According to Adobe’s US Digital Video 2014 Inaugural Report, only 12.5% of cable, satellite and IPTV customers regularly use TV Everywhere services – despite the 487% increase in overall authenticated pay TV viewing seen in the past two years.
The report says that TV Everywhere grew significantly in the year, with the number of unique viewers growing to 13 million, up 117% year on year, and authenticated video playback starts up 266% in the year to reach 2.1 billion.
Adobe says “the fact that 2014 saw an average of 11.6% active viewership suggests that TV Everywhere is only a few quarters away from crossing the chasm and becoming technology not used only by the early adopters, but by the early majority as well.”
In terms of the device playback, Adobe’s most interesting discovery was that TV Everywhere viewing is becoming increasingly found on static devices such as games consoles and OTT set tops, and not on the mobile devices that are more readily associated with the TV Everywhere name.
Games consoles and OTT devices “are taking a bite out of the iOS share of TV Everywhere authentications,” growing 50% year on year, from 11% in Q4 2013 to 16% in Q4 2014. iOS’ share of authentications dropped 21% year on year, from 57% in Q4 2013 to 45% in 2014.
This will likely be a shift that is addressed by the cheaper Apple TV that is due to be launched in the next month, in response to the increasing amount of OTT devices that have come to market in the past year. iOS has lost out as viewers switch from viewing on iPhones and iPads, and turn instead to watching the largest screens in the house – a transition that was not so easy to make back when tablets initially hit the market, due to the comparatively poor choice of options for getting a TV Everywhere app to display on a TV.
In terms of content, sports have the most unique visitors, with 3.2 times as many unique viewers as movies. Feature films did enjoy the fastest increase in unique viewers though, growing at 216% year on year.
Adobe says that mobile video viewing may overtake desktop viewing by Q4 2016, and notes that 15% of all online video views are initiated on mobiles, with 12% watched on tablets, for a total of 27% of all online video consumption. Adobe thinks that figure could reach 50.2% in two years – aided in part by a higher viewing completion percentage, afforded by larger screens on smartphones.
The time spent viewing online video on all devices increased, with smartphone viewing up 24% in the quarter. Tablet viewing increased 16% in the same period, but these mobile devices have a long way to go before they catch up with desktops – which enjoy an average viewing time that is 16 times longer than the average smartphone, at 5 minutes 46 seconds vs just 22 seconds on smartphones.
Adobe measures the percentage completion of video views, and finds that a little under half of all videos watched make it to the 50% completion mark. Based on the graph, around 55% of videos are watched to 25% completion, but the percentage of videos that are viewed to 75% completion is only around 20%.
Based on those figures, it looks like viewing on a smartphone is a rather transient experience for the viewer – who rarely makes it to the end of a video, and frequently loses interest. This seems to explain why total time spent viewing on mobile devices is much lower than the desktop – as viewers appear to be very quickly losing interest in content.
It’s unlikely that this is down purely to the user experience, since the applications used on smart TVs or games consoles are very similar to those used by mobile devices nowadays. The more likely culprit would be the smaller screen size and the user experience that comes with having to hold the device in order to watch it – on a device that is increasingly the primary gateway to the internet and all its distractions for viewers in developed markets.
Regarding the mobile UX, Adobe says “often, links designed to automatically launch and start videos are accidentally, clicked, which produces undesirable metrics like high bounce rates and low viewing time per video start. These links often irritate consumers who become more annoyed with the advertising that is embedded in these video launches. Developers who are able to design layouts that reduce accidental clicks will provide an experience that is much more pleasant for viewers, and will drive better metrics for advertisers.”
It would be interesting to see the amount of time spent watching on desktops with a secondary screen in hand (and on connected TVs too), as losing interest while viewing on a phone will prompt the viewer to end the session by switching to another app – which is not the case for users who stop watching a larger primary screen and turn their attention to a secondary screen.
On this topic, Adobe notes that the platform used to consume content has a measurable effect on viewing behaviors, and so we might eventually get to see Adobe’s thoughts on the matter. It adds that “understanding that devices alter behavior can prepare marketers to adjust advertisement offerings to be more in-line with those behaviors.”
Adobe’s breakdown of devices puts the iPad at the front of the pack (29%), with iPhones in second place (18%), and the entire Android platform in third with 16%. Apple TV accounted for 5% of authenticated video views, with Roku ahead on 7%. Games consoles stand at 2%, with PC (12%) and Mac (8%) cumulatively clocking in at second place if their numbers are combined. Two years ago, Adobe say iOS had 80% of online viewing.