Voice Control Slow to Gain Traction for OTT Viewing, Event Told

User experience will be increasingly important as competition heats up in the streaming video market, Parks Associates’ virtual Future of Video conference was told Wednesday. “Eventually there’s going to be user fatigue from being subscribed to so many services,” said Parks analyst Paul Erickson.

Erickson cited Parks Q1 survey stats saying 46% of U.S. consumers have four or more over-the-top video subscriptions, up from 22% last year. “The pressure is on in this crowded environment for services to find way to increase their engagement” and differentiate their offerings beyond just on price and content, said the analyst. They also need to consider consistency of experience across the range of devices consumers use to watch video: smart TVs, traditional pay-TV set-top boxes, streaming media players, smartphones, game consoles and PCs.

Voice control, touted by some TV makers as a step-up feature, hasn’t gained strong traction with users, said Erickson. Parks found 54% of smart TV and streaming media player users never or rarely use voice to control the video experience. Voice control “still has quite a way to go” to be a ubiquitous part of the video consumption experience, he said.

The experience is different, though, with pay-TV customers whose MVPDs offer voice via a set-top box and remote, Erickson said. The disparity suggests a better implementation of voice control, he said, “or that sector has been more successful at making its subscribers acquainted with, and comfortable using, voice control.”

Voice has an important role in “removing friction” from the video viewing experience on connected devices for content search and initiating hands-free playback, said Erickson. It’s an area where video service providers and device makers need to work together to improve consumers’ comfort with the technology. The top two reasons consumers gave for not using voice control for OTT viewing were a preference for a different control method (56%) and their device didn’t support it (29%).

Michael Ribero, Paramount+ vice president-global marketing, said experiences have to translate to users 7 and 70 years old. Seeing the way the two disparate groups interact with streaming devices, “you see how important voice is,” he said: “It’s easy.” Users can look at pictures after they have arrived at a destination in a user interface using a voice command. “When you have other connected devices in the house, you can see how integrated it can really be.” Comparing voice’s timeline to streaming five years ago, Ribero said: “If you can’t get the basics right, and it just works, we’re going to be in trouble.” Commands need to work every time, he said.

Paramount+ is trying to speed up time to content for customers, said Ribero. “We’re starting to put so much content into Paramount+,” he said: “How do we get people to video as fast as possible?” That can be showing what’s new, showing content by franchise or giving recommendations based on what users have watched before.

Pierre Donath, chief product and marketing officer at 3 Screen Solutions, said it’s complex for streaming services to enable voice control through consumers' smart speakers, and many consumers don’t understand the TV control use cases they can have with their smart speakers. He believes voice is a superior interface, envisioning a future where Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri and Google Assistant will communicate with video apps using hybrid control. Users can still use a remote, a mouse or a finger on a smartphone, “but everything you do inside will also be able to be triggered using a voice action.”

It will be important to educate consumers about use cases where voice saves time, Donath said. It’s faster to flip channels using a button on a remote, he said, “but if you want to go to a specific game that you know will be playing, you might be better off saying something like … ‘Play my favorite soccer club.'"

Erickson referenced the challenge of natural language recognition for the voice control ecosystem: understanding context and deeper meaning, while also understanding accents. Service providers need to know where voice is an enhancement to the user experience, he said.

Paramount+’s Ribero said the industry can’t rely on voice because of variable performance factors of consumers' smart speakers such as mic placement, processing speed and latency. The focus for user interaction should be on improving the video experience in ways that are “durable across multiple platforms and devices.”