Study: Weekly Release Models Drive More Sustained Engagement, But Hybrid Strategy May be Best for Most Streamers
Hiding under the covers with your phone or laptop and whispering, “Just one more episode,” has become a guilty pleasure that many of us have discovered in the age of streaming. Binge releases of entire seasons make it possible to burn through a season of television in a single day, and a recent survey found that 66% of streaming audiences prefer to binge watch shows.
But new data from Parrot Analytics is challenging the notion that any one release model is universally better for streamers than the other. Parrot has done an exhaustive review of the analytics behind weekly, periodic — shows that release more than one episode at once, often in batches, but never all at the same time — and binge releases, and found that most streamers are best off with a hybrid release model.
The service that is best adapted to the binge-release system is (unsurprisingly) Netflix. The world’s largest streaming service releases dozens of new titles each month, and at the rate it puts out new shows, it would risk cannibalizing its own audience if it consistently shifted to a slower, weekly release format for its series. But even Netflix has been willing to tinker with its release strategies, opting to shift “Stranger Things” Season 4 and “You” Season 4 to batch releases rather than the traditional binge model. Both shows saw a rise in demand among U.S. viewers as compared to the previous seasons.
Netflix has always maintained that its binge-release formula can drive sensational, short-term demand that a show might never reach in a periodic release format. A show that releases multiple episodes at once might pull a customer to a streaming platform four or five times in a week, as compared to a series that puts out one episode every week and causes a user to visit that streaming platform just once.
Parrot’s data also shows that of the 50 most in-demand streaming originals between 2020 and 2023, the supply share of binge-released shows has dropped 14%, while the supply share has dropped 15%. Periodic releases grew 16% in supply share and 18% in demand share, reflecting an increased willingness among streamers to use varying release strategies.
“For popular titles, weekly drops are meant to maximize sign-ups and build buzz over time,” Roku executive Lana Li said in 2022. “Series that release all episodes at once encourage bingers to watch in bursts, potentially growing engagement and ARPU for rising ad-supported tiers.”
Hulu is demonstrating the success of using multiple-release strategies even now. The service typically follows a weekly release format, such as with shows like “Only Murders in the Building” and “How I Met Your Father.” But it binge-released both seasons of “The Bear,” an original show without an established IP that audiences were already familiar with, to allow viewers to latch onto the show more quickly and easily. Though “HIMYF” started out at a higher demand point than “The Bear,” the latter series will outperform the “How I Met Your Mother” spinoff by a wide margin.
It will mean more data analysis for streaming providers, but Parrot’s study makes it clear that the best release strategy is to remain fluid with release strategies. Different shows will produce different reactions when given to users over time versus all at once, and knowing how to maximize engagement will be crucial as streamers attempt to justify their own existence in the age of aggregation.
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