U.S. OTT Subscription Churn Rate Steady at 18 Percent

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New research from Parks Associates finds the rate of cancellations for OTT video services among U.S. broadband households has held steady over the past three years at around 18 percent.

The average subscription length for OTT video services is 30 months overall. The three top services in the market—Netflix, Amazon and Hulu—have the most stability, while churn rates for other services tend to be more volatile.

Parks also found that more than 85 percent of U.S. millennials subscribe to at least one OTT video service. By 2022, more than 265 million households worldwide will have more than 400 million OTT video service subscriptions.

“With OTT service penetration starting to plateau at around 65 percent adoption among U.S. broadband households, the OTT video market is reaching a level of saturation for the services currently available to consumers,” said Hunter Sappington, research analyst at Parks Associates. “In an increasingly crowded and competitive marketplace where subscriber acquisition costs are high, this plateau highlights the need for services to focus on retention rather than solely acquisition. Successful services can encourage retention in several ways, such as community building, continuously offering new and fresh content, and improving their user experience.”