Providing market intelligence for more than 35 years

In The News

Streaming wars will force media companies to choose between pricey subscriptions and ads

Parks Associates, a research firm that tracks the connected home, found in a recent survey that one-third of U.S. broadband households use a free, ad-based streaming service, up from 24% a year earlier.

“Consumers are turning to ad-supported streaming services as subscription fatigue continues to settle in,” Brandon Riney, a researcher at Parks, told CNBC in an email. “When discussing attitudes regarding ads on these streaming services, more consumers are willing to endure the ads to watch the content than completely resisting them.”

“As the purse strings of OTT consumers tighten, there is tremendous opportunity for free ad-based services to thrive,” wrote Steve Nason, an analyst at Parks Associates, in a post in November. “A service can establish a foothold in this space by delivering a unique offering of high-quality content in an engaging advertising-based environment.”

From the article "Streaming wars will force media companies to choose between pricey subscriptions and ads" by Megan Graham.

Previously In The News

Cutting the cord: 59% of Americans have canceled cable TV, signaling the dominance of streaming giants Netflix, Hulu and Amazon

Netflix is also preparing to crackdown on illegal account sharing via new artificial intelligence software, which will be able to analyze which users are logged in and then flag shared accounts. Th...

Tech Companies Waging Big Battle Of The Bots

In order for a virtual helpmate to run your life, it needs to engage with the providers of all the services you rely on, from your calendar app to your Uber ride. Those providers must either partner w...

Smart Home Goal: No Doorbell Left Behind

In a second-quarter 2016 survey of on-line households, research company Parks Associates found that 50 percent of smart-doorbell owners use the devices to see who's at the door when they're not home,...

Amazon Takes On Netflix With $8.99 Monthly Video Streaming Service

Netflix is by far the biggest online streaming video service. Last week, researcher Parks Associates estimated that about half of all U.S. households with a broadband Internet connection subscribed to...