Three-in-five subscribers to multiple streaming services expressed frustration with their viewing experiences, according to a new report from Accenture (NYSE: ACN), and 44% of those surveyed indicate they spend more than six minutes searching for something to watch.

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“A big change to the streaming ecosystem is needed to give consumers greater control over their experience—the addition of a smart content aggregator, sitting across multiple platforms.”

The “Streaming’s Next Act: Aggregators to play a starring role in making consumers happier” report surveyed 6,000 consumers globally to understand their preferences, beliefs, and behaviors on their video content streaming experiences. In addition to the challenge of finding something to watch, consumers also think more than 60% of the content they are paying for is not relevant to them. Furthermore, more than half (56%) say they wish their profile from one service could easily be shared with another service that may offer them better, more personalized content.

“Through our research, consumers said that the video streaming experience has become somewhat unwieldy, unfriendly, and expensive for many them,” said Andrew Walker, global Communications and Media industry group leader at Accenture. “A big change to the streaming ecosystem is needed to give consumers greater control over their experience—the addition of a smart content aggregator, sitting across multiple platforms.”

Accenture’s research also indicates that while consumers care more about the content delivered by streaming services, they find the navigation experience with the growing number of services to be increasingly frustrating. Content aggregators can address this concern by unifying access across streaming services through application software, services and data-sharing agreements. Aggregators can also foster flexibility and personalization for viewers by serving as a single platform with curated content that enables them to select exactly what they want to watch.

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“Consumers didn’t express a strong preference for a particular company to give them a better user experience,” said John Peters, managing director in the Media and Entertainment industry group at Accenture. “People expect innovation and improvement in this space and are looking for a company to come up with new and better ideas for delivering content to them in a way that makes their lives easier and their viewing experiences more enjoyable.”

The report also offers the following considerations for companies in the streaming entertainment ecosystem—from video, music and podcasts to gaming—so they can start on a journey of deeper consumer relationships:

• Consider your play in the aggregated world. Determine if you want to be an integrator or the integrated, so you can either shape distribution deals to entice subscription video on demand (SVOD) and advertising-based video on demand (AVOD) services to participate or partner with the entities vying to be the preferred integrator.
• Start planning for a distributed data model. Invest in data privacy and make that commitment known to your consumers, so they are confident sharing data that is critical for integration and personalization services.
• Be ready to stretch. Think beyond SVOD and AVOD services to consider music services, podcast and e-book services, video games, home security, food delivery services and more.
• Engage in experimentation. Players with data-driven experimentation at the core of how they operate will be far more ready and nimble to adapt to changing consumer preferences.

Research Methodology
Accenture conducted research to gain an understanding of global consumers’ preferences, beliefs and behaviors on their video content streaming experiences. The online survey of 6,000 consumers, ages 18 and older, across 11 countries (Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, India, Japan, South Africa, Spain, UK and US), was designed to identify significant changes to the existing direct-to-consumer (D2C) media environment and offer suggestions for brands across the media spectrum to adapt their model to be more relevant and successful with customers. Fieldwork was conducted between October and November 2021.

Accenture’s research, and that of its ecosystem partners, employs ethical and responsible research methods. Respondents reveal their identities voluntarily, all personal data in the data set is anonymized, and results are reported in aggregate. Accenture commits to not using the data collected to personally identify the respondents and/or contact the respondents.

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