Streaming video-on-demand (SVOD) services have become quite mainstream, but a new survey from Ampere Analysis suggests that people are not abandoning pay-TV in favor of these streaming services; instead, they are choosing to supplement their pay TV services by, in essence, creating their own TV bundles.
Some 30% of the 53,000 internet users surveyed in North America and Europe used only pay-TV services in Q1 2017, representing quite a decline from 43% a year earlier. But much of that decline owed to bundling of traditional pay-TV with SVOD services as opposed to cord-cutting: some 39% in Q1 subscribed to both traditional pay TV and SVOD services, up from 26% a year prior. As such, while pay TV-only users have been consistently decreasing over the last 1.5 years, those with both pay TV and SVOD have been gaining in numbers. Indeed, US-specific data shows continued cord-cutting, but at relatively flat levels over the past few years.
Meanwhile, the proportion of SVOD-only users, although still relatively modest at 13% as of Q1 of 2017, has been nearly doubling each year, per the Ampere survey. A greater number of SVOD customers are also using multiple services: in Q1, SVOD homes averaged 2.6 services, almost double the average (1.4) from Q3 2015. That tallies with a recent report that revealed that the proportion of online video customers who are paying for at least 3 streaming services is on the rise, demonstrating that viewers are ever more willing to pay for a range of options.