Some 31% of U.S. and Canadian adults (18+) say they have at some point chosen to watch a TV show or movie because of all the buzz it was getting on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, according to the latest quarterly video trends report from Digitalsmiths.
But growth in this area appears to have slowed, based on a review of past editions of the study.
Indeed, going as far back as Q3 2013, a similar 30.8% of survey respondents said they had watched a show or movie due to social buzz. And while more than 1 in 7 respondents (14.8%) to the latest survey said they post about what they’re watching on social networks, that is actually slightly down from the percentage saying the same in Q3 2013 (15.4%).
It’s possible that some of that may be due to seasonality, as the 31% this past quarter (Q1 2015) choosing a show based on social buzz is up from previous first quarters (2014; 29.3% and 2013; 18.6%).
Similarly, the 14.8% posting about shows is up from 13.2% a year earlier, suggesting that social’s influence on TV is still growing, albeit slowly.
The figures are similar to those recently released by ShareThis, in which 1 in 6 TV viewers were found to share content about shows online.
In other notable results from the most recent Digitalsmiths report:
- Almost one-quarter (24.2%) of respondents are unsatisfied with the level of value they’re receiving from their cable/satellite service provider, most commonly due to increasing fees for cable/satellite (71.7%) and internet (46.4%) services;
- Respondents are as likely to have increased/added to (18.4%) the level of their cable/satellite service in the past 12 months as they are to have decreased/eliminated it (18.2%), with premium channels the leading reason for increasing (36.4%) service and the second-leading reason for decreasing (44.1%) service;
- The ideal pay-TV line-up, per respondents, is 17 channels, for which they would pay $38 a month;
- Almost half (48.7%) of respondents estimated watching at least 3 hours of TV per day;
- Some 69% of respondents watch 2 hours or less of recorded TV per day, compared to 51% who watch 2 hours or less of live TV per day;
- By comparison, just 16.6% of tablet owners report watching at least 3 hours of TV shows, movies or video content on their device, per week, with the comparable figure among smartphone owners being just 7.4%;
- One-third of respondents feel overwhelmed by the amount of channels available to them, up from 29.1% in Q1 2013; and
- Of the channels offered to them, 81.7% watch between 1 and 10 typically.