Ampere: Bundles Key to Mitigating Churn

Some 42 percent of U.S. consumers regularly subscribe, cancel and then resubscribe to SVOD services, Ampere Analysis notes, with bundling expected to have a significant impact in mitigating subscriber churn.

Bundles have become popular across the U.S. media ecosystem, with SVOD services from Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Comcast and Apple, among others, featured in bundles for a single subscription fee. Ampere data indicates that there is limited overlap in uptake between those services.

The company’s latest research found that former Disney subs that resubscribed to take the Disney+/Hulu/ESPN+ are 59 percent less likely to cancel than those taking just Disney+.

The 42 percent of consumers that are frequent resubscribers tend to be younger (18 to 44) and living in a family household. They tend to be avid media consumers with daily TV and on-demand viewing on multiple services, and they are likely to spend time on video games and music services. They are also 40 percent more likely than average to exhibit signs of subscription fatigue and 21 percent more likely to want aggregated services.

Ampere’s Q1 2024 Media Consumer data also found that 15 percent of the subscriber base of either Disney+, Hulu or Max currently take all three in the household. Ten percent of Comcast mobile, broadband and TV customers subscribing to Peacock, Netflix or Apple TV+ currently take all three.

Daniel Monaghan, research manager at Ampere Analysis, said: “As the SVoD market in the U.S. has become increasingly saturated, new subscribers are harder to find, which makes retention all the more important. There is a sizable group of consumers who frequently subscribe to SVoD platforms, cancel and resubscribe. Reducing this behavior would boost platforms’ top and bottom lines. Analysis of Ampere data reveals that churn is far smaller for bundle-takers than non-bundle resubscribers for some offerings.”

Monaghan continued, “For instance, resubscribers who took the Disney bundle in Q1 2023 were less than half as likely to churn within a year, compared to standalone Disney+ resubscribers. We’re now seeing competing players following suit and joining forces to bundle their platforms, and our consumer data shows the overlap of uptake for those is currently very limited. This should stand them in good stead to both upsell their services and limit the churn of resubscribers and first-timers alike.”