Reports: smart tvs

Streaming TV and social platforms have long competed for audience attention but from separate lanes. Now, these roads are merging in the social platforms’ favour as the likes of YouTube and TikTok evolve into kaleidoscopes of entertainment content, from vlogs and music videos to live sport and TV series.

Smart-TV-owning gamers skew older and combine increased consumption spend with an increased willingness to pay for content and entertainment more broadly. Smart-TV owners over-index for games consumption and in-game spending,offering an unparalleled platform distribution opportunity for cross-platform gamesdistributors such as Xbox Game Pass.

With the attention recession in full swing following the lockdown boom, video isalready feeling the pinch as evidenced by Netflix’s declining subscriber count.The mainstreaming of subscription video on demand (SVOD) pulled TV into the digital entertainment sphere, placing it at risk of further disruption from the attentionrecession.

With video streaming transitioning into mainstream TV consumption, we have moved into the era of streaming TV. As a result, the early focus on gaining subscribers is making way for the rising challenge of retaining these newly acquired subscribers. Retention is the key metric of the emerging post-growth streaming, with the ratio of weekly active users (WAUs) who are daily active users (DAUs) becoming the key metric to measure streaming success, as streaming TV becomes a fully digitally- native experience.

Metaverse smart TV opportunities are currently nascent as clarity about the overall growth of the metaverse concept is still emergent. From a smart TV OEM perspective, a focus on future-proofing features to accommodate the likely games and VR heavy functionality of early metaverse commercial scenarios will be key.

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have caught the attention of the wider media landscape. However, consumer awareness is niche with just 20% of consumers aware of what NFTs are. Despite this, NFTs represent the vanguard of paradigm shifts in consumer access and ownership of media.

The unbundling of TV consumption is catalysing the smart home, with media streamers and smart TVs driving adoption and engagement. The smart home entertainment ecosystem will expand due to smart devices (smart TVs and smart speakers), as they are building on traditional consumption habits and engagement of key segments to act as smart home ecosystem ambassadors.

Online TV viewing in the UK is now a mainstream consumer activity. This has been facilitated by near universal levels of internet connectivity and smartphone adoption and driven by the unique role played by national broadcaster the BBC. However while the UK is in the vanguard of video viewing, the dominant position of BBC’s iPlayer ad-free OTT (Over The Top) programming complicates the environment for SVOD (Subscription Video On Demand) services.

The United States is fast approaching the point where online TV viewing becomes a mainstream consumer activity. This has been facilitated by near universal levels of internet connectivity and smartphone adoption. Leading the charge on its home turf is Netflix, experiencing double digit growth since 2010.