By Garth Franklin
New survey results indicate that users of subscription video on demand services (SVOD), though paying more for than ever before, are becoming less satisfied with what’s available to watch.
After years of costly content spending, 2024 has been dubbed the end of ‘Peak TV’ as streamers pull back on lavish original content spending, and investors are more concerned with profitability than subscription numbers.
Now, Ars Technica has posted details on the TiVo Video Trends Report for this year which surveys a sample of around 4,500 people in North America aged 18 and up.
They’ve noted that a drop in the percentage of those who would rate the content quality of their SVOD services as ‘moderate to very good’ as compared to a sample taken two years ago.
Specifically ad-free SVOD has seen a drop from 78.6 per cent to 74.5 per cent (-4.1%) compared to two years ago. While that does sound bad, it’s a drop on par with regular PayTV which dropped from 69.1 per cent to 65.1 per cent (-4.0%).
It’s better than AVOD apps (e.g. Pluto TV) and vMVPD services (eg. YouTube TV & Fubo TV) which both fell around 6 per cent – the former dropping from 59.4 per cent to 53.1 per cent and the latter from 72.6 per cent to 66.7 per cent.
The single biggest decline in quality is ad-supported SVOD, with a single-year drop from 74.2 per cent to 60.8 per cent – in other words, people who stream REALLY don’t like commercials.
One exec at TiVo’s parent company, Xperi, tells the outlet that as many consumers shift to ad-supported SVOD services, there’s a perceptual drop in the quality of content. A lower amount of new original content overall on SVODs is also likely to have contributed to the perceived quality drop.