Some 12 percent of U.S. broadband households use a livestreaming platform like Facebook Live or Periscope, said a Wednesday Parks Associates report based on Q3 data. Nearly a fifth of consumers ages 18-24 engage in livestreaming activity, but livestreaming of TV shows and sports skews older, which Parks says indicates more older viewers “might be using these solutions to access illegal streams of content.” Eight percent of broadband households have used livestreaming apps to watch TV shows, and 7 percent have used them to watch sports, said analyst Brett Sappington. Though some sports franchises and leagues are livestreaming their content legitimately, “much of the produced content on these live-streaming platforms remains unsanctioned,” Sappington said. More than a third of households that livestream TV shows or sports said programming was available, but they opted for livestreaming “because they did not want to pay for access,” said the analyst. Another quarter of survey respondents said they chose livestreaming because programming prices are too high, he said. The figures represent less than 5 percent of U.S. broadband households, but Sappington called that a “significant portion” of viewers watching app-based livestreams. Other findings: 18 percent of “cord-nevers” use credentials of someone outside their household to access an online service, while 7 percent of pay-TV subscribers do, and 45 percent of broadband households are “very concerned” about receiving a virus or malware when downloading or streaming video.

The advertising-supported video experience needs to be more compelling to compete with ad-free services like Netflix, with the TV industry trying out approaches such as addressability -- different TVs tuned to the same channel at the same time receiving different targeted ads -- and cross-screen ad platforms, nScreenMedia analyst Colin Dixon blogged Monday. Change is coming fast enough to slow the shift of audiences to ad-free viewing, he said.

Total U.S. consumer spending on home entertainment content jumped 5.3 percent in 2017 to $20.49 billion, said the Digital Entertainment Group in a Tuesday report. Subscription streaming was 2017's big winner, rising 31.1 percent to $9.55 billion, said DEG. Brick and mortar rentals were the year’s big loser, declining 20 percent to $390.43 million, it said.

Consumer intentions to buy new TV sets increased in December from November, said preliminary Conference Board data released Wednesday. Nielsen canvassed 5,000 homes through Dec. 15 and found 13.5 percent plan to buy a new TV in the next six months, up from 12.6 percent in November, 12.8 percent in October and virtually unchanged from 13.6 percent in December 2016, said the board. Overall consumer confidence declined in December after five straight months of increases, including a 17-year high in November, it said. A “somewhat less optimistic outlook” for business and job prospects helped fuel the decline in consumer confidence, it said: “Consumers’ assessment of current conditions, however, improved moderately. Despite the decline in confidence, consumers’ expectations remain at historically strong levels, suggesting economic growth will continue well into 2018.”

U.S. digital advertising revenue grew 23 percent year on year in first half 2017 to $40.1 billion, the Interactive Advertising Bureau reported Wednesday. Mobile had 54 percent at $21.7 billion, from $15.5 billion in the comparable 2016 frame and $8.2 billion in the first six months of 2015, it said. Total digital video, including mobile and desktop, rose to $5.2 billion in first-half 2017, up 36 percent, with video on mobile ad spending ($2.6 billion) overtaking video on display ads.

November retail sales increased 0.9 percent sequentially from October and were up 6 percent year over year, said the National Retail Federation Thursday. Online and other non-store sales grew 10.5 percent year-over-year, reflecting the growth of online shopping, it said. November’s results indicate retail sales for the holiday season -- defined as November and December -- are on track to meet or exceed NRF’s holiday sales forecast for an increase between 3.6 and 4 percent over last year, it said. November electronics and appliance store sales were up 2.1 percent from October and up 7.3 percent year over year, NRF said. “This has been an impressive start to the holiday season, perhaps the best in the last few years,” said NRF. “The combination of job and wage gains, modest inflation and a heathy balance sheet along with elevated consumer confidence has led to solid holiday spending by American households.”

Artificial intelligence by 2020 will create more jobs than it eliminates, Gartner reported Wednesday. It forecasts that in 2020, AI-related job creation “will cross into positive territory,” reaching 2 million “net-new” jobs five years later. “Many significant innovations in the past have been associated with a transition period of temporary job loss, followed by recovery, then business transformation,” and AI likely will be no different, said Gartner. It dismissed “calamitous warnings of job losses” as those that confuse AI with automation. By 2022, one in five workers “engaged in mostly non-routine tasks will rely on AI to do a job,” it said. Leveraging technologies such as AI and robotics, “retailers will use intelligent process automation to identify, optimize and automate labor-intensive and repetitive activities that are currently performed by humans, reducing labor costs through efficiency from headquarters to distribution centers and stores,” it said. Many retailers already are “expanding technology use” to improve the point-of-sale experience, it said.

Crowded stores and more online buyers characterized Thanksgiving week ended Nov. 25, but retail spending on general merchandise categories “fell short” of that in the comparable 2016 holiday week, said NPD Thursday in its weekly point-of-sale report. Spending for the week was 2 percent lower than a year earlier, NPD said. Declines in the third and fourth week of November “dulled” the holiday selling season’s “early lead” over holiday 2016, and were up 2 percent cumulatively for the four weeks through Nov. 25, NPD said. The number of online buyers increased by more than 30 percent from a year earlier on Thanksgiving day, Black Friday and the Saturday after, but only on Saturday did the average e-commerce basket size increase by more than 2 percent, it said: “The increase in shopping traffic didn’t result in more spending, so this holiday season has some catching up to do.”

Mobile is driving most global spending on telecom services and pay-TV services, a segment expected to reach nearly $1.7 trillion this year, IDC reported Monday. Mobile spending, projected to be 52 percent of the total market in 2017, is forecast to have a 2 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2021, driven by growth in mobile data usage and machine-to-machine applications, offsetting spending declines in mobile voice and messaging services, IDC said. Fixed data service spending, at 21 percent of spending this year, is seen growing by a 4 percent CAGR over the period, driven by higher-bandwidth services. Spending on pay-TV services -- cable, satellite, internet protocol and digital terrestrial -- is projected to be flat over the five-year period, but they're an increasingly important part of the multiplay offerings of telecom providers worldwide, IDC said, with spending forecast to grow 9 percent this year and 7 percent in 2018. Spending on fixed voice services, meanwhile, will drop at a 6 percent compound annual growth rate over the forecast period, to less than 10 percent of the total market by 2021. An increase in IP voice isn't offsetting "rapidly declining” time-division multiplexing voice revenue, it said.

Nearly 60 percent of U.S. TV households own at least one internet-enabled device capable of streaming content to a TV, said a Nielsen report. Penetration of connected devices has grown 12 percent since June 2016 and includes a range of product types: streaming media devices such as Apple TV, Google’s Chromecast and Amazon Fire TV; game consoles; and smart TVs. Of the 69.5 million TV homes with at least one connected streaming media device, 6.5 million have access to all three categories. Smart TVs are “approaching ubiquity and becoming more accessible to the average consumer,” said Nielsen, with a third of TV homes having an internet-enabled TV. Connected game consoles are in a third of U.S. TV homes, and some 31 million homes have at least two devices that can stream video content to a TV, it said. Households with internet-enabled devices skew young, employed and affluent, and half are under 45 years of age, Nielsen said. Connected households are more likely to have children and have a median income of $70,500, it said.