I’m pleased to present the 508th edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia. We hope all of our listeners are staying well and we urge everyone to take all precautions possible.

In this week’s podcast, we focus on how the virus and stay at home guidelines are continuing to change viewership and monetization. First up we review Conviva data that shows a huge uptick in daytime viewing. Colin shares Nielsen data that Netflix recently accounted for 29% of video streaming on TVs and 9 out of the top 10 most viewed streaming shows.

Colin likes Sling TV's “Stay in & SLING” initiative, which seems like a smart on-ramp to get viewers engaged with free VOD content. HBO’s decision to make 500 hours of its classic TV programs and Warner Bros. movies available for free is in line with this thinking and a great promotion for HBO Max. We agree that Quibi could also benefit from a free tier of content, beyond the 90-day trial it is offering at launch.

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As part of VideoNuze's coverage of the virus's impact on the TV/video industries, we're publishing a series of short interviews with industry thought-leaders. The goal is to have them share relevant details of how their companies are experiencing the virus's impact, to help us all be better informed in our decision-making. Today's interview is with Joe Hirsch, CEO of SpringServe, a leading independent video ad platform. A few key takeaways from the interview: CTV is posting the biggest percentage growth, sports channel viewership is holding up, ad demand is dropping (consistent with IAB research) and publishers are digging into operations to squeeze out every dollar they can.

Read on for the full interview. And also check out our Coronavirus Video Industry Research Hub for more data and insights.

VideoNuze: Which categories of viewing are spiking as people are staying at home?

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Conviva has released new data showing how significantly daytime viewership has surged due to virus-related stay-at-home guidelines. Comparing viewership during the week of March 17-23 to viewership in the 2 weeks immediately preceding, Conviva found increases between 33%-43% in the 10am-5pm window (see chart below). The peak increase of 43% was achieved at 11am.

Early morning hours of 6am-9am also saw a surge of between 14%-33%, while early fringe of 5pm-7pm had increases between 7%-31%. Traditional primetime viewership has been mostly unaffected, with 8pm (+2%), 9pm (-3%) and 10pm (-4%).

The net impact of this is a shift in total viewing per day from the 3 hours of the night primetime daypart to the 7 hour daytime daypart. Conviva said that viewership in the 7 hour daytime daypart March 17-23 comprised 32.3% of total viewing per day (vs. 18.9% in the 3 hours of night primetime) up from 27.1% in the March 3-9 window (vs. 22.4% in night primetime). Note that viewing time per hour is still higher in night primetime.

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Yesterday Comcast shared select network data on how significant changes in consumer behavior have been due to virus-driven stay at home guidelines. Comcast said that since March 1st, peak traffic is up 32% overall, and 60% in some geographies. Peak or “primetime” for downstream traffic has shifted from 9pm to 7pm-8pm and peak time for upstream traffic has changed from 9pm to between 8am-6pm (no doubt reflecting the widespread use of two-way videoconferencing apps, which Comcast said is up 212%).

Comcast noted spikes in specific types of video viewing: streaming (up 38%), VOD (up 25%) and gaming downloads (up 50%). Even linear TV appears to be increasing (up 6% or 4 hours per week, to 64 hours per week). No doubt reflecting our stationary lives, Comcast said that LTE mobile data usage was down 10% while WiFi mobile data usage was up 24% since March 1st. Comcast said that its network is “performing well” and that it is running over 700K speed tests most days.

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