eMarketer senior analyst at Insider Intelligence Audrey Schomer discusses important considerations when advertising on YouTube, the significance of Hulu's deal with ViacomCBS, whether there's a space in streaming land for Discovery+, and what cord-cutting will look like in 2021.

The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated cord-cutting and boosted streaming video viewing.

But cord-cutting remains rampant

While pandemic-driven lockdowns may have benefited certain forms of media, the traditional pay TV industry is not one of them. In fact, cable, satellite, and telecom TV providers will lose the most subscribers ever.

eMarketer principal analyst Mark Dolliver, junior analyst Blake Droesch and forecasting analyst at Insider Intelligence Peter Vahle discuss the implications of TikTok suing the US government, smartphone use while watching TV, a potential new tech agency, Instagram's new "Suggested Posts," the status of cord-cutting, how you can tell the temperature by counting cricket chirps and more.

Instead, cord-cutting unexpectedly accelerated, viewership declined by roughly 10 million, and 2020 ended up with 20 million fewer adults watching TV than we thought (landing at 204.2 million). However, those who stayed ratcheted up their time: Among US TV-watching adults, daily time spent with TV increased by a robust 9.2%, to 4 hours, 31 minutes (4:31) per day.

How prevalent is cord-cutting in Canada? Up until this year, the number of cable subscribers opting out of their service was fairly small compared with the total number of cable households in Canada. But some estimates have cord-cutting significantly rising in 2020 as financial pressures mount. WHAT’S IN THIS REPORT?

More people are leaving pay TV for digital alternatives, as TV networks increase their subscription costs and end promotional prices.

Many viewers, particularly cord-cutters, have migrated from traditional pay models toward broadband-only service while others have gravitated to over-the-air options.

Despite these spikes, we do not expect ad dollars to flow back to TV at previous levels due to Mexico’s strong digital ad market and increased rates of cord-cutting.

Comparatively, non-pay-TV households, which include cord-cutters and cord-nevers, will increase from 44.6 million in 2019 to 51.7 million this year. This trend will continue throughout our forecast period; by 2024, cord-cutters and cord-nevers will outnumber pay TV subscribers. Read More:. US Pay TV Suffers Historic Cord-Cutting.

Sports are on hold in the US due to the coronavirus pandemic, but digital live sports viewership will still rise more than 14% this year thanks to continued organic growth and accelerated cord-cutting.

“Connected TVs and video game consoles are the main beneficiaries of the cord-cutting trend due to increases in the number of subscription OTT and ad-free video-on-demand users and content offerings.”. See below for break-outs by media type. Social NetworkTime: 1:05, up from 56 minutes in 2019. Digital Video Time: 2:13, up from 1:46 in 2019. Digital Audio Time: 1:29, up from 1:22 in 2019.

Fewer outdoor and social viewing parties, generally less enthusiasm for sports, and accelerated cord-cutting were all likely contributing factors—the same forces that dragged down sports viewership throughout the past year. The NFL 2020 regular season saw its average ratings fall about 10% compared with 2019; other leagues like the NBA, NHL, and MLB also reported below-average ratings.

By 2024, cord-cutters and cord-nevers will outnumber pay TV subscribers. Our pay TV figures exclude vMVPDs that deliver live TV over the internet. When vMVPDs are included with traditional pay TV packages, the impact of cord-cutting looks slightly less dire. This year, 86.1 million US households will have pay TV/vMVPD, which is a 5.9% year-over-year (YoY) decrease.

According to our latest estimates for over-the-top (OTT) video services in the US, Disney+ will have 72.4 million users this year, representing 32.1% of OTT viewers.

eMarketer analyst Ross Benes, forecasting analyst Eric Haggstrom, Business Insider Intelligence research associate Daniel Carnahan and senior analyst Audrey Schomer discuss whether the coronavirus might accelerate cord-cutting, whether sports TV rights will shift to digital platforms quicker, how a delayed NFL season could impact ad spending, how many Americans watch sports, what a second COVID-19 wave might do to the leagues and its lasting effects on sports consumption.

eMarketer analyst Ross Benes and forecasting analyst Eric Haggstrom discuss what advertisers are doing with those sports programming dollars, how bad cord-cutting might get, the future of spending on original content, and more. They then cover how Disney+ is doing in the US and abroad, Fox Corp.'s recent purchase of Tubi and Hulu viewership growth.

eMarketer forecasting analyst Eric Haggstrom walks us through the current cord-cutting climate, explains why CBS is suing Locast and what Dish has been up to. Vice president of content studio Paul Verna joins the discussion to chat about streaming service password sharing, a new Facebook TV video-calling device, Spotify Q2 results and more.

At a time when the number of cord-cutters continues to climb, a new report indicates that most folks who ditched their cable TV service don’t miss anything about it.

eMarketer senior forecasting analyst Oscar Orozco tees up our numbers for the US non-pay TV population and how we define cord-cutters and cord-nevers. Watch now.