As all streaming customers know by now, the freedom to cancel a subscription whenever you want instead of being locked into a contract is one of the main differentiators between streaming services and cable plans. Cord-cutters have become quite adept at rotating between streamers in order to keep bills more under control, but new data from Antenna suggests that all is not lost for services that lose a customer for one reason or another.
Key Details:
- Almost one-third of all gross subscriptions in 2024 were viewers returning to a streamer they’d canceled.
- Antenna’s report shows that 45% of all viewers who cancel a streamer resubscribe within a year.
- Adjusting for returning subscribers, the average monthly churn rate has fallen under 3%.
Antenna’s State of Subscriptions report covering premium subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services and their performance in 2024 contained some fascinating insights regarding customer behavior. It found that streamers like Apple TV, Disney+, and Netflix saw 26.5 million total net subscriber additions last year, 2 million fewer than in 2023.
It also recorded that many of the additions to streaming services were customers who had previously been subscribed to those same streamers. Thirty-two percent of gross streaming additions in 2024 were customers who had canceled that service at some point and were resubscribing, a jump of five percentage points from 2022.
Antenna’s statistics showing how often customers return to a platform are also encouraging for streaming providers. It found that among viewers who canceled a streaming service in 2024, 25% returned to that same streamer within three months. Thirty-four percent come back within six months, and 45% return within 12 months.
The habit of viewers returning to a streamer soon after canceling is having a marked effect on the overall churn rate. When accounting for customers who come back to a service within 90 days after leaving it, the net churn rate is now just 2.8%, as opposed to a gross churn rate of 5% without subtracting such customers.
This behavior is hardly surprising considering the cyclical nature of content on streaming services. Even the biggest streamers see viewers leave when the show they signed up to watch finishes a new season; it’s one of the reasons Netflix is focused on adding live programming it can promote as a big event. That kind of content can help give viewers more reason to stay subscribed month after month, as opposed to leaving a streamer and then coming back to it.
Keeping subscribers in the long haul is better for streamers as far as revenue is concerned. They’ll continue to focus efforts on customer retention, but at the very least Antenna’s numbers show that winning back customers who have canceled a streamer is a highly achievable goal.
Source: thestreamable.com