Younger viewers down with nostalgia, but not with paid ads
Younger viewers down with nostalgia, but not with paid ads
A new survey from Tubi has interesting insights about how customers are engaging with streaming services.
The pull of nostalgia is strong. That continues to be true across younger generations, according to a new report commissioned by Tubi and The Harris Poll. The Stream 2025 report has some fascinating findings, especially regarding streaming audiences’ attitudes about commercials, and about the prevailing feelings regarding nostalgic TV shows.
Key Details:
- The report found that almost 90% of Gen Z viewers want to see older streaming content.
- Nearly 80% of customers feel that paid streaming services should not include ads.
- Free ad-supported streamers are a great source of older content.
The Stream 2025 report shows that audiences are more than willing to turn back the clock to find something new to stream. Sixty-six percent of viewers across age groups are enjoying discovering shows and movies that are 10 years old or more, and 87% of Gen Z respondents say that streamers should be showing them older content in addition to new releases.
The attitudes regarding nostalgic content go hand-in-hand with the report’s findings on customer feelings about advertisements. Ad-supported streaming services are a great repository for nostalgic TV shows, and customers will likely head to these services to watch older titles more often given The Stream’s findings.
The report specifies that while 81% of viewers think watching ads on free streaming services is a fair trade-off, 79% of respondents also said they expected paid streaming subscriptions to be ad free. In other words, while viewers are perfectly willing to watch commercials with content they’re getting free, they’re not nearly as eager to watch ads on titles that they’re paying to access.
These two factors could go a long way toward explaining why free, ad-supported streaming services like Pluto TV and Tubi are growing in popularity. These streamers carry a multitude of older shows like “Everybody Hates Chris” or “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” and because they’re free, customers are more willing to watch commercials on them.
Recent data from Antenna shows that while customers may think paid, ad-supported streaming plans aren’t the most fair proposition, they are willing to adopt them anyway. Antenna found that 57% of gross streaming subscriptions to paid services were for ad-supported plans, suggesting that price concerns can outweigh the desire to only pay for ad-free streaming services.
Nevertheless, the link between nostalgic TV and movies and free streaming services is clear. Ad-supported streamers offer a wide range of these titles, and fix seamlessly with customer attitudes regarding what kind of streaming content should come with ads.
Tubi
Tubi is a free video streaming service that includes on-demand access to 200,000+ movies and TV episodes - more than any other streaming service. Its ad breaks are shorter and less frequent than most free services. Fox executives have called their service “TV on steroids.”