Every week, 2.8 million Boston adults watch video programs delivered via the internet. This content goes by several interchangeable names, including OTT (Over-The-Top Television), CTV (Connected TV), and Streaming Video. For this article, we will refer to this type of content as Streaming TV.
Unlike traditional TV, cable, and satellite where the viewer needs to be in a fixed location, Boston consumers can access streaming TV anywhere using an internet-connected device. These include SmartTVs, Firesticks, Roku, smartphones, computers, laptops, tablets, and gaming consoles.
In all, according to Nielsen, 95.4% of Boston households have one or more devices capable of connecting to streaming TV. Although this medium is still new, streaming TV now rivals legacy media in its ability to reach local consumers.
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Every week, Boston consumers are spending more-and-more time engaged with streaming TV.
Based on projections from Nielsen, during the week of Christmas 2021, Boston consumers spent a record number of minutes watching streaming TV. Here's how it compares to the week of Thanksgiving and the weeks of March 2020 at the onset of the pandemic lockdowns.
Here are the top five streaming media platforms where Boston consumers spend millions of minutes of viewing time.
Boston consumers don't necessarily differentiate how they are watching their video content. Most think of it as just watching TV. According to Nielsen, Streaming TV now accounts for 27.7% of how they 'just watch TV'. This is more time than they spend watching local TV stations and slightly less time than viewers spend with cable.
For Boston television advertisers who want to readjust their budgets to reach consumers who are migrating from local broadcast and cable stations to streaming TV, it is important to understand the two options that viewers have.
SVOD is the abbreviation for Subscription Video On Demand. That is the collective name for streaming networks like Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and Amazon Prime. For a monthly fee (subscription), these services provide commercial-free access to TV shows, original content, and movies.
AVOD means Advertiser-supported Video On Demand. AVOD provides viewers with movies, TV shows, and original content for free. Unlike SVOD, there is no subscription fee. The trade-off, however, is that AVOD includes commercial breaks, similar to traditional TV viewing.
A few services even offer Boston consumers the option to subscribe without commercials or to receive content for free in exchange for watching advertisements.
Unlike with traditional TV, local advertisers don't have to pick specific AVOD channels or programming to advertise in. Instead, Boston area business owners can identify the socio-economic qualities of the consumers they would like to reach and target the geographic area where the advertising will be seen. Then the advertisers' commercials would only be shown to those viewers on any advertising-supported streaming channel they might be watching.
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