Underlying Data
Antenna sources data from a variety of data collection partners which contribute millions of permission-based, consumer opt-in, raw transaction records. These are derived from digital purchase and cancellation receipts, consumer subscription signals, credit, debit and banking data. Antenna cleans and models this raw data, and then subsequently weighs the panel to correct for demographic and behavioral skews.
Core Metric Definitions
- Subscribers: The number of paying Subscribers for each Service at the end of each month.
- Cancels: Number of users who canceled in each month. Cancel date is determined when the Subscription lapses (loss of access) for iTunes; for all other Distributors the Cancel date is determined when the Subscriber explicitly acts to cancel the service.
- Trial Users: Users who are currently enrolled in a Service’s Free Trial program, and have not yet converted to paid Subscribers. A free trial is defined as 6 months or less. Free trials that are longer than 6 months are not considered an Antenna Sign-up, however those which convert to paying Subscribers are captured as Antenna Subscribers.
Calculated Metric Definitions
- Sign-ups: Users who Sign-up to a Service as paid Subscribers or free trials. We do not include Trial Conversions in this metric to avoid double-counting individuals who signed up via a free trial.
- Gross Subscriber Adds: New paying Subscribers in each month, including both new and converted (from trial) Subscribers.
- Net Subscribers Adds: New paying Subscribers in each month, including both new and converted (from trial) Subscribers, less the Cancels in that same month.
- Churn Rate: Cancels in a given month divided by Subscribers at the end of the previous month. A Churn is counted when the Subscription lapses (loss of access) for iTunes; for all other Distributors a Churn is counted when the Subscriber explicitly acts to cancel the service.
- Trial Conversion Rate: The percentage of Trials that convert to paying Subscribers. A Trial is defined as 6 months or less. Trial Conversion Rate is calculated for the conversion month. Eligible buyers are those whose Trial is expiring in a given month.
- Survival: The percentage of new Subscribers in a given month who remained subscribed and did not cancel in each period thereafter. Users who cancel cannot re-enter in subsequent periods.
- 12-month Resubscribe Rate: The percentage of Gross Subscriber Adds who had previously Subscribed to and since canceled the same Service (via any Distributor) within the prior 12 months.
- Overlap Rate: The percentage of Subscribers who Subscribe to both Service A and Service B in the same month.
- Switching Rate: The percentage of users who canceled [Cancel Service] who Subscribed to [New Service] within one month.
Antenna's Subscriber Coverage
Antenna Subscribers includes Subscribers who made an explicit paid purchase of a service and are currently being measured in Antenna’s core panel. This currently includes Subscribers that have signed up for a service directly (by going to the Service’s own sign-up page), as well as through Apple App or Google Play Store. In addition, for Video services, we also measure several distribution channels which are prevalent in that category: Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Channels, Hulu Live + TV, Roku App Store, The Roku Channel, YouTube PrimeTime Channels, and YouTube TV.
What is not Measured
Consumers not counted as a Subscriber by Antenna include:
- Trial users who have not (yet) converted to paid
- Non-paid users in long-term trials over 6 months in length
- Non-paid users in perpetuity (e.g., Peacock free tier)
- Commercial contracts (e.g., Netflix in your hotel room)
- Corporate liable (e.g., Subscriptions purchased by corporations on behalf of their employees)
- Consumers who get access to services included in broad intra-company bundles (e.g., Amazon Prime Video and Amazon Music within Amazon Prime) or inter-company bundles (e.g. SVOD service included at no additional charge in a Comcast Xfinity 200 channel package)
- Subscribers who are outside of the 50 United States and D.C. (e.g., Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories)
Additional Note: We measure subscription at the individual level, not at the household level. For instance, if one member of a household is subscribed to Spotify, and a different member of the same household is subscribed to Netflix, we would not observe that as an “overlap”. Therefore, the absolute values for Metrics such as Resubscribe, Overlap and Switching will typically be lower than a household level measurement would report.
Why do Antenna's Subscriber numbers sometimes not line up with the numbers which Services publicly report?
While Antenna’s numbers will typically directionally align with the numbers that companies report to the public, there are numerous reasons that the exact counts will vary, including:
- Subscriber Definition: Antenna follows the very specific definition described above to count a Subscriber, which will frequently differ (sometimes substantially) from the definitions which Services use to count their own subscribers. For example, Apple may count an individual who purchases an Apple device and receives Apple TV+ and Apple Music for free for an extended period of time as Subscribers to those services; Antenna would only count them after their free trial periods ended and they explicitly chose to pay for the services.
- Coverage: As described above, Antenna does have some coverage gaps, which would typically be included in a service’s own reported numbers.
- Territory: Antenna reports only on consumers in the 50 United States and Washington, D.C., and Services may be reporting on Global, U.S. + Canada, or other territory combinations.
- Estimation: Antenna is an estimation service, and could have errors in its calculation due to panel bias, data errors or human errors.
To dive deeper on Antenna methodology, please contact info@antenna.live
