As premium plans become more costly, a majority of new streaming subscribers are opting for ads, according to a new report from Samba TV.
In the second half of 2024, 43% of total SVOD subscribers had an ad-supported plan. The share is increasing, with 56% of new subscribers in that time period choosing the ad option, Samba says.
Peacock is leading the pack with 78% of its new subscribers in the second half of the year choosing an ad-supported plan, which is pretty on par with the second half of 2023, when 76% of new subscribers chose ads. Notably, Netflix saw a pretty significant increase in new subscribers opting for ads, up from 28% to 44%. Max also saw a larger jump from 18% to 39%.
In its report, Samba calls this an opportunity for streamers to reach “younger and more diverse audiences that have historically been harder to reach on linear TV,” which had always been the case to some degree with streaming but is only becoming more true as the medium expands.
Courtesy of Samba TV
As expected, churn rates continue to be a headache for streamers. Samba says the average churn rate hovered around 6% in the second half of the year with Netflix and Disney+ doing the best in terms of retaining subscribers to reduce turnover.
Netflix is also leading the pack in multi-show engagement, which is the number of subscribers that watch more than one original program. While Netflix saw 72% of subscribers engage with more than one original title, the others hovered between 30% to 50%. Disney+ was the lowest, with just 33% engaging with more than one streaming original.
While 33 out of 50 of the biggest shows in the second half of 2024 were on Netflix, the top two spots actually went to Max’s The Penguin and Paramount+’s Landman. In the first 15 days, the premiere episode of The Penguin drew 5.3M households, while Landman brought in 4.8M.
Samba also pointed to Prime Video’s Beast Games as a top example of “destination programming,” which is shows that people turn on the TV specifically to watch.
Overall, streaming hours are up 56% year-over-year, but interestingly, that increase seems to not come at the expense of linear television. Saved by sports and the U.S. election, linear was up 8%, Samba says.
