It's no surprise that more and more households are beaming in their favorite shows over the internet, but even as cable-cutting completion grows, one service stills remains the top dog by a sizable margin.
As you might've guessed, that service is Netflix, which takes up more of members' viewing time in the US than all major competing over-the-top (OTT) streaming services combined, according to MarketingCharts.
The data, gathered by comScore, shows Netflix holds a 40% share of total viewing hours of an OTT service, with YouTube coming up in second place with 18%, Hulu third with 14% and Amazon Video at 7%. Together, these services combine for 39% — just a percent short of the share Netflix commands solo.
This information follows another comScore survey from April that found Netflix ruled over other streaming services in terms of reach, but competition was creeping up in another category: engagement.
While Netflix has a greater share of viewing hours and household penetration, services like Sling TV and Hulu were close to leading the pack when it came to how long watchers were actively using the service each day.
It looks like Hulu has finally taken the lead, as this most recent comScore survey found that Hulu users studied averaged 2.9 hours per viewing day. That beat Amazon Video's two hours, YouTube's 2.1 hours, and even Netflix's 2.2 hours by a considerable amount.
As Hulu begins rolling out its live TV offering alongside Google's own YouTube TV, it might become even harder for Netflix to hold viewers' per-day attention, though its consistently growing library of original content seems to show no sign of slowing momentum for the streaming giant.
That said, it appears there's increasing merit for streaming services that specialize in a steady schedule of new content over sudden bursts of binge watching material.
Netflix may still have more eyes on its content per month than its top three competitors put together, but it appears Hulu in particular may have a new hill to stake its claim on.
