According to data gathered by Rentrak from its MSO customers, video-on-demand (VOD) viewing increased by 59 percent in the first quarter of 2008, compared with the same timeframe last year.
The data gathered from Rentrak’s subscribing cable operators showed that consumers increased their time spent viewing VOD programming by 185 million hours versus the first quarter of 2007. The quarterly VOD playtime data is part of the expanded information that will be included in Rentrak’s “State of VOD” that is slated to be released next month.
Rentrak’s first-quarter data also showed a 36 percent increase in the amount of VOD content available to consumers. In the first quarter of 2007, there were about 52,000 titles available from Rentrak’ subscribing MSOs. In the first quarter of 2008, that number jumped to 70,500 titles, with the Free On Demand (FOD) category providing the highest increase in titles as new networks and additional content continue to be launched.
Additional findings included:
- The swell in VOD programming included increases in the playtime for all content types, including Free On Demand (48 percent increase, or 95.4 million hours), Subscription On Demand (41 percent increase, or 75.3 million hours) and Transactional On Demand (11 percent increase, or 14.2 million hours).
- Free movies accounted for the most FOD playtime minutes at 33 percent, with kids’ programming coming in at a close second with 29 percent.
- The top-five FOD categories based on total transactions in the first quarter of 2008 were music, kids, TV entertainment, free movies and the cutting edge. The top-five categories accounted for 85 percent of all FOD orders.
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