Pay-TV services to push global consumer video media spends to reach $314 billion in 2017

Pay-TV services which has been a major component of consumer video media services will comprise of 90% of this segment.

Global spending on consumer video media services will total $314 billion in 2017, as per a report by Gartner released on Friday.

This will lead to a 4.2% increase from 2016 from $301.6 billion total video media services spends in that year.

Pay-TV services like subscription television, premium television, or premium channels are subscription-based television services. They are services usually provided by both analog and digital cable and satellite television, but also increasingly via digital terrestrial and internet television.

“…internet-delivered linear TV services have already launched in India and the Middle East, and Gartner expects these services will commence across all emerging regions by 2018,” the report said.

Pay-TV services will amount to $282 billion in 2017, while subscription-based video on demand (S-VOD) and Transactional video on demand (T-VOD) will amount to $18.7 billion and $13.6 billion respectively.

“In 2017, emerging Asia/Pacific (20.8 percent) and Middle East and North Africa (17.4 percent) are forecast to record the highest growth in end-user spending on consumer video media services,” the report said.

Fernando Elizalde, principal research analyst at Gartner said, “We estimate that, incentivized by lower prices, one million households in emerging regions will enter the pay-TV market through an internet TV service by 2020.”

Pay-TV services amounted to $275.2 billion in 2016 and is estimated to reach $309.1 billion in 2020 with S-VOD and T-VOD reaching $30.1 billion and $19.2 billion respectively.

Total video media services is estimated to reach $358.4 billion in 2020.

T-VOD offers consumers the ability to access a wide variety of content, from either managed Pay-TV providers or over-the-top (OTT) companies such as Amazon, Google or Apple, Gartner said.

"Consumers will not subscribe to more than three services," said Derek O'Donnell, senior research analyst at Gartner. "This is because of price and content discovery fatigue. Consumers are having to go through each application separately to find content, which can create fatigue."

'Universal search,' the report added was the ‘key to driving further penetration,’ which will allow consumers to search for content across all their S-VOD services.

"However, this is a 'holy grail' in the industry as providers, such as Netflix and HBO don't want to cooperate," added O'Donnell. “Therefore, true universal search is still some years away.”