MediaPost Publications

The home entertainment market is consolidating around the smart TV, with the TV now being the most commonly used platform for accessing video content, according to Parks Associates.

Consumers are being re-trained to use remote control devices with voice to interact with smart TVs.

For example, to search for a movie on Amazon Prime Video remote, a consumer holds the remote’s microphone button, names a TV show or movie title and rapid speech recognition instantly provides ...read more

More than one in five (22%) of U.S. broadband households plan to purchase a voice-controlled smart speaker this year, according to Parks Associates.

From the article "Santa More Likely To Bring Smart Speakers Over Smartwatches" by Chuck Martin.

New research from Parks Associates found that more than one in five consumers plan to purchase a voice-controlled smart speaker with a personal assistant in 2017.

Interest in the category is growing along the introduction of new devices and the expansion of others, such as the increasing number of models of Amazon Echo and Google Home devices.

"It's still early days for the voice-first market, but rapid early adoption of products like smart speakers with personal assista ...read more

TV customers have a high rate of starting and stopping many new OTT services.

Parks Associates says that with the exception of Netflix and Amazon Prime, OTT services experience churn rates exceeding 50% of their subscriber base.

Research also shows that more than 50% of U.S. OTT subscription homes subscribe to multiple OTT video services. Of these multi-OTT households, 81% use Netflix plus some other service or combination of services -- mostly Amazon or Hulu.

From t ...read more

Google Home and most recently Amazon’s Alexa can tell whose voice is talking to it so it can respond to the right person, making the voice assistants even more personally tuned.

Around 11% or so of U.S. consumers own an Amazon Echo or Google Home, making the percentages relatively small but the numbers high. For example, 15 million Amazon Echo devices were sold just last year, according to Parks Associates.

From the article "Smart Light Bulb Owners Turn To Amazon Echo, G ...read more

A large majority (73%) of U.S. broadband consumers express a desire to keep tight control over access to their personal data, with nearly half being very concerned that someone will access the data without their permission, according to a new report by Parks Associates.

In terms of trust, only 5% of broadband consumers ranked pay-TV providers as trustworthy. Here’s how they rank as the most trustworthy companies:

62% -- Home insurance provider
59% -- Security monitorin ...read more

Despite the relatively high cost, 2 million smart door locks will be sold by 2021, according to a new study by Parks Associates.

Annual sales from the devices will increase from $207 million this year to pass $357 million within five years, with the adoption rate increasing more than 75% from this year.

However, half of consumers view smart door locks and smart video doorbells as too expensive, according to Parks Associates, pegging the average price of a smart door lock ...read more

Starting simple with AI technologies, there are recommendation engines: "Early low-hanging fruit for brands to harness the power of AI is in content discovery,” Glenn Hower, senior analyst at Parks Associates, told attendees at the "A.I. Meets Media: Innovation Summit" presented by Ooyala.

Netflix, Amazon, and YouTube have all been tweaking their recommendation engines for years. Ingesting user data and predicting what each consumer is most likely to want to watch sounds rel ...read more