“Channel surfing” was a staple of growing up in the 80s and 90s, and it’s finally making a comeback. In a world of on-demand streaming and robust channel guides, good old channel surfing is back as a way to ease the dig for content, especially after a long day.
“I come home in the evenings, I’m tired from work,” Xumo CEO Colin Petrie-Norris said in describing his own viewing habits. “I want to eat my meal. I don’t want to hold a remote control and search around for an hour on Netflix trying to pick out a movie.”
The daunting home screens of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video offer another hurdle to getting there, so consumers are going back to TV — specifically, ad-supported TV services.
NextTV recently published a feature story highlighting channel surfing's triumphant comeback thanks to the rise in AVOD services. According to a TVision report, the share of app viewers using AVOD has grown to 37.4 percent in Q2 2021 from 34.5 percent in the first quarter and 32 percent a year ago. And, according to Horowitz Research, 46 percent of TV content viewers in the U.S. report using an AVOD service at least once per month, 28 percent of which use a free ad-supported TV (FAST) service with ad-supported linear channels, in addition to watching their on-demand video subscription services.
“We’re seeing lots of engagement via home screen banners, through our search functions and by utilizing the WatchFree button on the remote,” Vizio VP of engagement Steve DeMain said. “But there are a lot of people who are new to streaming that prefer leaning back and surfing, like they have for decades now, through a programming guide.”
AVODs continued ascent mirrors other consumer reports showing that subscribers really don’t care that much about ads. An Ampere report showed that in 2018 Q3, 37 percent of consumers don’t mind seeing ads while watching shows or movies. In 2021 Q1, it jumped to 46 percent. In the on-demand streaming world, almost twice as many consumers prefer tiered subscription services that offer a paid, ad-free option and a free or less expensive ad-supported option — and 60 percent of Americans have already made the switch to an ad-supported streaming service.
Regardless of how you consume your AVOD content, it’s nice to see that at least one standby of old-school TV is making a comeback. Now, if only we could get those cheesy music compilation commercials back, too.