Daily per-service user engagement continued to fall back in 2022, while the out-of-season World Cup provided a big boost.
In its fourth annual study, NPAW found that although global streaming adoption continued its overall growth in 2022, the ever-expanding number of content options years mean that individual services are on average capturing a smaller share of users’ daily watching time.
NPAW’s 2022 report examines the evolution of streaming consumption and quality of experience (QoE) trends on a global and regional scale.
For the second year in a row, providers around the globe saw a year-on-year increase in the total number of video plays while daily consumption per user and service continued to drop for both VOD (-12%) and Linear TV (-23%).
Daily Linear TV viewing per user and service took a big hit, declining by 23% year-on-year, while users watched 11% fewer titles per day.
The World Cup, held in Qatar in November and December, was a major driver of viewer interest. Its availability on linear and streaming services varied from market to market. Providers with streaming rights to the tournament enjoyed an increase of 80% in the total number of plays and 83% higher total viewing when compared with the previous six months.
“With competition growing fiercer by the minute, it’s business-critical for streaming services to provide the right content and a superior streaming experience if they want to attract and retain users and maintain growth,” said Ferran G. Vilaró, CEO and Co-Founder of NPAW. “To do so, they need to leverage their platforms’ data to the fullest extent, implementing advanced analytics solutions that combine technical performance monitoring and user journey insights.”
Technical quality has stabilised, reflecting the technology upgrades of recent years. The average bitrate for VOD marginally decreased (-1%), suggesting the beginning of a plateau in VOD video quality. Providers, keen to enable the best possible streaming experiences, focused on minimizing buffering by proactively increasing the Avg. Join Time (so that more of the program loads before the viewer can play). However, this resulted in higher Exit Before Video Start rates as users had more time, and greater opportunity, to disconnect before playback started.
