Live Online Sports Is a Great Fit for Advertisers, Finds Conviva

The global audience for the recent World Cup tournament reached 7.9 million concurrent viewers tuning in for live online sports coverage. Around the same time, 5.3 million concurrent viewers streamed the seventh game of the NBA Western Conference Finals.

In its just-released report for Q2 2018, video optimization specialist Conviva says massive numbers of viewers are watching live online sports, and that's something advertisers need to pay attention to.

"These spikes demonstrate that sports continue to drive 'appointment TV'—even in the streaming TV space. This has significant implications for the leagues, publishers, and advertisers—all of which should expect to derive incremental value from these types of events as they grow over time," the report says.

The report sees a doubling of overall online video streaming in just one year, as TV publishers are streaming twice the amount of video that they did in Q2 2017. Streaming TV publishers delivered 5.5 billion hours of video in Q2 2018, up from 2.6 billion hours the year before. Viewers successfully initiated 17.2 billion video plays in Q2 up from 8.5 billion the year before.

Conviva's data measures worldwide video streaming. The company's sensor collects data in 3 billion video apps for over 200 brands. Conviva measures 4 of the top 5 skinny bundle services in North America, and 5 of the top 10 subscription video services.

In Q2, people did the largest part of their streaming through their TVs, which accounted for 51 percent of all viewing hours. Roku devices were the big winner here, handling 22.1 percent of total viewing. Mobile devices accounted for 29 percent of viewing and desktop 20 percent. Desktop is the only platform showing a decline.

Video quality is improved in all metrics, such as video start failures and rebuffering rates. The biggest quality issue now is that 12.7 percent of viewers exited their videos before they started playing, indicating that many videos still take too long to start.

Download "Conviva's All-Screen Streaming TV Census Report Q2 2018" for free for more data (registration required) or view the infographic below.

Troy Dreier's article first appeared on OnlineVideo.net