Streaming Trend Continues With Direct Use on Smart TVs on Rise: Conviva

Temporary spikes in streaming activity due to lockdowns early in the COVID-19 pandemic “have turned out to be not so temporary,” said a Q2 Conviva report released last week. A tipping point spurred by the pandemic “shows no signs of reversal,” with Q2 streaming rising 13% over the “pandemic heights” of Q2 2020, it said.

Most of Q2’s gains came from outside North America, where streaming posted a 7% decline in April in a tough compare with April 2020 when stay-at-home mandates sent streaming hours skyrocketing. North America returned to double-digit growth in June at 14% year on year. South America led all regions in Q2, seeing a 167% jump in streaming.

Among the survey’s findings, 16% of ads were “missed opportunities,” either going unfilled or failing to play as expected; that was down 37% from the previous quarter. There was a 4% increase in ad impressions quarter over quarter, said the report. For ads that were delivered, ad start times improved significantly as viewers spent 31% less time waiting for ads to play. Ad buffering had slight improvement, down 1% from the previous quarter. Picture quality for ads slipped 2% in Q2 from Q1, it said, while ad duration contracted 3% to 27 seconds.

On YouTube, mobile phones were 63% of views but just 52% of watch time, as consumers tallied nearly twice as many minutes per view when watching YouTube on a console or connected TV than they did on mobile or tablet in Q2 2021, the report said. Sports returned to pre-pandemic engagement levels in Q2, the first time since early 2020 in which all sports leagues showed a year-over-year increase in posts, videos and engagements on social media, it said.

Smart TV viewing was up 46% in the quarter and up 5% on connected TV devices, but streaming on game consoles fell 14%. Conviva defined smart TV viewing as TVs with streaming apps built in vs. connected TVs with an outboard streaming player. Viewing on smaller screens grew across the board: 30% on smartphones, 15% on desktop PCs and 9% on tablets. Roku, maintaining 31% of big-screen viewing time, lost some share as smart TV-only devices from Samsung, LG and Vizio increased share.

Streaming viewing time on the big screen was up 11% year on year in Q2, with LG having a 50% gain, followed by Vizio at 43%, Android TV at 40% and Samsung at 36%, showing the growing prevalence of smart TVs, said the report. On a webcast discussing the report’s findings, Conviva Director-Global Marketing Paula Winkel said as capabilities of smart TVs improve, consumers are choosing to stream directly from a smart TV vs. an external dongle. Streaming on Apple TV was down 6%; console streaming fell 17% on PlayStation and 21% on Xbox.

TV buffering dropped 16% overall, while picture quality improved 10%, the report said, but Amazon Fire TV had a 1% higher buffering level. Vizio had a 1% drop in video quality, it said. Winkel said buffering is key to the viewing experience because viewers tend to tune out when they experience buffering and other negative artifacts of streaming.