Brands Should Consider Co-Viewing On OTT Platforms

Nearly all households that consume TV content on any platform also engage in “co-viewing” of that content, a trend that marketers should consider as they plan campaigns, according to a new study from the Interactive Advertising Bureau also supported by Hulu, Roku and Freewheel.

Co-viewing means that two or more people watched a program together. Often these are members of the same family, but also friends and others.

According to the study, 93% of people engage in co-viewing, and over-the-top video now reaches more of those viewers than DVR or video-on-demand services. About 29% of time watching OTT video is spent co-viewing with others.

Those OTT subscribers are also more likely to be in a younger demographic (age 18-34), and a majority engage with video delivered through those platforms. Perhaps most significantly for marketers, co-viewing consumers are likely to discuss ads and brands while they watch.

“When you are watching [OTT TV] with someone, else, you are going to be leaned in, and discussing it,” said Dan Robbins, head of ad research at Roku, during a panel unveiling the study at the IAB Video Symposium Monday .

In addition, co-viewers spend more than twice as much time watching ad-supported services as they do watching ad-free services.

Still, as brands begin to think about how to target consumers who watch with others, concerns over measurement remain. “People do watch TV together, and we haven’t, to date, been able to count the people in the room,” said Julie DeTraglia, the head of ad sales research for Hulu, at the IAB summit.

1 comment about "Brands Should Consider Co-Viewing On OTT Platforms".
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  1. Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics, November 14, 2017 at 11:52 a.m.

    The fact that people sometimes watch TV along with othes does not mean that this is a typical situation. Indeed, it is distinctly atypical. As subscribers to our annual, "TV Dimensions 2018", due out in January will note, approximately two thirds of all TV viewing takes place with a single person attending the set-----a far cry from the predominately "co-viewing"  environment depicted in this study. We track the rise of "the solitary viewer" going back to TV's early days when the average TV home had more members than is the case now and large numbers of visitors---who didn't as yet have their own TV sets---viewed in their friends or neighbors' homes. But that was then and now is now. As I said, most TV viewing has become a solitary experience. Though "co-viewing" does take place from time to time, it is not the norm. I suspect that this is mostly true for OTT/SVOD as well, but we will have to wait for Nielsen to start putting out some findings to edify us on this score.

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