If you have found yourself browsing through an app store on your Roku streaming device recently and decided to give a new streaming service a try, you’re definitely not alone. According to new figures from the media research and insights firm Antenna, more customers than ever are using third-party platforms to subscribe to a streaming service.
Antenna’s research indicates that 53% of all streaming signups in 2022 were done through a distribution platform like Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, or Roku devices. That means that customers were more likely to use such a platform to choose a new streaming service than they were to simply go directly to that streaming service and subscribe directly.
There’s a definite downside to streamers when users decide to subscribe this way. Whichever platform the streaming app is being offered on is compensated by the company that owns that particular streaming service, whereas the streamer gets to keep all the money for themselves when a user signs up directly through their website or app. Apple charges a 30% commission on all signups through apps available in its App Store, and if companies don’t pay they risk their apps’ removal, so there are clear financial repercussions when a customer decides to sign up for a service that way.
However, the benefits to streaming providers through arrangements like this are clear. Their product gets a much wider distribution than it otherwise would have, and by making streaming apps available through third-party distributors, media outlets ensure they get customers to sign up who otherwise might never have come to their platform.
This data from Antenna shows once again how valuable a true aggregation platform for various streaming services would be. A whopping 86% of streaming users report wanting a single place where they can see all their streaming subscriptions, all the content available on those various platforms, and a bill that shows everything they owe for their video services that month. Services like Plex attempt to perform this function, but they haven’t gotten the necessary buy-in from all the major streaming platforms in the industry to match their offerings to customer wants.
Antenna’s numbers clearly show that users are being conditioned to think of platforms like Google, Apple TV and Roku as one-stop shopping for their streaming needs. Now that customer behavior is more closely aligning with customer needs, a true streaming aggregation platform could be more viable than ever… if the giants in the streaming industry decide to play nice enough with each other to create one.
Plex
Plex is a free streaming service that includes on-demand access to 50,000+ movies and TV shows. The service also offers 1,100+ free-to-stream live TV channels in 193 countries. Users can also connect Plex to their computers to stream and share any media they have on their hard drives.