Roughly 43.1% of American and Canadian adults are aware that their pay-TV provider offers TV Everywhere according to the latest quarterly report from Digitalsmiths covering Q3.
That represents an increase from 34.6% aware in Q3 2013, with a corresponding increase (from 19.6% to 23.9%) in the percentage of respondents who report having their provider’s app downloaded on their tablet or smartphone.
Though the growth in awareness and app downloading is modest at best on a year-over-year basis, there appears to be a gradual rise in consumption among those who have downloaded the apps.
During this past quarter, for example, almost 1 in 10 (9.7%) said they use the app every day.
That’s up from 8.5% last year and 6.3% the year before, indicating a rising level of comfort with the viewing method. At the same time, a slightly larger percentage this year (15.9%) report never using the app they downloaded, so it may be that the increase in usage is limited to those who are already heavy users.
Nevertheless, separate industry data supports the growth of TV Everywhere (TVE). Recent data from FreeWheel, for example, indicates that almost two-thirds (65%) of digital viewing of live and long-form content for Programmers was through authenticated channels in Q3, up from 46% in the year-earlier period.
In looking further at awareness of TVE offerings, the DigitalSmiths report notes that it is highest among AT&T Uverse (52%) and Comcast (51.3%) subscribers, and lowest among Charter (40.5%) and Cox (40.7%) subscribers. AT&T Uverse (36.1%) and Comcast (35.1%) also sported the highest rates of app downloading among subscribers, while only about 1 in 6 (16.9%) Cox subscribers have downloaded its TVE app.
In other results from the DigitalSmiths survey:
- Some 45.1% of respondents who do not have cable/satellite service use an antenna to access the basic channels on their TV, with this up from 33.3% the preceding quarter;
- About 4 in 10 (40.6% of) cable/satellite subscribers say their current bill is more than what they were paying 12 months ago;
- Close to one-quarter (24%) of cable/satellite subscribers are unsatisfied with the value they are receiving from their provider, up from 21.5% in Q3 2013;
- The leading reason given by those unsatisfied is increasing fees, cited by more than two-thirds; and
- HBO (23.9%) is the leading premium channel subscribed to by respondents and HBO GO is the TV network app downloaded by the largest share (5.4%) of respondents.