TV and film measurement service Rentrak recently released its latest “State of VOD” report, which found that free video-on-demand viewing of prime time broadcast television programming increased 24 percent over the same period last year. The Rentrak report also found that 66 percent of prime time program viewing occurred after the third day of original broadcasts, suggesting that there is increased opportunity to generate additional advertising dollars for VOD.

“Based on the report’s findings, which is broken into three parts — free-on-demand, subscription-on-demand and transactional-on-demand — an average of 43.3 million televisions (out of a total of 111 million) accessed VOD content, with almost nine hours of time spent viewing per month,” reports Creative Planet.

“The total time spent viewing all VOD content was 4.4 billion hours, a three percent increase from the previous year. The TV Entertainment category, which includes programming from many of the top broadcast and cable networks, also saw a 17 percent increase in time spent viewing.”

Additionally, the report notes that about two-thirds of viewing for cable network programs occurred after the third day of original airing, and transactional Movies On Demand via pay TV services generated $1.5 billion.

“The consumer is utilizing the VOD button on their remote in a bigger way than ever, and TV networks have responded with their best programming,” said Bill Livek, Rentrak CEO and vice chairman.

For more information, check out the Rentrak press release.