Tomorrow marks the start of the second Amazon Prime Day in 2022. During the previous 2022 Prime Day held in July, Amazon once again offered Prime Members a discounted rate on SVOD subscriptions. The promotion allows Prime Members to sign up for SVOD Service Subscriptions through Amazon Channels at a discounted rate of only $0.99 per month for the first two months (link).
To better understand the impact of these promotions on Sign-ups and retention, we took a look at Sign-up volume via the Prime Day promotion in July 2022, as well as the Survival Rates of users who came in via the promo in June 2021 for each of the individual Services that participated.
The bottom line: while the promotion is associated with a significant lift in Sign-ups for the Services that participate, these subscriber cohorts overall tend to have a lower retention rate.
In July 2022, 4 Premium SVOD Services and 6 Specialty SVOD Services participated in the promotion. The only Service that participated in a previous year that didn’t participate this year was Sundance Now.
On average, the Services that participated in the Prime Day promotion saw 43% more Sign-ups via Amazon Channels on the month of the promotion vs. the previous month.
In terms of gross volume, Paramount+ saw the greatest number of Sign-ups via the promotion for the past two years. In July 2022, it saw 424K Sign-ups alone. Starz, with 295K Sign-ups via the promo, saw the second greatest number of Sign-ups.
However, AMC+ saw the greatest MoM increase in Sign-ups via Amazon Channels from June 2022 to July 2022. It more than doubled their Sign-ups in July, with 49% of new users coming via the Amazon Prime Day Promotion.
Looking back at last year’s Amazon Prime Day, it is clear that the promo cohorts tend to behave differently than non-Prime Day Sign-ups. While these Services tended to have higher M1 Survival for the 2021 Prime Day cohort (+3pts higher on average than Full Price Subscribers) there was a steep drop-off in M2 Survival when the $0.99 discount expired. For instance, Premium SVOD Services averaged a 10pts difference in M2 Survival between Non-Prime Day Sign-ups vs. Prime Day Sign-ups.
By M12, all Services saw a lower Survival Rate for Prime Day Subscribers. On average, Premium SVOD Services saw a 16pts difference in Survival between Prime Day Subscribers and Full Price Subscribers. For Specialty SVOD Services, the difference in Survival was slightly less steep with a 12pts difference in Survival by M12.
BET+ had the lowest difference in M12 Survival Rate across the two cohorts (-8pts), however it also had the lowest M12 Survival Rate for the Full Price Cohort overall.
Brendan Brady is a Content Strategy Associate at Antenna, a measurement and analytics company providing insight into purchase behavior and subscription metrics across the new media landscape.
