In a finding that seemingly cuts across the grain of expectations, a new survey found that pay TV subscribers are more likely than non-pay TV consumers to add a paid over-the-top video service, such as Netflix or Hulu, to their entertainment mix within the next six months. That’s per the Interactive Broadband Consulting Group, a Philadelphia-based company that works on new business and technology initiatives with such top cable, media and wireless companies as Comcast, Cox Communications, Sony and Verizon Communications.
The discovery could present “strong bundling opportunities” between pay TV and OTT service providers, IBB said. Both Hulu and Netflix have been keen to pursue such opportunities on provider-supplied set-top boxes.
Consumers continue to gravitate to streaming devices to fill their video needs, but from a platform view, the market remains far from uniform, IBB found.
One-fourth of survey respondents said they plan to buy a new device to watch streaming media in the next six months. About 76% of consumers said they use a desktop or laptop computer for streaming, but the buying trend suggests that the landscape will become increasingly fragmented.
Thus, it’s “increasingly important to have common code and analytics across these devices,” IBB noted.
Though there’s seemingly no end to the number of OTT options available to consumers, the vast majority of consumers (80%) said they use between one and five apps to stream video each week.
And $20 per month appears to be the ceiling that most consumers (again, 80%) are willing to pay for a streaming service (Sling TV, by the way, sells its core offering for just that amount). That could create more opportunities for ad-supported OTT services, IBB said.
