Last week, we dove into Netflix’ Q1’22 results and closely examined the contributing factors to their net subscriber loss. While gross additions have remained relatively stable, Netflix saw 3.6M Cancels in Q1'22 — over one million more than the service dealt with in both Q1'21 and Q4'21. We decided to further unpack the behavior of these churned subscribers and their engagement with other SVOD platforms.
Premium SVOD Share of Sign-ups
Paramount+, Peacock and Disney+ were the platforms these users were most likely to sign-up for in Q1’22, accounting for 51% of all new sign-ups in the quarter.
Disney+ and Apple TV made up a relatively large percentage of new sign-ups for the churned Q1’22 Netflix users when compared to their market share of all new Q1’22 sign-ups (accounting for 23% of churned Netflix subs’ sign-ups vs. 11% for the market as a whole).
Conversely, Paramount+ made up a smaller percentage of new sign-ups for the churned Q1’22 Netflix users when compared to their market share of all new Q1’22 sign-ups (17% vs. 22% respectively).
Premiums SVOD Sign-ups by Plan Type
There’s been much ado about the possibility of Netflix launching an ad-supported plan. While it remains to be seen if this will be the case, Antenna data suggests that churned Netflix users were not disproportionately likely to enroll in ad-supported plans in Q1’22. In aggregate 35% of total new sign-ups were to ad-supported plans. If we exclude those services that did not offer an ad-supported plan, 54% of all new sign-ups went to ad-supported plans.
These trends are consistent with the behavior of the general market where 35% of new sign-ups went to ad-supported plans (and 53% of sign-ups when excluding services without an ad-supported option).
The cohort that churned from Netflix was significantly more likely to select a plan with ads for Peacock (80% vs. 20% for ad-free). For Paramount+ & Hulu, it was roughly split evenly. HBO Max was the service that saw the greatest percentage of these users elect an ad-free plan (65%).
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.
