OTT account sharing a ‘lingering challenge,’ says Parks

Some 11% of all US broadband households rely exclusively on shared accounts when using subscription OTT services like Netflix, with account sharing a “lingering challenge,” according to Parks Associates.

The research firm said that 8% of US broadband households are using a subscription OTT account held by someone outside of their home and 6% are exclusively using shared accounts to access OTT services – equating to 11% of all households.

According to the research, based on a survey of US broadband households last year, 11% of Netflix subscribers, 10% of Hulu Plus subscribers, and 5% of Amazon Prime Instant Video subscribers are using an account paid for by someone else.

Among younger households account sharing was found to be more prevalent, with 22% of OTT service users aged 18-24 accessing a subscription paid by someone outside of their household.

“OTT video accounts for a disproportionate amount of content consumed when compared to expenditure – over one-third of video consumed per week is OTT, but it is only 9% of the household video budget. Account sharing is part of the larger problem in monetizing the strong consumer demand for OTT content,” said Brett Sappington, director of research, Parks Associates.

“In terms of hours of consumption per dollar spent, consumers have every reason to shift spending to online video. While the all-you-can-eat subscription model is very popular, several OTT services are experimenting with models that blend advertising, subscription, and transactional options. Pay TV providers will have to quickly move up the OTT learning curve, which is very different from the traditional pay TV environment.”

Parks claims that a total of 57% of US broadband households access OTT video subscriptions.