By the time 2020 ends, the average person will spend more than an hour each day streaming.
According to new data from Business Insider, average OTT video consumption (essentially any video content delivered over the internet) will pass 62 minutes per day this year. And before you blame the coronavirus pandemic for skewing numbers, that’s only a 23% increase from 2019, which was an increase of 15% from 2018.
So what’s the cause?
For sure, stay at home orders across the nation do have people streaming more and financial situations have many people cutting unnecessary costs. 9% of people who responded to a Business Insider survey on March 31 said they plan to or had already cut their cable specifically because of COVID-19. Most of those said they plan to replace it with a cheaper streaming service.
But additionally, a number of new services entered the market the past few months (namely Disney+, Peacock, and HBO Max), each one not only bringing a large library of content but a decent selection of original content. The current king of streaming, Netflix, will see average daily consumption eclipse 30 minutes per day in America.
And lastly, a large portion of people surveyed by Business Insider are finally cutting cable because they finally have an internet speed sufficient for streaming. While fast internet speeds are a way of life for urban dwellers, many more rural residences are just now seeing streaming become possible.
What this study tells us is that streaming will likely continue to be the video consumption method of choice going forward. The question is, are we near the ceiling or does the growth continue?
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