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Video streaming services gaining ground

By on September 11, 2017

Editor’s note: The following article originally appeared in the September 7 print edition of Caribbean Business.

SAN JUAN — For this week’s poll, Gaither International asked respondents in Puerto Rico whether they use a video streaming service on a regular basis (such as Netflix or Hulu) to watch movies and/or videos. The results showed that one-third (33%) of local respondents do use this service.

About 75% of those who have watched video through streaming say they have watched within the past seven days, Gaither reported. “We can see that those who do watch movies and video via streaming are heavy users of this service,” said Melanie Dederick, a client service associate at Gaither International.

When asked which platforms or websites most respondents are using to stream videos, the top-three mentioned were YouTube (69%), Netflix (31%) and Facebook (20%). Other services with fewer mentions were: Instagram (5%), Snapchat videos (3%) and Hulu (2%).

Interestingly, YouTube and Facebook streaming services are free, while Netflix and Hulu require a monthly paid subscription. With YouTube and Facebook in the top-three mentions, this indicates that Puerto Rico users are overwhelmingly downloading free streaming services rather than opting for paid monthly memberships.

“Comparing the results from 2016 vs. the results of 2017, we see that Facebook, as a video streaming platform, has experienced significant growth, having been at 12% last year,” Dederick said. “Netflix has remained about the same and YouTube also saw some growth, even if only by 5 percentage points. It is surprising to note that Amazon’s streaming platform [via Amazon Prime, a paid membership service] barely acquired 1% of mentions.”

In terms of devices used for streaming, the preferred device for video streaming is the smartphone (75%), followed by a TV connected to an external device (13%), computer / laptop (11%), smart TVs (8%) and tablets (7%). About 1% of respondents mentioned they use other devices, which most likely refers to devices such as videogame consoles.

“Compared to 2016, there are fewer people using their computers or laptops to watch movies and videos online. It is very likely that those who used to watch via computer are now watching via their smartphone devices,” Dederik said. The overall mentions for computers / laptops have dropped by 4 percentage points while the mentions for smartphones have grown by 5 percentage points, she indicated.

When looking at the incidence of video streaming among demographic segments, the incidence of using these services is over-represented among those ages 18 to 34 years of age and among both male and female respondents. It is also over-represented in the Middle-Low lifestyle tier and the San Juan metro region.

The results are from Gaither International’s Media Brand Profiles (MBP) survey, which interviews about 500 people daily from among a representative sample of the population ages 12 and older. The MBP survey has also found that 35% of respondents interviewed say they have a paid internet service in their households.

—Polling is conducted by Gaither International and results are reported exclusively by Caribbean Business.

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