A report released on Wednesday stated, the global over-the-top (OTT) video market is expected to reach 4.2 billion users by 2027, with an impressive 53 percent penetration rate.

According to data presented by OnlyAccounts.io, the number of users in the over-the-top video segment has increased by 45 percent over the last five years, rising from 2.4 billion in 2018 to 3.5 billion in 2023.

OTT has taken over the video market and will continue to expand in the future, IANS reported from New Delhi.

According to Statista Market Insights, approximately 2.4 billion people around the world used OTT video services in 2018. Over the next two years, this figure more than tripled to more than 3 billion.

The market’s impressive user growth continued in 2021, with another 300 million people joining. The year 2022 saw an 82 million user drop, the first in years, but the upward trend continued in 2023.

Between 2018 and 2023, more than one billion people worldwide began using OTT video services, causing market user penetration to rise from 33.2 percent to 45.6 percent, according to the report.

Over the last five years, streaming behemoths have spent hundreds of billions of dollars creating new content in an effort to increase their viewership, pushing the total number of OTT video users to record highs.

All of the market’s largest service providers, including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, and Disney+, have seen their subscriber counts double and triple in the last five years, assisting total market revenue to reach new highs.

OTT video service providers are expected to earn nearly $295 billion in revenue in 2023, nearly three times the $98.7 billion reported in 2018.

The top three markets, the United States, China, and the United Kingdom, will account for roughly 70 percent of that value.

OTT video advertising is the market’s largest revenue stream, accounting for $176.6 billion, or nearly 60 percent, of total revenue this year.