NPD: 17% of US viewers use only SVOD services for video

In the US, 17% of the population solely used SVOD services like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu to view video content in the 12-months ending in March 2018, according to NPD Group.

The research firm said that while the majority of US consumers view video content from a variety of sources – both in physical and digital formats – the proportion who used just SVOD services climbed by six percentage points from 11% in 2017.

Among all SVOD users in the US, as of March this year 40% subscribed to one subscription on-demand service, 37% to two and 24% to three or more, according to the study.

 Millennials aged 25-34 were most likely to subscribe to three or more streaming video services at 42%. However this figure was flat year-on-year, while the proportion of ‘Gen X’ viewers aged 45-55 who subscribed to three or more services increased by three percentage points.

“As the technology gets older and less novel, as smart TVs become more common, and as more streaming content becomes available, older consumers with more disposable income are coming on board with streaming video services,” said Ricardo Solar, president of media entertainment for NPD.

“Although Millennials were the first to adopt SVOD, GenX and Boomers are now driving the growth among those subscribing to multiple services.”

Despite the rise in SVOD-only viewers in the US, NPD found that a larger proportion of consumers at 24% relied only on transactional video viewing – renting and buying videos on physical discs or in digital formats.

Some 32% of people used a combination of transactional and subscription video.