TiVo: Consumers Take to Bundles Amid Streamer Price Hikes

TiVo’s Q2 2024 Video Trends Report found that consumers are adopting streamer bundle packages amid SVOD price hikes, with average entertainment spend down by $30 year-on-year.

The average number of services, meanwhile, is back at 2022 levels, slipping from 10.9 last year to 9.1. “This indicates that while consumers are cutting back on their spending, they haven’t stopped enjoying entertainment,” the report notes. “Instead, they have found a way to supplement their favored pay-TV and broadband services by turning to ad-supported services and pushing major media companies to bundle services or risk losing customers.”

Among SVOD users, 64 percent said they utilize available ad-supported tiers, an increase of 16 percentage points from Q2 2023. Further, almost 62 percent of survey respondents stated that they were “likely” or “much more likely” to keep their broadband service if their provider bundled additional streaming services with internet access.

“In the past, we’ve seen over-the-top (OTT) service providers trying to assess the limits of consumer entertainment spending, and they are now seeing where consumers are willing to draw the line,” said Scott Maddux, VP of global content strategy and business at Xperi, the parent company of TiVo. “Now, the same OTT service providers are starting to see the promotional and monetary benefits of creating bundles with their subscription video on demand, ad-supported video on demand and free ad-supported television service options, helping to reduce churn and, more importantly, keep their customers under one roof rather than spread across multiple broadband and pay TV services, allowing content providers to monetize across the full spectrum from subscription to ad-supported.”

The study also found that 85 percent of respondents are partial to browsing to find something to watch, and almost 73 percent go into more than one app in a typical viewing session. Discovery is still led by word-of-mouth/recommendations from friends (50 percent) and commercials or ads that run during other shows (40 percent).