The amount of time spent watching TV increased in 2023 after two years of decline.
Publishing its 2023 Video Streaming Industry Report, video streaming analytics firm NPAW said the past 12 months was “a significant year of engagement and quality improvements for the industry.”
Daily user engagement for VOD and Linear TV, grew by 4% and 3% respectively. The amount of time the average user spends watching content per day increased globally in 2023 by 12% for VOD and 4% for Linear TV content.
Series continued to dominate as the primary type of VOD content for another year, capturing 67% of the total global playtime. However, movies saw a slight increase, accounting for 26% of all VOD minutes streamed in 2023.
Additionally, 2023 was also a year of significant improvements in the Quality of Experience front, both globally, with a global decrease of 38% in the buffering ratio, and regionally, with regions like Asia experiencing an 18% increase in the average bitrate. These boosts signal that there is still room for optimization of the viewing experience.
“These findings underscore a significant year of renewal and growth for the streaming sector. The increase of up to 12% in daily playtime per user, coupled with tangible improvements in the Quality of Experience, highlights how the industry is consolidating and evolving to meet and exceed viewer expectations, said Ferran G. Vilaró, CEO and Co-Founder of NPAW.
At the device level, big screens extended their dominance in total playtime by up to 8 percentage points, driven by the growth of Smart TVs. This reaffirms that consumers overwhelmingly prefer big-screen experiences when streaming video content, reserving smaller-screen devices like smartphones for casual streaming or while on the move.
