Streaming television continued to grow in the second quarter, according to Conviva’s State of Streaming Report.
Global streaming time was up 14%. In the more-mature North American market, streaming was up 5% after posting a similar gain in Q1. In Asia, streaming was up 90% and Latin America saw a 70% gain.
The majority of streaming hours are happening on big screens, either via smart TVs or connected devices. Smart TVs — up 31.4% — were the fastest-growing device type globally for the eighth-straight quarter, accounting for 35.3% of global viewing. Connected TV devices handled 34.6% of streaming, up 2.8%.
In North America, 37.6% of viewing comes on smart TVs and 37.6% happens on connected devices.
Among device makers, Roku had the highest share of global streaming at 23.1%. Amazon’s Fire TV followed with 12.1%. Then came Samsung, Android TV, Apple, LG, Android, PCs, Apple TV and Apple tablets.
Roku’s hours were up 3.8%.
In the U.S. Roku’s share was 32.6% to lead the industry. It was followed by Amazon Fire TV, Samsung TV, Apple iPhone and LG TV.
Conviva said streaming video quality showed improvement in some metrics, but degraded in others. Bitrates were up and there was less buffering, but it took longer for videos to start.
Minutes per video play averaged 20.8 globally and 22.3 in North America.
“The race is on to see which publishers will meet these expectations, including providing the best experience when it’s most important. Those that do will quickly eclipse the competition,” Conviva president and CEO Keith Zubchevich said.
“For long-form VOD content watched from the couch, that means improving bit rate,“ Zubchevich said. “For live content, that means decreasing VST and buffering to provide a similar experience to linear TV. For mobile devices, where bitrate is less important, publishers may want to think about optimizing VST and buffering. And as streaming ads become a way of life, optimizing their performance will separate the leaders from the pack.”
To prepare its report, Conviva analyzed data primarily collected from the company’s proprietary sensor technology, which is currently embedded in 3.3 billion streaming video applications. It measures in excess of 500 million unique viewers watching 180 billion streams per year and nearly 2 trillion real-time transactions per day across more than 180 countries. ■
