The Evolution of the Global Video on Demand Market

The accelerated transition from pay TV to VOD services drove hundreds of media and entertainment (M&E) companies across the globe to launch their own streaming platforms. In the past five years, the proliferation of vendors has made the VOD ecosystem an increasingly crowded space.

With more online streaming service options than ever, VOD operators need to differentiate themselves amid fierce competition. Pricing strategies, content quality, and user experience are the primary factors influencing VOD platforms’ performance and ability to retain end users.

Not only has the market become more fragmented in recent years, but rising inflation rates and the worsening macroeconomic conditions have also increased subscription fatigue and impacted end users’ willingness to pay for multiple streaming services at the same time.

With the limitations on subscription-based revenue growth, VOD vendors are innovating their monetization strategies. Major market participants have adopted hybrid approaches, combining subscription, advertising, and pay-per-view strategies. Advertising, in particular, has proven to be a major revenue driver for streaming operators.

Rapid technological advancements in the broader M&E and streaming industries, especially with the expansion of artificial intelligence (AI), large language models (LLM), and machine learning (ML) use cases, are causing significant disruption in the VOD market.

VOD vendors are incorporating technologies such as AI and ML across their workflows to gain efficiencies in content distribution and advertising insertion, create intelligent recommendation engines, increase content personalization, and boost user interaction on their platforms.

This study covers the global market for video on demand (VOD) services that go over the top (OTT), i.e., providers that distribute video content directly to customers over a non-managed public internet connection. This report excludes other means of delivering on-demand video, such as satellite services or Internet Protocol TV (IPTV), video-hosting platforms like YouTube, and social live-streaming services such as Twitch or Kick.

VOD consists of a distribution system that allows users to instantly access and stream their preferred content from a platform’s online media library. With the OTT model, end users can access content without requiring any memory space via an open internet connection and compatible devices such as tablets, laptops, smart TVs, smartphones, or streaming sticks. During the past decade, billions of users have adopted these services as their primary entertainment channel.

This study broadly addresses the global VOD industry in terms of drivers, restraints, pricing trends, and growth opportunities, along with a more detailed quantitative analysis for the subscription video on demand (SVOD) segment of the market. This analysis includes revenue, paid licenses, and net new licenses forecast, as well as a regional market share estimation. Show more