Study: Prime Day Channel Deals Bring Streaming Services New Subscribers, But Do They Stay?
Amazon Prime Early Access has begun, and customers are once again flocking to the website to check out the best holiday preview deals available. The television research firm Antenna has released an interesting study regarding the e-commerce platform’s success in retaining customers from promotions offered on Prime Video Channels during big sales like Prime Day.
The survey looked at channels offered by Amazon for $0.99 per month for the first two months of a subscription during previous Prime Days. The research was split into two different types of channels: Premium and specialty. The data showed that such promotions do indeed bring more viewers to Prime Video, at least initially.
On average, channels that participated in the Prime Day deals saw 43% more signups via Amazon during the month of the promotion than over the previous month. Paramount+ got the highest overall subscriber jump, netting over 400,000 subscribers in July 2022, when the last Prime Day was held.
However, once the two-month promotional period ends, and the subscription cost reverts to the original price, many customers aren’t willing to pay more to keep access to the channels. On average, premium channels saw a 16% lower retention rate of customers who signed up for a promotional price versus customers who signed up at full price.
While more specialized streaming services are seeing increases across the board thanks to customers who sign up for the particular niche programming, specialty channels didn’t fare much better than their general entertainment counterparts when it came to Prime Days retention.
These more focused streamers saw an average of 12% lower retention among promotional subscribers versus customers who signed up at the regular price; better than the overall Amazon average, but not markedly so.
The price of a subscription after the promotional period did not seem to affect whether a customer retained a service or not. After all, Paramount+ and discovery+ are the same price ($4.99 per month), but after one year neither channel managed to retain even half of the customers who signed up during the July 2021 Prime Day promotion.
There is likely little that Amazon itself can do to alter the steep retention drop-offs. Customers love getting extended trial periods to services, but unless they find a content library that they can’t tear their eyes away from, they’re simply unlikely to stay.
The numbers from Antenna make yet another case for the consolidation of streaming services. If streamers like STARZ and AMC+ don’t have robust enough content offerings to retain customers after a promo period, they would likely be better off licensing their content to other streamers, or simply merging with a larger platform.
The cross-company streaming bundle is a long way off, but there can be no doubt that it would benefit some streaming services immensely. Until it arrives, the companies who offer deals via Prime Video channels on Prime Days will continue to see a flood of new subscribers initially, and an exodus of those subscribers when the deal expires.
Amazon Prime Video
Amazon Prime Video is a subscription video streaming service that includes on-demand access to 10,000+ movies, TV shows, and Prime Originals like “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” “Jack Ryan,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “The Boys,” and more. Subscribers can also add third-party services like Max, Showtime, STARZ, and dozens more with Amazon Prime Video Channels. Prime Video also offers exclusive live access to NFL Thursday Night Football.