• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, January 4, 2021

Active subscriptions to on-demand video services will reach 1.9 billion globally by year-end 2025 — up 65% versus year-end 2020, projects Juniper Research.

The growth will be driven primarily by traditional broadcasters’ turning to streaming services to compete with Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and other online video giants, says the researcher, in a new report focused on OTT TV and video streaming trends.

The report forecasts that broadcasters’ growing number of hybrid services that combine subscriptions and ad-supported, lower-priced tiers -- such as NBC’s Peacock and CBS All Access -- will account for $1.4 billion in advertising spend in 2025.

Such new models will become increasingly necessary to battle subscription fatigue, notes Juniper. That’s particularly true for the U.S., where Juniper reports a current average of four subscription-based video-on-demand subscriptions per household, but also forecasts significant slowing in the growth of SVODs this year.

"Thanks to this high level of market saturation, streaming providers need to keep their offerings competitive to retain subscribers," stresses Nick Hunt, the report’s co-author. "Hybrid monetization is one way that VOD providers can keep their offerings low-cost, and therefore less likely to be dropped."

Juniper also forecasts that more than 70% of streamed video sessions over the next five years will occur on smartphones, driven by social videos on platforms like TikTok.

But because such videos do not yield a high number of advertising slots per video watched, smartphone advertising spending is projected to grow at an average rate of just 2% per  year over the forecast period.