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Discovery+ and Peacock Proving Best at Converting Free Trials into Paid Subscribers

Lauren Forristal
Lauren Forristal is a news writer for The Streamable, providing coverage on the most recent movies, TV series, and sports events.
Read full bio ›
Lauren Forristal

Do free trials work for streaming companies? New information proves that they do, and some services have incredibly high success rates in converting free customers into paid subscribers.

Analytics firm Antenna notes that in 2021, the success of converting free trials to paid subscriptions improved +2.3 points from the year prior. Discovery+ (81.4%) and Peacock (77.9%) had the highest Trial Conversion Rates, whereas STARZ (61.4%) was the lowest.

Deals on streaming services in the U.S. are strategically engineered to get consumers in the door in the hopes they’ll remain as paying subscribers after the price discounts or free trials end, or so goes the idea. The popularity of free trials was quite consistent year-over-year, with the number of Trial Sign-ups rising from 60.4M to 61.0M.

Related: Which Streaming Services Offer Free Trials?

However, free trials still require SVOD services to give away entertainment for free for an entire month, with the big risk that those using free trials will not even become paying subscribers. Streaming giants Netflix, Disney+, and HBO Max (with the exception of users who join via Hulu and YouTube TV add-ons) saw the downside of this promotional tactic and got rid of their free trial periods.

Colin Dixon, chief analyst and founder at nScreenMedia, said, “Free trials are an extremely effective way of converting people to subscribers. When I talk to companies that track it in detail, what they usually tell me is between 50 and 70 percent of the people that sign up for a free trial convert to a paying subscriber.”

Furthermore, Premium SVOD services increasingly used promotional offers to drive user acquisition. There were 8.4M promotional price Sign-ups in 2021, compared to just 3.3M in 2020.

Black Friday 2021 saw a surge in promotions from streaming services such as Hulu with its ad-supported VOD service priced at only 99 cents/month for one year, along with discovery+ offering the first three months of its ad-supported plan for 99 cents/month. Paramount+, Peacock, Amazon Prime Video, SHOWTIME, STARZ, AMC+, Philo, among others were the streaming services that offered free trials and crazy promotions during Black Friday.

While promotional price Sign-ups still make up a small portion of the acquisition, they were especially popular in Q4 of 2021, accounting for over 13% of all Sign-ups. SHOWTIME was the most prevalent discounter, attracting nearly 20% of all their 2021 Sign-ups at a promotional price.

The central pillar of this tactic to grow subscribers is hooking free trial users on great content that they can’t get elsewhere. Deals, free trials, and promotional prices can be crucial in convincing consumers to stay for a streaming services’ content.

Lauren Forristal
Lauren Forristal is a news writer for The Streamable, providing coverage on the most recent movies, TV series, and sports events.
Read full bio ›
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