Online video streaming has reached an all-time high as the world now binge watches for six hours and 48 minutes weekly — with Indians binging one hour and 45 minutes more, taking the same figure to eight hours and 33 minutes, leaving the global average far behind, said a report by edge cloud services provider Limelight Networks on Thursday.
According to Limelight Networks’ ‘State of Online Video 2019’ research report, time spent on binge-watching is also on the rise in India, jumping more than 23 per cent from last year to an average of 2 hours and 25 minutes at a time.
Indians were less apprehensive of pre-roll advertisements, with 84.8 per cent being either affirmative or neutral if the content is free. Indians mostly watch online videos from home, followed by travel or commute.
“Since India is new to the digital bandwagon, it doesn’t come as a surprise that 89 per cent are also subscribed to cable TV. This figure was observed to be the lowest for Japan, where the subscriptions turned out to be just 39 per cent or less than half as compared to India,” the company said in a statement.
The adoption of dedicated streaming devices is also gradually increasing in India with 27 per cent of the respondents saying they owned Google Chromecast and 34 per cent owned Amazon Fire TV Stick. Eighteen per cent of the respondents, however, didn’t have any streaming device at all.
“India is quickly opening up to the idea of online video streaming. This ongoing trend has been highlighted time and again by our State of Online Video studies over the years. Now, as data costs are further lowering and smartphone penetration increasing, people living even in the remotest of regions are coming under the fold of digital technology and services,” said Ashwin Rao, Director—Sales, Limelight Networks, India.
Smartphones were the primary streaming device while digital devices such as computers and laptops came next on the list followed by a connected device or a smart TV.
The top spot as the most popular content in India was shared by both TV shows and news, with movies and professionally developed content on social media coming next on the list.
