consumers view content fundamentally changed in 2020 with the launch of new streaming services, the rapid adoption of smart TVs and connected TV devices and changing social behavior,” said Bill Demas, CEO, Conviva. “While the year was clearly defined by spikes in streaming viewing associated with COVID restrictions, the shift to streaming is anything but temporary and we anticipate global streaming viewership to continue to increase in 2021.”

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Big Screens Dominate

The smart TV category drove much of the Q4 growth, experiencing a 157% year-over-year increase in viewing hours and nearly doubling in overall share of viewing time. Connected TV devices also tallied significant growth in viewing hours, up 38% year over year and earned nearly 50% share of global streaming viewing time. Connected TV devices did lose a small percentage of share for the second quarter in a row, dropping from 51% to 49.1% year over year, due in large part to the growing popularity of smart TVs.

Big screens also dominated in engagement. Television viewers watched for an average of 28.7 minutes each time they pressed play. Chromecast demanded the longest watch time at 35.5 minutes per play, followed closely by Roku at 33.3 minutes per play. In contrast, mobile phones tallied just 8.6 minutes per play.

Streaming Ads Continue Their Comeback

Q4 2020 built upon Q3 ad demand growth, showing a 34% increase in ad attempts and a 31% increase in ad impressions for the quarter. While quality issues continue to plague advertisers in terms of meeting all available opportunities, with 40.1% of ads not delivering as expected, the quality of ads that were delivered improved with viewers enjoying 14% less buffering, 4% higher picture quality and 2% less time waiting for ads to load. Despite data showing viewers are more likely to abandon longer ads, ad length increased 12% in Q4 2020, to 31.49 seconds on average.

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Social Streaming – Engagement Rates Plummet, YouTube Draws Viewers

Cross-platform engagement rates dropped significantly in Q4 as compared to the same time the previous year. Entertainment and brand accounts saw the largest decreases, each down around 26%, while media and sports accounts were slightly less affected with declines of 22% and 18% respectively.

YouTube was the only social platform to tally an increase in audience share across the entertainment, media, brands and sports categories. Media and sports accounts saw the largest increases in YouTube followings with share increases of 5% and 5.4% percentage points respectively. Longer videos became more common on YouTube as well, with average video length increasing in sports, entertainment and media accounts by 60%, 59%, and 34%, respectively.

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