Streaming on Connected TVs Increases During Coronavirus

When looking at the average number of daily streaming households and hours each week, it is clear that there was a sharp increase in both since schools closed and social distancing practices were implemented. By the week of April 13, 2020, the average number of daily households streaming entertainment over OTT devices had grown 11 percent since the week of March 9, 2020, from 45 million to 50 million. Even more telling was the 24 percent spike in average daily streaming hours we witnessed over the same timeframe – 297 million hours per day during the week of April 13, 2020 vs. 240 million hours per day during the week of March 9, 2020.

Additionally, growth in daily streaming hours exceeded growth in daily streaming households, meaning the average household is spending more hours on OTT devices each day, up to nearly 6 hours per day per household for the week of Apr 13, 2020, vs. 5.3 hours per day per household for the week of Mar 9, 2020. These levels of streaming haven’t been reached since December 2019.

Another trend we have noticed is a gradual shift in favor of streaming through connected TVs (vs. other platforms like streaming boxes/sticks or gaming consoles). While household reach for streaming boxes/sticks grew 4 percent the week of March 9 vs. the week of March 2, it has declined each of the subsequent 5 weeks. Streaming boxes/sticks still dominate the OTT landscape overall, but connected TVs have closed the gap considerably since the week of March 9, largely due to share growth in 4 of the past 5 weeks.

Lastly, the percentage of households streaming more than one app (such as Netflix or Hulu) grew from 76 percent in early February 2020 to 80 percent over the past of couple weeks, which shows that consumers are increasingly turning to more than one source for streaming content during the pandemic.

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