David Farnor | On 09, Jul 2017

Netflix officially dominates online viewing in the US, new research reveals, but Hulu wins the battle for viewers in one key area.

It can be easy to forget how wide Netflix’s net spreads in the online era. New data from ComScore, as featured in MarketingCharts’ latest report, shows just how much the streaming giant dominates the video landscape: Netflix accounts for 40 per cent of over-the-top viewing hours in online households, more than all of its rivals combined. YouTube trails at 18 per cent, followed by Hulu (14 per cent) and Amazon Video (7 per cent).

One factor that can affect the services people use is the device they watch through. On Blu-ray players, Netflix accounts for a larger-than-average 63 per cent share, while on Smart TVs, it accounts for 57 per cent of viewing time. Roku and Chromecast users, on the other hand, only spend 26 per cent of their viewing time on Netflix, with MarketingCharts noting a tendency for Roku users to watch Hulu and Amazon and for Chromecast uses, unsurprisingly, to use YouTube.

Overall, Netflix accounts for an average of 12.3 days of streaming a month in a typical household, while 75 per cent of online households all use Netflix on their TVs. Most OTT households in the US use only one or two apps every month, with 75 per cent using three or fewer. For those who only use one app (30 per cent), Netflix again dominates, accounting for half of them (YouTube accounts for one-quarter).

Hulu, however, trumps Netflix in one surprising aspect: engagement. According to ComScore, Hulu’s viewers are more engaged than those of any other streaming service: despite Netflix’s greater market penetration, Hulu’s average household watches 2.9 hours per viewing day, far ahead of Netflix’s 2.2 hours, YouTube’s 2.1 hours and Amazon Video’s 2 hours.

Should Hulu manage to increase its audience share to the point of Netflix’s market saturation, then, the streaming giant would have a major contender for its crown in the USA.

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