Comscore Releases 2020 ‘State of OTT’ Report Examining OTT Consumption Across CTV, Ad-Supported Services

Number of OTT households rose 5.2 million homes between April 2019 and April 2020

The over-the-top (OTT) landscape in 2020 is rapidly changing due to the growth of OTT services, content and devices as well as the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on consumer behavior. Amidst this evolving landscape, Comscore, a trusted partner for planning, transacting and evaluating media across platforms, is thrilled to release its 2020 ‘State of OTT’ report.

Using data from Comscore OTT Intelligence™, Comscore’s ‘State of OTT’ report offers insights for advertisers, OTT streaming services, and content owners and creators to understand changing audience habits in a dynamic space.

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Key insights include:

• There has been a spike in OTT engagement since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic that is holding steady for now. OTT consumption saw exceptional growth starting in early March 2020 through April 2020 and has since plateaued.
• Consumption of OTT content grew by both total households and total hours. 69.8M homes used OTT in April 2020, an increase of 5.2M homes compared to April 2019. The average home viewed 102 hours of OTT content during that same month, an increase of 17 hours compared to April 2019.
• Growth in reach of ad-supported services is outpacing that of non-ad-supported services, presenting a need and opportunity for advertising. Ad-supported services grew nine percent when comparing April 2020 to January 2020. Non-ad-supported services grew only five percent.
• Total viewing hours increased 2.3 billion viewing hours across live TV, DVR, VOD, and OTT in April 2020 vs April 2019. Of this, OTT alone added 1.4B total viewing hours.
• In April 2020, 21 percent of CTV viewing households are cord cutters (households who cut the cord within the past five years), up three percent from April 2019. 21 percent are cord nevers (households with no cable/satellite subscription in the past five years), up three percent within the same time frame.
• The use of pure-play virtual MVPDs to view OTT content has seen a 70 percent year-over-year growth between the three-month average of February through April 2019 and 2020.

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