Some 47% of advertisers worldwide said high-quality data targeting would encourage a higher ad spend on connected TV (CTV), wrote Insider Intelligence analyst Sara Lebow Thursday, citing a Lotame study. Marketers are looking for a more efficient planning and buying process and for “transparent measurement,” the report said. Other factors that would influence marketers to spend more on CTV ads are a more efficient buying process (36%), efficiency frequency capping (30%), transparent measurement (30%) and a connected ecosystem for greater scale (26%), said the report done by PureSpectrum Nov. 3. EMarketer projects U.S. CTV ad growth of 27.2% next year to $26.9 billion vs. 21% growth for retail media advertising and 8.8% for social network ad spending. People under 25 are more than a quarter of CTV users, Lebow said, and 90% of Gen Zers use the internet and TV simultaneously, “so advertisers can count on younger viewers being on two screens at once.” Next year, 230 million people in the U.S., 67.8%, will use a connected TV, rising to 70% by the end of 2026, she said: “Marketers are meeting TV viewers where they are.”

The U.S. installed base for internet-connected video devices will rise at just a 2.3% compound annual growth rate from 2021-2026, with broadband households having an average of 8.5 devices, S&P Global Market Intelligence emailed Monday. The number of connected video devices topped 1 billion last year for the first time, reaching a "saturation point," S&P said. Smart TVs have the highest growth potential, it said. Subscription VOD services have “served the streaming video segment well” to date, S&P said; ad-supported models will provide “further monetization.” Total smartphone subscriptions are expected to reach 303.1 million this year, rising to 314.5 million in 2026; the installed base of smart TVs is given at 208.5 million for 2022, growing to 274.2 million. S&P forecasts 1.1 billion installed connected video devices through the forecast period.

The global smart TV market will reach $451.6 billion by 2030, said a Wednesday Grand View Research report. 4K TVs will grow at the highest compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in the category, 12%, on rising demand for high-resolution content in entertainment and live sports, the report said. TVs 65 inches and larger will be the top growth category in screen size, and Grand View expects the Roku operating system to lead connected TV platforms in CAGR. Android TV accounted for the largest market revenue among TV operating systems last year, it said.

The largest pay-TV providers, covering about 92% of the market, lost 1.93 million video subscribers in Q2, up from 1.24 million lost the same quarter a year earlier, Leichtman Research Group said Friday. Those providers combined have about 72.2 million subs, including 39.5 million among the largest cable companies, 25.5 million among other traditional pay-TV services, and the top publicly reporting virtual MVPDs have about 7.2 million, it said. It said the cable providers lost about 950,000 subs in the most-recent quarter, compared with a year-over-year loss of 590,000, while vMVPDs lost about 265,000 subs compared to a gain of about 55,000 a year earlier. It said telco and DBS losses for the most-recent quarter were about 710,000, about the same as they were in Q2 2021.

Samsung’s Gaming Hub platform began rolling out to its 2022 smart TVs, said the company Thursday. Owners of Samsung Neo QLED 8K, Neo QLED 4K, QLEDs and 2022 Smart Monitor Series can discover and play games from Xbox, Nvidia, GeForce Now, Google Stadia, Utomik, and, soon, Amazon Luna, it said.

About one-third of TV households have smart TVs for all their TV sets, said a Q2 Leichtman Research Group study Friday. As of Q1, U.S. households had about 500 million connected TV (CTV) devices, up from 300 million five years ago, The tally includes streaming media boxes and sticks, connected game systems and Blu-ray players but not internet-connected pay-TV set-top boxes, which add 80 million to the total, or streaming boxes like Comcast’s Flex for internet-only customers, it said. The number of CTV devices far exceeds the number of TVs, about 330 million, in U.S. households as consumers commonly use multiple types of devices and have multiple devices connected to a set. Two-thirds of TV households have multiple types of CTV devices vs. 43% in 2017, it said, “so it is premature to prognosticate the pending demise of connected TV devices other than Smart TVs,” LRG said.

