The move to the digital age has create waves of change for media companies. From the explosion of devices to social distribution, broadcasters are navigating through a sea of new and unfamiliar trends. Taking a deeper look, one trend stands out as the accelerator of this digital transition, and that is the unprecedented pace at which consumers have changed their behavior and expectations around viewing premium video content.
To help keep on top of these trends, we embarked on some third party research surveying 2,000 consumers across the US, UK, France, and Germany. The results confirmed that consumers have increasingly high expectations around speed, reliability, and quality of video playback.
Great expectations
Of the 2,000 global respondents surveyed, more than half (55%) stated that, over the past two years, they have come to expect more from video on-demand (VOD) content. At the top of the list is speed, with a third (32%) now expecting VOD to be faster, followed by availability across all devices (20%). In addition, around one in five (19%) think all broadcast content should be available on-demand – and an optimistic 10% expect content to be available on-demand even before it has been broadcast.
Timely frustrations
According to consumers, the most frustrating part of online video is having to wait for videos to load or buffer (36%) – followed closely by ‘annoying adverts’ (28%) and not being able to get the same quality content across different devices (26%).
The rise of anytime, anywhere
Despite frustrations, VOD remains a consumer favorite. Half (50%) of consumers say they watch VOD content – such as Netflix and BBC iPlayer – at least once a week, with one in four (41%) tuning in at least twice a week. The proliferation of smart devices has also contributed to the rise in popularity of VOD content, allowing for quick ‘dip in, dip out’ viewing. 40% of viewers are now most likely to watch online video on tablets, smartphones, smart TVs or games consoles.
Above all, the vast majority (72%) admit that they would choose to watch VOD content over linear TV simply because they ‘can watch it anytime’. However, to truly rival traditional TV, around two-thirds of consumers agreed that VOD content needs to be both faster (63%) and better quality (67%).
Brightcove will be showcasing this research and its newly launched Brightcove Perform video player service at IBC 2014, where Brightcove is exhibiting and available for meetings (12th – 16th September 2014) at Stand 5.B20.