Last week, Disney spiked the proverbial football by announcing that across its various streaming platforms, it had 157 million global ad-supported streaming customers. However, according to a new survey from TVB, Disney still has some work to do if it wants to convert even more customers to more profitable subscription plans. TVB, a trade association comprised of members from the American broadcast TV industry, said that more than 50% of customers to Disney+, Netflix, and Max are still using ad-free streaming plans.

Key Details:

• The survey found 61% of Netflix subscribers are still ad-free.
• Fifty-three percent of Disney+ customers are still ad-free, and 57% of Max customers don’t see commercials.
• In contrast, broadcast TV reaches 91% of customers who have a streaming service.

TVB’s survey shows the limitations of streaming ads, despite how far they’ve come in the past couple of years. All of the major streaming services — aside from Apple TV+ — now have an ad tier, and in nearly every case, these plans are several dollars cheaper than their ad-free counterparts.

Despite the proliferation of ad-supported plans, customers aren’t totally convinced quite yet. TVB’s study found that 61% of Netflix subscribers are still using ad-free plans, showing that viewers of the world’s largest streamer are still enticed by the promise that on-demand content should come without commercials. In general, streaming services are keen to have customers on the ad-supported plan, because the combination of a subscription fee (albeit lower than on ad-free tiers) and ad revenue leads to higher average revenue per user, a key financial marker for the success of a service.

Despite TVB’s findings, It isn’t all bittersweet news for Netflix on this front. The streamer revealed in November that it had 70 million ad-supported customers, more than many of its streaming competitors can boast in total subscribers.

Fifty-three percent of Disney+ customers also use the platform’s ad plan, according to the TVB survey. The organization did not register how many Hulu customers are ad-supported, nor did it figure in ESPN+, which always shows ads during live content. Disney+ has the biggest global presence of those three streamers, which likely means the company will employ even more efforts to convert viewers to ad plans, including further eventual price hikes. Fifty-seven percent of Max viewers are also still ad-free, and the desire by audiences to see premium HBO shows without having to put up with commercials is probably a huge factor why.

Contrasting the still relatively limited reach of ads on these platforms, broadcast TV content still reaches 91% of customers who have a subscription to an on-demand streaming service. Since nearly all broadcast TV channels come with ads, the penetration of ads via broadcast is substantially deeper than that of streamers, even with the continued acceleration of cord-cutting.

The survey from TVB also has an interesting tidbit about Prime Video, which was the most recent major streamer to incorporate ads. Fifty-eight percent of respondents said that they were subscribed to Prime Video, but only 4% of that total said they subscribed to the streamer alone, meaning the other 96% get their service through the larger Amazon Prime subscription. That shows that the benefits of Prime, such as discounts and free two-day shipping, are far more of a draw than Prime Video’s original content.

The shift of viewing eyes away from linear TV and to streaming is undeniable, but TVB’s survey shows that streamers will have to continue doing more to get customers to be willing to watch ads again. In aggregate, ad-supported streaming tiers bring in substantially more revenue than ad-free ones, so consumers should expect even greater efforts to convert them to ad-supported subscribers moving forward.