The streaming market is continuing to evolve. When Disney+ was first introduced in 2019 and the so-called “streaming wars” began, it was an exciting time from a consumer standpoint. After all, these companies with giant content libraries were fighting for attention, and willing to offer some pretty good deals to get it.

A few years later, the landscape has changed completely. So many services have popped up that the market has reached a saturation point. Customers are being forced to trim budgets across the board, and over 25% of U.S. households cut their pay-TV budget this year. That must have had a dire impact on the average number of services a person subscribes to, right?

Not exactly, according to a new study from TiVo, the average number of services that U.S. customers subscribe to actually increased from the fourth quarter of 2021 to the second quarter of 2022 by nearly a full platform, moving from 8.88 to 9.86 per household.

But with customers around the world feeling the burdens of increased inflation, how could U.S. consumers be adding TV services? The answer highlights the changes that the streaming industry has undergone in the past few years. While the average number of paid services subscribed to only rose from 6.53 to 6.73, the average number of nonpaid services subscribed to rose from 2.35 to 3.13.

That means that respondents to the survey had, on average, subscribed to nearly one new ad-supported video-on-demand (AVOD) service per person in the last two quarters. As more people have signed up for such services, they’ve started to feel more positively about the content they offer as well.

Of the major categories of TV providers, only AVOD and/or free ad-supported TV (FAST) services saw an uptick in reported customer satisfaction. Those platforms still lag behind the others in terms of overall satisfaction, but the increasing popularity very well could cause companies to commit more resources to their AVOD platforms, which should, in turn, drive further satisfaction increases.

One finding that subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) operators will want to note is that 80% of respondents said that they wish their paid service offered a free, ad-supported option. FAST services are quickly profitable for their companies because of the infusion of advertising dollars and the relatively lower content spend required to get hundreds of hours of programming on the air. So, this data provides yet another incentive for more media companies to launch FAST services of their own.