NPAW, the video intelligence company, has shared its industry predictions for streaming in 2023.
With The World Cup underway, streaming adoption will be pushed to never-before-seen levels in 2023, according to NPAW. This comes after world viewing records were broken in 2018 as the international soccer/football community turned to streaming platforms to take in more games than ever before.
NPAW reported in its Video Streaming Industry Report 1H 2022 that the streaming of live sports content was already up 13% in the first half of 2022 compared with the same period the previous last year, and there is a 19% increase in streaming sports viewership predicted for the 2022 World Cup.
With the advancements in number, quality, accessibility and revenue for streaming providers, more people than ever in history will adopt online viewing as their primary method of watching sports content after turning to streaming services for the Cup.
NPAW has forecasted streaming ad revenue will exceed that of traditional broadcast. Nielsen reported in August that streaming services captured more viewers than cable or broadcast for the first time.
With this continued transition, paired with streaming providers pivoting to ad-supported models instead of, or in conjunction with, subscription models, streaming revenue is set to eclipse cable/broadcast in 2023.
The video intelligence company has also predicted that with the shift to ad-based models, more complex and complete analytics and intelligence tools will be needed, and consolidation of these tools will be required.
Cross-company access across departments, with ad effectiveness, audience behaviour, quality control, content performance, etc., utilising the same data set will replace the piecemeal model currently employed by many in the industry.
NPAW also estimated that the number of streaming services will continue to expand. It noted that there are currently over 200 streaming services available across the world, and with linear TV hemorrhaging money and viewers almost unilaterally.
The streaming market is expected to hit $330 billion by 2030, according to Cloudwards, and while not all of these will succeed, investment will chase this market, and the market (still early in its development) will stabilise.
With continued expansion, daily playtime per user, per platform will continue to go down. This number was down 12% for VoD in H1 2022 mainly due to the competition between services, according to NPAW’s H1 report.
A focus on analytics is increasingly needed for services to not lose users to the competition due to poor streaming experience or a poor understanding of the audience and its preferences.
Established in 2008, NPAW helps online streaming services grow. It has over a decade of experience developing groundbreaking, scalable analytics solutions to optimise performance and user engagement, helping customers to build media experiences that maximise revenue.
Its Suite of analytics apps provides advanced visibility of platform performance, audience behavior, advertising and content efficiency, and app navigation in real-time to support data-driven decisions.
NPAW serves more than 190 video services and processes with over 120 billion plays per year worldwide.