The OTT video trend has expanded its reach by 100%, according to a new report by video AI platform Conviva. The report suggests that the amount of people who are watching content via streaming has doubled, with viewing taking place on more than 2.4 billion devices, up 9% from the company’s previous study. The U.S. accounted for 58% of OTT viewing, followed by Europe with 21%, Asia with 19% and the rest of the world with 2%,
The data in the report is based on Conviva customers, which cover close to 60% of the internet population. The company measures seven out of the top 10 SVOD providers in the U.S., as well as other OTT providers globally.
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According to the report, the amount of people using apps to stream content has also increased. In December 2017, 64% of traffic on Conviva’s platform came through video apps, compared with 36% from watching video through browsers. That’s the opposite of 2016. Video app activity grew 160%, while browser video rose 23%.
“Conviva expects to see continued accelerated growth over the course of 2018 across both existing and new customers,” the company said in its Streaming Market Year in Review report.
As far as the quality of OTT video is concerned, Conviva said that of the 47.1 billion attempts to start watching a video, 38.8 billion were successful. It took an average of 4.84 seconds for a video to start, a 23% improvement from the previous year.
And despite the buffering of online videos still being a main frustration of consumers, according to the report: “buffer time has improved slightly.” While watching a half-hour show, the average viewer spent 0.95% of the time (less than 18 seconds), waiting for video to rebuffer.
