Top Consumer Trends in Video Consumption: Takeaways for Your Advertising Strategy

Online video, mobile devices and subscription-based streaming have completely reshaped the TV advertising landscape. While TV audiences have been fragmented across many different platforms and viewing modes, online video has grown more valuable to brands seeking out cost-effective options for reaching a targeted audience.

Today’s businesses have many different video advertising options to choose from—and more channels and wrinkles are being added almost constantly. For local businesses operating with limited resources and bandwidth, these trends can be difficult to keep pace with: as soon as you optimize your TV and video advertising strategies, new opportunities and best practices seem to pop up out of nowhere.

To help you out, we’re highlighting some of the TV and video consumption trends most relevant to your digital ad strategy. Read on for some of the top takeaways to keep in mind in 2022.

TV Edges Online Video in Advertising ‘Value’

TV and online video are locked in a tight battle to win over marketers who see one advertising channel as more valuable and beneficial than the other. While the competition remains close, TV holds a slight edge in a recent survey performed by eMarketer.

Forty-seven percent of marketing professionals cited TV advertising—which includes both linear TV as well as addressable, OTT, video on demand and other delivery methods—as “most valuable for achieving advertising goals.”

While digital video—which includes both online and mobile—was close behind at 46 percent, TV’s narrow win illustrates how TV ad solutions have managed to adapt to fast-changing consumer preferences, remaining relevant even as digital video alternatives have emerged. Given this widely recognized value offered by TV advertising, your local business should be eager to embrace this advertising channel.

Diverse OTT Channels Offer Greater Choice in TV Advertising

Rather than remain static in its offerings, TV’s endurance can be credited to the development of many different types of TV content delivery experiences, including over-the-top streaming services supported by digital advertising.

Today’s local businesses can build TV ad campaigns that utilize subscription video-on-demand, direct-to-consumer streaming, free ad-supported video-on-demand, and other OTT services that connect targeted ads to a relevant viewing audience.

Expanded advertising options give your business greater control over who sees your ads and in what context. This makes it easier to concentrate your TV ad spending on a select, highly relevant audience, and to seek out ad inventories that can maximize audience engagement with your campaign.

Streaming’s Popularity is Only Going to Rise

If the numbers around video consumption agree on one thing, it’s that streaming services will continue to get bigger and more influential in the years to come.

Research suggests that OTT TV and video subscriptions will rise to two billion by 2025, while the overall OTT media market will generate more than $210 billion in annual revenue by 2026.

OTT streaming, meanwhile, will be embraced by roughly 98 percent of U.S. households, while the average number of paid subscription services is expected to remain level at four per household. As consumers resist increasing the number of services they pay for, ad-supported streaming is expected to experience a rise in popularity—creating additional advertising opportunities for businesses.

Ultimately, the average Internet user consumes about 38 hours of video content every month—nearly the equivalent of a full work week. This expanded inventory and high consumption is an opportunity for local businesses to further increase the value of their TV and video advertising.

OTT Ads Earn High Marks for Engagement and Recall

Television and digital video are well-known as effective channels for building brand awareness and reinforcing brand recall. But they’re also great for motivating consumer conversions: sixty-six percent of paid OTT subscribers said they’ve been influenced by an ad to buy a new product or service in the past.

OTT consumers are also very tolerant of watching advertisements if it means they don’t have to pay for the content: 25 percent say they would watch up to 10 minutes of content to avoid paying a fee. This open attitude toward TV advertising is yet another incentive for local businesses to invest in TV ad campaigns, since a welcoming audience is more likely to pay attention to ads, to develop positive brand associations, and to engage with that brand in the future.

Eager to optimize your TV and video advertising strategy? A digital advertising partner can support your local business with the specialized expertise your business needs to generate value and ROI from your digital advertising campaigns.

Cox Media can help you capitalize on today’s TV and video trends while also adapting your strategy as those trends evolve in the future. Ready to get started? Contact us today.