Report: Streaming companies leaving money on the table
April 9, 2024
Evergent, the customer management and monetisation player for streaming and digital subscription businesses, reveals the top five ways that media organisations and direct-to-consumer streaming services are missing out on revenue. The insights are based on Evergent’s experience onboarding 800 million subscribers in 180 countries and point the way to fix changes that can make a significant difference in the drive to improve profitability.
According to market data firm Antenna, the video streaming industry faces rising churn rates and a 50 per cent decline in subscriber growth for premium SVoD tiers in the US in 2023. Amid macroeconomic challenges and growing pressure on the number of paid video subscriptions that consumer households maintain, streaming providers are focused on maximising profitability and securing long-term customer retention.
Evergent has analysed the most common revenue-boosting changes typically achieved across its customer base — which includes the NBA, Fox, Sony Pictures, BritBox and MSG Networks — to reveal the critical strategies streaming companies can deploy to improve profitability:
- Fix the leaks: Streaming businesses can tackle churn before it even happens, addressing revenue losses that are a major barrier to profitability. Advanced analytics can predict multiple causes of subscriber departures and intervene with personalised retention strategies.
- Identify the REAL growth sources: Streaming providers can dynamically fine-tune content offerings, pricing tiers, and promotions — using data-informed decisions to trial and double down on the products, business models and partnerships that are successful with different audiences.
- Get close to subscribers: Providers can use technology to understand and engage with their customers on a much deeper level than ever before, using behavioural insights to create new, customer-centric subscription options including loyalty-based incentives and event-specific pricing.
- Simplify global payments: Offering flexible payment options to properly cater to local payment preferences is crucial for reducing friction in the subscription process and minimising payment-related churn. The constant evolution in local consumer trends, global payment platforms, taxes and regulations means that managing payment systems is a significant operational burden far removed from a streaming provider’s core business.
- Harness AI for subscriber engagement: AI is a game-changing tool in proactively predicting and combating churn. Streaming providers can tailor pricing and promotions, and recover avoidable collection failures. For example, Evergent’s Captivate Smart solution can recover almost three-quarters (70 per cent) of failed collections, minimising involuntary subscriber churn.