Analysis

The number of subscriptions to online video services hit 1.1 billion globally in 2020, a 26 percent year-on-year gain, according to new research released by the Motion Picture Association.

The rate of cord-cutting in the U.S. and Canada has slowed, according to Digital TV Research, which projects that the number of pay-TV subs in North America will fall to 74 million in 2026.

Broadcast television advertising spend fell by $34 billion in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic as brands shifted their investments to AVOD services, according to WARC.

Digital TV Research is forecasting that the number of subscribers to Disney+ (294 million) will overtake the Netflix total (286 million) in 2026.

The number of AVOD users in the U.S. is now close to 200 million every month, according to Omdia, which also found that the number of different OTT services accessed per user is up to 7.2.

Netflix added 8.5 million net subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2020, bringing its total membership base to 203.65 million.

Juniper Research is forecasting that there will be nearly 2 billion subscriptions to on-demand video services in 2025, a 65 percent increase from the end of 2020.

The Mandalorian ranks as 2020's most-pirated TV show on the internet through BitTorrent, according to TorrentFreak, beating out Game of Thrones, which dominated the chart for years.

In the third quarter of this year, the number of global SVOD subscribers rose by 217.6 million, according to Strategy Analytics, the highest increase ever, topping the previous record of 211.7 million in Q4 2018.

In analyzing what U.S. viewers were streaming on the platform this year, Netflix revealed that viewing of foreign-language titles was up by more than 50 percent compared to 2019.