About 50% of people who consume video on a viewing device (TV, computer, tablet, or phone) watch a free, ad-supported service (FAST) or ad-based video on-demand service (AVOD) at least once a week, according to new data from Parks Associates, which includes consumer surveys of 8,000 and 10,000 U.S. internet households.

Connected households consume 43.5 hours of video per week on average across all viewing devices, an increase of more than six hours from 37.2 hours in 2020, according to new data from Parks Associates. Additionally, 61% of households watch paid streaming services on a TV set, consuming an average of 7.5 hours per week of content from these services.

“Video-viewing households report watching on average more than 21 hours per week on a TV, accounting for half of their viewing hours,” research analyst Sarah Lee said in a statement.

 
Sarah Lee

Lee said that as video consumption on a cell phone continues to rise, when excluding social video, U.S. internet households spend 6.5 hours per week watching video on a smartphone and 3.9 hours on a tablet.

“TVs are still the main video-viewing device, but platform usage continues to diversify,” she said.

Parks found that paid streaming services are the most popular content type consumed across TV, mobile, computers, and tablets, but households watch several different types of services across their devices over the week. About 78% of households watch an SVOD service weekly, followed by 67% of households who watch user-generated content such as that from YouTube.

“Given the popularity of FAST and user-generated content, consumers may soon decide they do not need to subscribe to as many services as they do now,” Lee said in a statement.

From the article, "Parks: 50% of U.S. Video-Viewing Homes Use Ad-Supported Streaming Services Weekly" by Erik Gruenwedel