CONSUMERS WATCHING MORE TV ONLINE

The past year has seen an exponential increase in the numbers of viewers watching broadcast and cable content online, according to a new Video Benchmark Report by software maker Adobe. Major sports events such as the Winter Olympics, basketball’s March Madness and soccer’s World Cup were the biggest contributors to a 388 percent rise in "TV everywhere" accesses, but broadcast and cable networks also saw their regular content being consumed nearly twice as much as it was a year ago. The average consumer streamed 5.6 episodes a month during the past year versus 3.1 episodes a month in 2013. Overall, Adobe said, the second quarter of 2014 saw 38.2 billion online video starts, up 47.3 percent from the year-ago quarter. Judging by the trend over just the past six months, the number of unique visitors to video sites grew 85 percent. In a related matter, Adobe said that it is teaming up with Nielsen to deliver a service that regularly measures the audience for online video content.