Smart Screen Exclusive

By Chris Tribbey

For all the work pay TV providers are putting into TV Everywhere platforms, the efforts are still going largely unrecognized by their subscribers.

That’s according to a consumer survey report from Digitalsmiths, which found (for the second straight quarter) that more than 50% of respondents didn’t know whether or not their cable or satellite company offered a TV Everywhere app.

Only 19.6% of the survey’s 3,000-plus respondents had actually downloaded a TV Everywhere app to their mobile device, and of those, 44.6% said they barely accessed the app on a weekly basis.

“Our recommendation to the pay TV providers is to do a much better job promoting those apps and making their consumers aware of them,” is the advice offered by Billy Purser, VP of marketing for Digitalsmiths.

Instead of TV Everywhere apps, consumers seem more interested in the apps provided by individual networks, with more than 31% saying they’ve downloaded more than one. And when it comes to social media applications, there truly is a measurable benefit for TV shows, Purser said.

“We’re very impressed by that with only about 17% of people posting on social networks about what they’re watching, the overall consumer audience we’ve reached out to showed 30% of them are influenced by those posts,” he said. “The more a pay TV provider and even the networks themselves can encourage their fans and viewership to post about [a show], it does have an influence on who watches.”

The report — Q3 2013 Video Discovery Trends — shows that less than 3% of respondents actually have plans to cut their pay TV cord completely in the next six months, but that an alarming 34% answered “maybe” to that question. What Digitalsmiths is finding, Purser said, is that pay TV subscribers are going halfway: almost 17% said they’ve decreased or removed services, with more than 45% of those killing premium channel services.

“The one thing we are seeing is a term we introduced last quarter: cord cheating,” Purser said. “People are taking off dollars they [saved] cutting the cord with and putting that money towards a Hulu or Netflix, leveraging their money in other ways.”

The report does note that more than 17% of respondents actually upped their pay TV services, with HBO and sports packages leading the way.

In terms of overall TV viewing,  Digitalsmiths found a decrease in hours of TV watched per day (under three hours), with 54% of respondents watching two hours or fewer of live TV. And nearly 89% say they’re watching the same channels repeatedly (80.2% said they watch fewer than 10 channels overall).

“I think what you’re seeing is that the average consumer, unfortunately, is still only watching 8-10 channels, and because they don’t have a very good discovery experience, they’re surfing those 8-10 channels, not finding what potentially interests them, go look at their DVR to see if something’s there, and then they go to some other solution,” Purser said. “If the provider can make it easier for the content to find the user, instead of the user having to go out and find the content, the overall number of channels watched is going to increase.”

More than 48% of respondents said they’re going elsewhere (Netflix, Hulu, etc.) for content a pay TV provider could be offering, and 28.7% say they’re getting content from a third-party rental service (like Redbox or iTunes). That’s money pay TV operators are leaving on the table, Purser said.

“They obviously could be doing a better job, but if you look at the average household and the number of movies they do rent today, if you could implement a better guide service, and increase that movie rental number by one or two per month, from a percentage standpoint of their overall bill, that’s pretty good,” he said.

“By improving the discovery process and personalizing the experience, like what [consumers are] used to with music services like Pandora, you make it easier for consumers to find the video content that they want, and make that rental.”

A copy of the Q3 report can be found here: http://www.digitalsmiths.com/resources/white-papers/

Look for Ben Weinberger, co-founder and CEO of Digitalsmiths, Jan. 6 at the International Consumer Electronics Show, where he’ll be presenting his firm’s latest findings at the 2^nd Screen Summit (1-6 p.m., Treasure Island).

Registration for the 2^nd Screen Summit can be accessed here: 2ndscreensociety.com/ces2014/