Viewers spent more than 3.1 billion hours watching video-on-demand content last year and ‘active users’ are ordering an average of 16.4 free programs, 8.7 subscription programs and 2.0 movies on demand, according to the Rentrak State of VOD: Trend Report 2009.
Rentrak’s OnDemand Essentials service, from which the report data was compiled, aggregates data by tracking some 70 million set-top boxes across 33 operators and more than 100 content providers.
Forty-five percent of VOD enabled set-top boxes (STBs) are accessing VOD in an average month, according to a summary news release. Viewers placed 5.1 billion free-on-demand (FOD) orders and spent nearly 1.6 billion hours watching FOD content last year. There were 1.6 billion subscription VOD “content transactions” totaling more than 1.6 billion hours of viewing time. So-called transaction-on-demand content tallied more than 208 million orders worth $963 million in gross revenues.
Rentrak has included ‘cumulative reach curves’ in its latest VOD report in order to help advertisers “understand reach among top titles in each of the Free-On-Demand categories, according to the publicly-listed company. It also includes detailed monthly VOD trends from January through December, order trends by hour, top movies-on-demand genres, FOD benchmarks and special sections highlighting HD and Adult.DemandD
VOD is Dead, Long Live VOD.
VOD via an aggregator like TVN that effectively controls how a Service Provider packages and prices its services is destined to die as TV Everywhere/OTT and the likes of YouTube/Hulu and emerging Google-OS/Intel Chips & TV Sony begins to impact how customers access Video Content (via Internet) and how they view the content (3 screens).
It is only a matter of time before Service Providers recognize the emerging alternatives and real world Interactivity provided by these new 3 screen OTT services and shift or force the aggregators to repackage their offerings.
Jim A.