Source: WARC
Consumer and advertiser investment in the delivery of premium video content via the internet is rising rapidly worldwide, with spend set to reach a projected $129.3bn by 2023. Of this, $46.6bn (36%) is expected to be spent by advertisers on ad-funded video-on-demand (AVOD) platforms, almost double the level invested today.
These and other key findings are included in the latest monthly Global Ad Trends report focusing on OTT (over-the-top) compiled by WARC.
Data from Digital TV Research, based on 138 countries, place the value of the OTT market at $68.7bn this year – a rise of 29% from the $53.3bn invested in 2017.
Just over a third (34.7%) – $23.8bn – of this year’s OTT total is expected to be invested by advertisers across AVOD platforms, such as Hulu, HBO Now, and Sony’s Crackle.
China is expected to overtake the US to become the world’s largest AVOD market for the first time this year, drawing $8bn of advertiser spend – a third of the global total. AVOD in the US is expected to attract just under this, at $7.9bn.
AVOD is still nascent: the expected $23.8bn in brand investment equates to a 5.2% share of global adspend this year (up from 4.5% in 2017 and 3.7% in 2016). But when compared with data in WARC’s International Ad Forecast, AVOD expenditure is seen to be growing ahead of other paid media, with the market’s value near doubling to $46.6bn by 2023.
59.5m US homes used OTT in April 2018, up 17% year-on-year according to data from comScore – the equivalent to almost two-thirds (63.5%) of all Wi-Fi enabled homes in the country.
A third of US OTT households are now “cordless”, meaning they do not hold a paid cable or satellite subscription. A full 18% are “cord-cutters” – homes which once held a pay TV subscription but have left in favour of OTT – while 14% have never held a pay TV subscription.
Rising internet penetration, connection speed, and device ownership is enabling more varied viewing. Whilst delivering convenience for consumers, this is adding complexity and technological challenges for marketers as the media landscape is being disrupted.
As advertisers are being forced to adapt their video campaign strategies, cross-channel fragmentation is challenging the creative and media buying process. The wide array of publisher specs, insufficient lead time required to track down all creative assets and a lack of standardised measurement when buying cross-channel audience-based inventory are cited as major concerns.
As a result, OTT is not currently front of mind when building media strategies; just a quarter (26%) of US CMOs regard OTT as either very or extremely important to their plans.
For more information visit https://www.warc.com/data