Demand for smart TVs cooled to pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels in Q1, leading to an estimated 9.2% drop in smart TV shipments, Kagan emailed Tuesday. Most vendors increased the proportion of premium, high-margin products in response to component shortages, resulting in a 21% rise in average selling prices (ASPs) to an estimated $496, said the S&P Global Market Intelligence research firm. It estimated Q1 smart TV revenue was $16.6 billion. Young brands such as Xiaomi and TCL had pockets of growth in emerging markets, Kagan said, saying the Chinese companies grew twice as fast as better-known Korean and Japanese brands. Samsung's Tizen-based Smart Hub maintained the largest connected TV operating system installed base worldwide, with an estimated 23.1% share, followed by Google’s Android TV, which is close to overtaking LG's WebOS to be the second-largest smart TV platform by footprint, Kagan said. Smart TV revenue continued to rise in recent quarters driven by component cost increases that were passed on to unit ASPs, offsetting shipment volume declines, Kagan said. Demand in the premium smart TV space is “relatively stable” regardless of price, but competition in the low- and midrange markets “remains stiff, keeping overall ASPs from going completely out of control,” it said. “Competitively priced models from the Chinese TV makers have become attractive options compared to more traditional brands, as smart TV adoption gradually grows among emerging markets like India, Latin America and the Asia Pacific,” said analyst Milan Ringol.

Samsung's QN95B line is available to order, Samsung emailed Wednesday. Starting price for the Neo QLED smart TVs is $2,399 for the 55-inch model; the series also includes the 65-inch ($3,299), 75-inch ($4,299) and 85-inch ($5,999). Features include Samsung's Neural Quantum Processor with 4K upscaling, 4K gaming with a 144Hz refresh rate and Dolby Atmos sound, it said.

Adding new subscribers in a saturated marketplace will be “increasingly difficult and costly” for subscription VOD services, said Aluma Insights Tuesday, citing “too many competitors, too many macro-economic challenges, and too many structural factors working against them.” Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu were the first to suffer the impact of domestic saturation, it said, “but others will soon follow.” At the end of 2021, 85% of U.S. households subscribed to a high-speed internet service, up from 72% a decade earlier, creating “a 15-year boon” for related industries including SVOD providers, connected TV makers and retailers dependent on the growing reach of residential broadband to generate revenue and profits, Aluma said. “Those salad days appear to be coming to an end,” said the market research firm, saying the broadband uptake rate in U.S. households is “slowly declining,” indicating “nearing saturation.” As a result, despite CTV’s 23% and SVOD’s 32% “headroom” of potential households, their penetration will slow as broadband additions become “increasingly slow to materialize.” The warning signs of leveling “were clear,” said Aluma analyst Michael Greeson: "Unfortunately, it caught a lot of people off-guard, including the nation's largest SVOD, Netflix." Services need to “look inward for ways to optimize existing revenue sources,” Greeson said, and that includes monetizing the “tens of millions of users that borrow credentials and watch these services for free." Aluma and Adobe plan a free webinar June 22 at 2 p.m. EDT on SVOD market conditions, Greeson said.

Just 13% of U.S. TV households don’t have an internet-connected TV, Leichtman Research Group reported Friday. Some 87% have at least one connected TV device, including a connected TV, streaming player, video game console or Blu-ray player. The percentage of smart TV households rose to 71% during the spring survey, up from 58% in 2020 and 41% in 2017, LRG said. Half of all TVs in U.S. households are smart TVs, up from 39% in 2020 and 24% in 2017, it said. About 28% of adults watch video daily on a TV via a stand-alone device, 27% via an internet-enabled smart TV app, 12% via a connected game system and 3% via a connected Blu-ray player, LRG said. In 2022, there are nearly 500 million connected TV devices in U.S. TV households, up from 300 million in 2017, said LRG President Bruce Leichtman. The survey was fielded April-May with 1,275 online and 625 phone participants.