US Over the Top Video Users Approach Saturation Point
Streaming video continues to grow as does consumer spending on streaming video services. That trend has led Hulu to drop its free streaming service in favor of a subscription business model. Increasingly Hulu is looking more and more like Content is King company Netflix. How long until there is so much proprietary content that we’ll be thinking once again of Springsteen’s early 1990s song, “57 Channels and Nothin On”
According to eMarketer’s first-ever forecast of over-the-top (OTT) video viewership, OTT video services are nearing saturation. This year, 186.9 million people in the US will watch video via an app or website that provides streaming content over the internet and bypasses traditional distribution.
Nearly nine in 10 digital view viewers in the US already watch video content this way.
Overall, more US TV viewers are watching television shows and movies via subscription-based streaming services. A survey from Hub Research found that the respondents who chose streaming services were nearly double those who picked TV network sites or apps, and they were more than double those who picked free aggregators, such as Crackle or free content from Hulu.
Source: Hulu Drops Free Streaming Service as OTT Viewership Grows – eMarketer