Majority of consumers happy to pay for more SVOD services, says Nielsen

Fears of streaming saturation may be overstated, suggests a new report from Nielsen.

According to the firm’s annual Total Audience Report, 93% of Americans plan to continue on with their current level of paid-for streamers or add new subscriptions.

The report also found that 96% of the respondents aged 18-34 subscribe to a premium SVOD, with that figure dropping to 91% for all age groups. Of those 18-34 year-olds, almost a third said that they subscribe to three or more paid services.

The report also estimates that 73% of US households now have at least one video streaming subscription.

Elsewhere, the report says that the number of ‘unique’ titles available on premium has increased to 646,152, up 10% from 2018.

Nielsen also found that 19% of all TV time during Q4 was spent on streaming. Broken down by brand, Netflix was in the lead with 31% of all streaming time, followed by YouTube at 21%, Hulu with 12% and Amazon at 8%. Other streamers, including the likes of the newly-launched Disney+, made up the remaining 28%.

In total, Nielsen noted that US consumers on average spend nearly 12 hours per day across TV, TV-connected devices, radio, computers, smartphones and tablets.

Breaking this down further, the report said: “That’s 1 hour and 24 minutes of additional media exposure across all platforms from third-quarter 2018, which was driven by smartphone usage.”

Peter Katsingris, Nielsen senior vice president of Audience Insights, said: “The proliferation of on-demand streaming services is the most profound media disruption of the last half-century. This disruption is driving profound, real, actionable opportunity across all facets of the industry.”