Video entertainment resilient to economic distress
Price inflation and wage squeeze are not putting a dampener on "TV" as consumers ratchet up their spend and their time spent on home video entertainment, according to the latest 2025 Video Trends Report from TiVo. The average number of services used by consumers is up too with the average number of FAST channels watched by viewers almost doubling year on year but SVOD churn has increased.
Spending increases, bundles gain traction
Viewers are now using close to 11 different video sources (it was 9 in 2024), including cable and satellite TV, premium streaming services, social platforms, and free ad-supported options, per TiVo’s report which surveyed consumer habits across the U.S. and Canada during the second quarter this year. Americans and Canadians are also spending over five hours a day, on average, viewing video content; up from 4.4hrs in Q2 2024.
With these choices, spending on video entertainment has increased. On average, consumers are paying $20-30 more per month than they did last year. The report attributes this to seasonal price increases and the popularity of bundled service offerings for exclusive content available only on select platforms.
Indeed, the data shows that video service bundles continue to gain traction. Tivo, a subsidiary of Xperi, concludes that consumers value the ability to access a diversity of content across multiple services.
“This willingness to spend highlights a strong desire for personalized and high-quality viewing experiences as well as the resiliency of video in these trying economic time,” said Xperi’s chief product and services officer, Geir Skaaden. “Consumers are looking for simplification by increasingly opting into the bundles and platforms that provide the highest-quality content for their household at the best value.”
The TV is overwhelmingly the most preferred device for watching video by almost a 3x margin. This includes a fractional rise in short form content consumed on the larger screen but the report also notes a 5.5% rise in viewing of long form content on cell phones. Three quarters of the survey’s cohort already own a smart TV and 21.6% say they planning to buy a smart TV in the next six months. Of those, 52.8% of respondents are planning to add a new TV to their home and 47.2% are planning to replace a TV.
FAST viewing up
The rise of viewing of FAST channels is an implicit consequence of smart TV penetration. Nearly 70% of respondents report using at least one Free AVOD/FAST service in Q2, an increase of about 8% year-over-year. The average number FAST channels watched has almost doubled to nine this year.
Over three quarters of all Free AVOD/FAST viewers noted watching some form of free live streaming TV or FAST channels which in Q2 2025 accounts for roughly 55% the viewing time of all Free AVOD/FAST services. This trend spans news, genre channels (like Westerns) and binge show channels (like Baywatch).
SVOD churn concern
The overwhelming majority of people use SVOD services but at the same time, over a quarter of respondents have cancelled a service in the last six months. Another 28.7% say they started subscribing to a new service in that period. The comparison figures for spring 2024 were 18.5% and 19.2% indicating higher churn.
As expected, the usage of ad-supported versions of SVOD services continues to increase slightly year-over-year with the top three tiers being Peacock (69.3%), Paramount+ (59.7%), and Prime Video (59.1%).
Planned PayTV cancellations over the next six months are also up by 3% with potential cord cutters’ however, this decline has a surprising coda. The report found that the share of respondents who cut the cord but later decided to resubscribe to a traditional pay TV service actually increased by 10% (to 31.9%). This tallies with potential cord cutters’ preference for continuing to watching live TV via a vMVPD streaming service.
Content discovery a challenge
Despite the abundance of content, discovery remains a challenge. Per the report, the number of people relying on commercials for discovery has dropped by 5% since last year, and by over 14% since mid-2022. Instead, audiences are seeking recommendations from friends, social media buzz, online reviews, and algorithm-driven suggestion.
The percentage of respondents who use multiple apps in each viewing session remains high with 73.5% noting that they have to use multiple apps (compared to 72.7% in Q2 2024). Over half of respondents found it annoying to browse multiple apps before settling on something to watch which is up about 3% year-over-year. Excluding Amazon’s IMDB (which is used by 39% of respondents), JustWatch remains the most commonly used companion app.
The report also notes:
AVOD quality believed to have improved: Perceptions of the quality of programming across free services have increased, with AVOD services seeing an 8% jump from Q2 2024. TV Network Apps also jumped 8% according to this metric while the related perception of content on SVOD dropped by 3.5%.
Voice control growing: Voice control awareness and usage has increased. 47% of respondents noted that they currently own an entertainment device that offers voice control, an increase of about 5% since this time last year. Among those whose devices offer voice control, 75.2% of respondents use this feature. This represents a YoY increase of 9%.
Ad tolerance high: Consumers’ ad tolerance has remained largely consistent, with about 75% noting that they are at least tolerant of ads. The biggest complaint is about the volume of ads or frequency of ad breaks consumers have to sit through compared to the amount of actual programme being shown.
Local content shows value: The importance of local content has increased over the past year, with 61% noting that it is ‘somewhat or very important’ compared to 54.8% YoY. 29.8% of all time spent watching video is spent watching local content, compared to 22.6% in 2023.
SVOD daytime viewing: The report indicates what it describes as ‘the first major shift’ in daytime viewing. The last quarter found that 41.5% of SVOD content is being consumed during primetime, with 15.5% of it watched during the morning, compared to 48.6% and 11% in Q2 2024.
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