MUMBAI: Over-the-top (OTT) platforms have become the new opium for millennials. According to a new report from the analyst firm Parks Associates, more than 85 per cent of millennials in the US subscribe use at least one OTT video service. Interestingly, the number of OTT subscribers among other generations is also growing gradually.
An earlier report from Parks Associates showed that the number of households worldwide with an OTT video service subscription will exceed 265 million by 2022. Since 2010, a steady increase has been noticed in the adoption of smartTVs and streaming media players.
Many of the millennials opt for more than one platform for browsing. More than one-fourth of millennials subscribe to three or more OTT services, and more than 50 per cent subscribe to at least two. OTT service penetration among ‘Baby Boomers’( 1946-64) and older generations grew more than 10 per cent between the two groups as a whole between 2016 to 2017.
“Overall penetration of subscription OTT video services among millennials has topped out, suggesting that those households that want such a subscription already have one or more. The more interesting and important question is how many subscriptions they will keep,” Parks Associates research senior director Brett Sappington said.
Millennials are more prone to consume online content not only because of a personalized experience but also due to the flexibility it offers. Various reports since 2014 have highlighted how millennials are opting for streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon over television.
Parks Associates researcher Hunter Sappington thinks self-aggregating content is simply a part of the entertainment experience, particularly in millennial households.
“Their evaluation criteria for services, and brand loyalty, differs from that of previous generations. To take advantage of this self-aggregation trend, providers need to understand the evaluation criteria consumers use for their OTT services, which can vary from household to household,” he commented.
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