Rebundling Fatigue, Ad Tolerance on the Rise, Says TiVo Video Trends Research Report
We’re here to parse a new market report from TiVo called “Q2 2024 TiVo Video Trends Report: North America Consumers Getting Smarter as Fatigue Sets In Amidst the Re-bundling Marathon.” The title is a mouthful, and the research doesn’t deliver on everything it promises.
As a journalist I could look at the information in two different ways. One is to ask the company to elaborate on things which are not clear. That sounds fair, but if you saw this report, you wouldn't do that. So, I'm going to take it at face value by trying to understand the information without TiVo’s additional help.
Comparing Apples to Cherries
The average consumer spend in Q2 2023 was $170.86 for streaming subscriptions, $208.54 for Pay TV subscriptions (really, there are people still paying this?), and $64.86 for broadband service.
In Q2 2024, the average spend was $140.06 for streaming, $178.06 for Pay TV, and $65.16 for broadband service. Pay TV subscribers are paying just under $30.00 less in the last year, but broadband subscription has barely budged.
Average total consumer spend YoY
First off, they define broadband-only subscribers as individuals who don’t currently have a Pay TV subscription but do have a subscription to a broadband internet service provider. The report provides no other details. At first, I thought they were talking about internet service, but now I'm leaning more into the likelihood that they meant streaming services. My takeaway is that “broadband providers” don't seem to have raised their rates, although that is not what, anecdotally, I've heard.
Next up, why average the numbers? If you use one or the other, it seems like these are different things. If you use both, you still wouldn't average things. Demerits on bad math.
Next, it seems viewers are using fewer services. For 2024, US respondents reported using 9.1 sources for content: 5.7 paid and 3.4 non-paid. This is down from last year, when Q2 2023 numbers were 10.9 sources: 6.9 paid and 4 non-paid.
Canada actually saw an increase, from an average of 7 to an average of 8 sources. There's no additional information here on what is being spent on paid services. No breakdown, no averages.
What Should We Watch?
Viewers still can't find what to watch and it's getting worse. 72.7% report going into more than one app in a typical viewing session, up 13% year-over-year. This makes sense because the amount of content keeps increasing. Streaming was all about having more control over viewing and this seems to be a logical result: consumers have more control, but now what we really need is a killer way to manage this.
41.5% use two or three apps, and by apps, I'm assuming they mean streaming service apps, though it's not 100% clear what app consumers are using. Viewers, however, are not happy to outsource their search, so while it seems like finding a way to manage this is what's needed, use of companion apps like JustWatch, TMDB, Reelgood, TVTime, Letterboxd, and Trakt.tv has declined 7% YoY.
Volume Decreases On Voice
Viewers seem less likely to use voice control (although it sounds like they didn't include mobile viewing here, because this survey was done by a TV company). 42.4% who own “entertainment devices” (defined as smart TV, streaming media player, set-top box, or game controller) with voice control is down 6% YoY.
Voice control use by device type
This is, frankly, just too hard to believe. The fact that “entertainment devices” would be eliminating voice control (and this is down 15.1% specifically on game controllers) is a topic for further research. I just don't believe this. Almost two-thirds who have this within their devices use it, but this number has declined 9%.
SVOD Slips (Kind of)
84% of those surveyed use SVOD, down from 88% last year. 19.2% of these started a subscription to a new service, which is down from 28.7% YoY. The research focused on the fact that ad-free SVOD services have dropped almost 18% year-over-year. My initial take was “Wow, 84% is a lot of SVOD consumers,” but 18% is a big drop.
When asked about where the best viewing experience was, SVOD won, where 74.5% of respondents rated services as moderate to very good quality. vMPVD was at 66.7%, Pay TV at 65.1%, SVOD ad-supported at 60.8%, TV network apps 56.2%, and FAST at 53.1%.
AVOD/FAST Gains
Viewers of all sorts of backgrounds are becoming more tolerant of advertising—not in the sense of “Yippee, I want to watch ads,” but 77.8% describe themselves as not ad-averse. TiVo reports that younger people and respondents with higher incomes are more willing to tolerate ads and this has also increased YoY.
Ad tolerance and perception over time
61.7% of respondents noted using at least one AVOD/FAST service in Q2. And finally, 22% of Pay TV subscribers cut the cord then later resubscribed to traditional TV service.
Takeaways
So, the key takeaways from the TiVo report are these:
- we still haven't identified a decent search tool
- voice use is on the decline
- the SVOD experience is perceived to be the best one, although there has been an 18% slip in subscriptions
- Consumers are willing to watch ad-supported video (although FAST came in at a 53.1% rating on perceived viewing experience).
There was additional information about how spending has gone down a bit, but without details to back this up, in good faith I can't really say I would believe this. If the point had been important enough to mention, it would have been important enough to break out exactly what people were spending less on exactly.
Overall, TiVo has delivered an interesting report which could have used one or two more facts to make it a really good one.