Breaking up is hard to do, but some streaming users are finding they have no choice. Prices are rising almost universally in the streaming marketplace, and some customers are being forced to make tough choices between streaming platforms to help trim their budgets.

• Antenna and Adobe’s new survey shows that 35% of customers who cancel a streaming service resubscribe to the same service within a year.
• The more times a customer subscribes, the less likely they are to stick with a service in the long term.
• The number of serial churners has more than tripled since 2019.

Goodbye Isn’t Forever

One recent study found that the rate of streaming subscribers who had canceled at least one streaming service has risen to 47%. But a new survey released by Antenna, performed in conjunction with Adobe shows that watching a subscriber leave isn’t necessarily the end of the relationship for streaming providers.

Antenna’s data shows that users who cancel a premium subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service actually have a good chance of coming back to that service. Nearly 25% of churners resubscribe to the platform they canceled within three months of their original departure, and 35% of users who cancel return within one year. Various reasons, including price changes and new content arrivals account for these returning users, and it’s critical for providers to gain a clear understanding of why users come back to their platforms once they leave. Streamers like Prime Video and Disney+ should be especially interested in these answers, as they’ll both introduce new changes (rules against password sharing for Disney+; conversion of its ad-free tier to ad-supported for Prime Video) in the coming months that could lead to increased churn.

The more times a user returns to a streaming service, however, the less likely it is that they’ll stay there. Antenna’s report indicates that users who subscribed to a premium SVOD service for the first time between Q1’21 and Q1’22 had a 12-month survival rate of 45%. That survival rate dropped -9pts to 36% for users on their second lifetime, and -19pts to 26% for users on their third or more lifetime.

Churning in Place

The Antenna/Adobe study also shows how many users have become so-called “serial churners” recently. As streaming costs rise, so does the amount of users who cancel a service after watching just one or a few titles and before being billed a second time. Serial churners are customers who have canceled any premium SVOD three or more times in the previous two years. In 2019, only 10% of streaming customers fit into the category of serial churners; now, the number stands at 33%.

The data from Antenna and Adobe demonstrates that streaming services have to ensure they have a clear notion of what their customers want, and how to give it to them. Churn isn’t the end of the world, and most streamers have a good chance of winning back customers who leave, but platforms like Prime Video and Disney+ have to have an intimate knowledge of their users’ needs if they hope to bring them back after losing them.