Mumbai: Global streaming grew 10 percent globally, including continued growth in mature markets like North America (5 percent) and Europe (9 percent), during the Q1 of 2022 as compared to 2021, according to the latest Conviva’s State of Streaming report, the continuous measurement analytics platform for streaming media.

“Despite recent news of Netflix’s subscriber contraction, streaming continues to grow worldwide, encompassing an ever-growing stable of platforms offering unique and original content. In mature markets like the US and Europe, viewers are upscreening from small devices to Smart TVs, setting the foundation for streaming to overtake linear TV on the big screen” said Conviva president, CEO Keith Zubchevich.

Conviva’s Q1 2022 report found big screens (which includes connected TVs, smart TVs and gaming consoles) continue to be the streaming device of choice, responsible for 77 percent of all streamed minutes globally in Q1 2022. Within the big screen category, smart TV viewing time grew by 34 percent while desktops and gaming consoles declined by 15 percent versus Q1 2021. Connected TV device viewing slightly declined again this quarter, down 1 percent YOY. Within the connected TV category, Roku maintained the largest share of viewing time (31 percent) with Amazon Fire coming in second at 16 percent.

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When it came to actual minutes streamed, Android TV was the big leader in growth across all the top big screens—up 78 percent. In yet another win for smart TVs, LG TV, Samsung TV, and Vizio TV all also had double-digit growth, up about 20 percent.

Quality Improves with One Exception: Globally, bitrate/picture quality (up 17.3 percent), buffering (down nearly 1 percent) and video start failures (down 17.6 percent) all improved significantly. Video start times were the one negative mark in terms of quality, as the wait for videos to start increased in every region, up 30 percent globally. Viewers in Africa waited the longest (8 seconds) while Europe had the fastest start time, waiting just four seconds on average.

In Q4 2021, the streaming industry saw advertising delays and increased buffering, but streaming advertising bounced back nicely in Q1 2022. Ad impressions were up 18 percent and ad attempts were up 14 percent, thanks in part to big, live sporting events like the Super Bowl, March Madness and the Winter Olympics.

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TikTok Reigns for Sports Leagues: Streaming on social platforms continues to be a key way for sports leagues to engage fans, and according to Conviva, TikTok was the only platform to grow its streaming audience share for every sports league measured. Bundesliga, Serie A, and the Premier League increased their audience share for streaming videos on TikTok the most at 6 percent each with the NFL coming right behind them with 4 percent growth on TikTok YOY. In fact, both Superbowl teams – the Rams and the Bengals – gained over 100k TikTok followers in a single day (Feb 13-14).

Methodology: Conviva’s data is primarily collected using proprietary sensor technology with a global footprint of more than 500 million unique viewers watching 200 billion streams per year across nearly four billion applications streaming on devices. Embedded directly within streaming video applications, the sensor measures across content and ads to analyze nearly three trillion real-time transactions per day for its customers. In the State of Streaming report, the year-over-year data from Q1 2022 as compared to Q1 2021 was normalized based on Conviva’s customer base. The social media data consists of data from over 2800 accounts, over 1.8 million posts, and over 10 billion engagements across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube in Q1 2022. Social data for professional sports leagues was collected from individual leaderboard lists for each sports league that totaled 262 individual team accounts and tallied over five billion cross-platform engagements in Q1 2022.

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