Q3 2020 US AVOD Consumer Deep Dive The Roku Channel, Pluto TV, Tubi TV and IMDb TV
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The 20,000 Foot View: Ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) continues to lag behind subscription video on demand (SVOD) in a US market still heavily focused on paid subscriptions. AVOD weekly active engagement grew steadily in 2020, and across all leading four AVOD services between to 2020. However, while US AVOD users show greater receptiveness to relevant ads, overall they show a lower tolerance for ad engagement. The current audience is both digitally savvy and niche, making traditional TV ad engagement strategies difficult to implement on streaming platforms. However, this presents a positioning opportunity for AVOD services as a conduit for hard-to-reach streaming audiences. With AVOD users under-indexing for income and over-indexing for unemployment, the overall direction of the economy will have the biggest negative impact on AVOD weekly active use (WAU) growth in the US over the short-term future.
Key Insights
- All four US AVOD services experienced WAU between to 2020 of Roku Channel weekly active users (WAUs) stop paying attention when TV show ads appear, eight percentage points above the consumer average of Roku Channel WAUs skip video ads online, six percentage points above the consumer average of Pluto TV WAUs do not want ads in paid video services, five percentage points above the consumer average
- All four AVOD service WAUs over-index for to relevant ads of Pluto TV WAUs pay for a monthly subscription for more than one video service, percentage points above the consumer average
- All four AVOD service WAUs over-index for piracy and for paid video of Pluto TV WAUs and of Tubi TV WAUs cut the pay-TV cord in 2020, significantly above the consumer average of
Companies and brands mentioned in this report: Amazon, Amazon Prime Video, Comcast, Fox, IMDb TV, Hulu, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Paramount+, Peacock, Pluto TV, Roku, Roku Channel, Tubi TV, ViacomCBS
Methodological Statement
MIDiA classifies AVOD services as providing streaming ad-monetised long-form TV content, for which users set up free accounts to access. While some of these services provide additional paid subscription and download services, the core proposition remains subscription-free.
In this report all four leading AVOD services have WAUs under Generally, MIDiA refrains from making an analysis of sample sizes below respondents in this US survey). Three of the four leading US AVOD services have WAU penetration above only IMDb TV does not. As IMDb TV is the fourth biggest AVOD service in the MIDIA US Consumer Survey, and is the only one which is owned by a tech major, it is included in this report. All IMDb TV WAU analysis in this report is included as it is relationally relevant only to the other three larger AVOD services.
Hybrid AVOD/SVOD (HVOD) services such as Peacock and Hulu are exempt from this report, as they are either not primarily AVOD services or not subscription-free.