As of last year, more than three-quarters of US households subscribers to at least one OTT streaming service. And, while there seems to be more to choose from every day, data from Comscore shows that Netflix remains the streaming service users spend the most time with.
An analysis of January 2021 data finds that Netflix garnered the largest share (34.4%) of viewing hours measured across the top 5 streaming services. Following Netflix in terms of share of hours spent viewing is YouTube, which accounted for 27% of the total hours spent with the top 5 services. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Netflix and YouTube account for the largest share of time US teens spend with video.
As for the other top 5 OTT streaming services, Hulu and Amazon Video gleaned 20.3% and 13.6%, respectively, of the total hours spent amongst the top 5 services. Disney+, which accounted for close to 12% of new US SVOD subscribers in the first quarter of 2021, garnered a 4.7% share of total viewing hours spent with the top 5 services.
Beyond OTT services, ESPN (47.8%) accounted for the largest share of viewing time amongst the top 5 network video apps, followed by PBS (26.7%), PBS KIDS Video (12.1%), NBC Sports (8.7%) and NBC (4.7%). Meanwhile, Spectrum TV (31.%) amassed the largest share of viewing hours amongst the top 5 vMVPD video services, with Sling (26.6%), Pluto.TV (19.5%) Xfinity Stream (11.6%) and Philo (11.3%) making up the remainder of the top 5 vMVPD services.
A closer look at how these top services perform on different days of the week shows that while Netflix sees an above-average share of viewing during the weekend and into Monday and Tuesday, it under-indexes midweek. Conversely, YouTube sees an above-average share of viewing time among the top-5 from Wednesday through Saturday while dropping off on Sunday and Monday.
The ESPN network app over-indexes in share of viewing time on Sunday and Monday, no doubt influenced by the network hosting NFL’s Monday Night Football. PBS and PBS KIDS Video have the strongest performance Tuesday through Thursday.
While there are few discernible trends when it comes to daily performance for vMVPD video apps, Spectrum TV appears to over-index in share of viewing time on Tuesday, Friday and Saturday, while Sling sees its performance improve Friday, Saturday and Monday. Additionally, Philo experiences a lower than average viewing share Thursday through Sunday.
See more daily performance data here.
About the Data: Findings are based on January 2021 data from Comscore OTT Intelligence, US.
