Research from Parks Associates has found that as many as 53% of US broadband households subscribe to both a pay-TV service and at least one over-the-top video service.
In the OTT Video & TV Everywhere: Partners, Alternatives, and Competition report, Parks investigated the evolution of over-the-top video services, including changes in market competition, new partnerships, and the changing priorities by consumers. It found that as of Q3 2017, more than 200 OTT video services were active in the US market, with more than 100 active in Canada.
The report noted that 60 players introduced OTT video services during 2016 and 2017, while only seven services closed during that same period.
The report also showed that over 87% of OTT video services in the US and 86% in Canada offer some type of subscription options today, including freemium, ad-free premium tiers and other blended business models.
“Many OTT services are evolving to be complementary to the market's largest players, instead of trying to compete directly against Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu,” said Brett Sappington, senior director of research, Parks Associates and author of the OTT Video & TV Everywhere: Partners, Alternatives, and Competition Parks Associates report.
“Consumers are increasingly self-aggregating their OTT and entertainment services - they are adopting primary entertainment content sources and supplementing those sources with complementary video options. Several factors are driving an increase in partnerships with and among OTT video services, including fragmentation of content, the success of bundling, polarisation in the OTT subscription market, a low threshold for OTT service survival, and low awareness of many OTT service brands.”
