What can streaming services do to keep customers from pausing subscriptions?
What can streaming services do to keep customers from pausing subscriptions?
Viewers are canceling a streaming subscription, only to return a few months later more often. What can top services do about the problem?
As streamers reach maximum market penetration in the United States, the goals of streaming services have had to shift. There simply aren’t enough new customers looking to subscribe to platforms to expend time and money on chasing novel domestic streaming customers, so operators have a new goal: keeping the customers they have. That’s a trickier challenge than it seems, as new data collected by Antenna and reported by the Wall Street Journal demonstrates. The information shows that the number of viewers who “pause” subscriptions — cancel them and return to the same streamer within a year — is rising, and I thought that was a good opportunity to examine what streamers could do about routinely losing subscribers, even if temporarily.
Key Details:
- Viewers who say they’ve paused a subscription are up to 34.2% in the first nine months of 2024.
- Streamers are already trying to combat this behavior with more bundling opportunities.
- Discounts, free swag, and other such promotions could also help viewers stay subscribed to streamers for longer.
Antenna’s data shows that the number of subscription pausers has risen from 29.8% in 2022 to 34.2% in the first nine months of 2024. The conclusion from those numbers is that increasingly, viewers who cancel a given service aren’t leaving because they hate that streamer; rather, they can’t justify the cost of the service until a new show or movie they want to stream there becomes available.
“I keep an eye on my streaming services because it’s death by a thousand paper cuts. I don’t want to get killed with monthlies,” Boston resident Sean Gallagher told WSJ about his subscription pausing habits.
To be sure, streaming providers are aware of the problem. There are already efforts to keep customers more loyal to their subscriptions underway, including an increase in bundles. Survey after survey has shown that bundling has the potential to markedly reduce cancelations, and several new bundles have been introduced in 2024, including the Disney+, Hulu, and Max bundle, as well as the StreamSaver combo available to Xfinity TV and internet customers.
What else can streaming services do about pausing?
It may take more creative measures than simply offering viewers a better value through bundles to keep them from pausing their streaming subscriptions. One possibility would be to allow audiences to pause a subscription but still stay a customer of that service; for example, customers who cancel a Hulu subscription are offered the chance to stop paying for their account for a given period, and then resume paying after that time. Of course, this couldn’t be something that would be able to be done in perpetuity, but as a one-time, 30-day offer, allowing customers to keep their account active on an ad-supported plan could help keep customers engaged with the service longer while still bringing in revenue.
Similarly, perhaps services could give paused subscribers a smaller selection of content for free in order to keep them from simply canceling altogether. We have seen this with live TV streaming services like Fubo and Sling TV, and it could be a powerful tool for on-demand streamers as well. It would allow customers who are only interested in one or two shows on a given service to stay within its sphere of influence while they wait for their favorite title to return. Streamers could also offer discounts to customers who pause and then commit to renewing their subscriptions at a specific future date.
Services could also introduce monthly benefits, free gifts, or some other such promotion. Hallmark+, for example, provides customers with free greeting cards and more. The anime streamer Crunchyroll sends subscribers at a certain level an annual swag bag, and other services may benefit from such ideas. Could Disney+ ensure greater loyalty by sending viewers merchandise based on their viewing habits every so often? Is Prime Video missing an opportunity to send viewers free gifts annually from Amazon’s huge selection of overstocked items?
Another option that is becoming increasingly popular in other industries would be to allow current customers to take advantage of promotions usually only available to new subscribers. This wouldn’t be applicable in all circumstances, but giving current account holders the ability to access deep annual plan discounts that are sometimes offered to new customers could convince a good chunk of month-to-month viewers to sign up for a longer period of time. Mobile phone providers are increasingly allowing existing customers to get the best prices on new devices, deals that for years were reserved only for new subscribers.
There are other tactics that streamers could use, such as speeding up production of popular shows. One of the growing trends for pausers is to cancel after they’ve watched the season finale of their favorite show. If streaming services were able to stick to a more traditional TV schedule, this might cut down on people canceling their service until a new season arrives. For example, “Stranger Things” premiered in 2016, but the fifth season of the show won’t be available on Netflix until sometime in 2025. “The Handmaid's Tale” debuted on Hulu in 2017, and will end its six-season run next year. With two or more years between seasons — obviously exacerbated by a pandemic and multiple Hollywood strikes — streamers and studios aren’t incentivizing viewers to stick around with the promise of more soon to come.
Of course, one way to keep viewers engaged between seasons of their favorite shows is to offer them something else that they will love in the meantime. Obviously, all streamers would like to keep their quality high, but gauging audience reactions before a title is released is quite difficult. Still, there are plenty of strategies available to streaming services that want to cut down on pausing behavior, and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see more streamers employ them in the future.
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.