Antenna Insights On The Subscription Economy

With the maturation of the streaming industry and continued focus on profitable growth, services are increasingly working to improve and optimize their performance.

For media companies, the concept of bundling isn’t new. But as streaming continues to evolve, bundling is increasingly viewed by the industry as a tactic to both attract new customers and mitigate churn.

With many of the streaming services’ parent companies set to hold their Upfront presentations this week, we thought it made sense to check in on the ad-supported streaming segment.

Some Serial Churners manage their subscriptions, but others decidedly binge and cancel. Antenna has observed that among Serial Churners 38% have made three or more of their cancellations within the first three months of subscribing to a Premium SVOD service. In a media landscape where a user’s favorite shows can be spread across several different streaming services, this behavior suggests these users are “Show Chasers” who sign-up for a service to access specific content and then cancel shortly thereafter.

Recent Antenna data shows that growth in the Premium SVOD category continued to moderate in the first quarter of 2024. Overall, there were 45.5M Gross Additions and 41.3M Cancels to Premium SVOD services in Q1’24, resulting in 4.1M Net Additions.

As we noted in the most recent Antenna State of Subscriptions Report, Serial Churners–individuals who have canceled three or more Premium SVOD services in the past two years–are a growing and active cohort of U.S. streaming subscribers. According to Antenna data, at the end of 2023 nearly one-in-four streaming consumers qualified as Serial Churners, an increase of 42% YoY.

The first two months of 2024 brought some big moments for streaming and sports: in January, Peacock’s exclusive broadcast of the NFL AFC Wild Card Game and Paramount+’s broadcast of Super Bowl LVIII.

One of the topics we unpack in the most recent Antenna State of Subscriptions Report is the concept of subscription tenure–how long a user has been subscribed to a given service–and its implications. While it’s still early days in the shift to streaming, there are a wealth of insights to be gleaned from tenure data.

Last week, we released the latest Antenna State of Subscriptions Report and said the streaming video industry has entered a new phase that requires services to engage in more advanced subscriber management. One area of opportunity for streamers: win-backs.