NAB
A new piece of research confirms what we’ve been expecting:
The world may be coming out of its pandemic-induced haze, but customer desire
to be snuggled up under a blanket in front of their favorite on-demand content
has never been greater.
Researcher JD Power says that the mass quarantine
of 2020 has acted as the impetus for a shift in customer behavior that will
forever alter the way content in consumed.
In fact, while the a la carte nature of streaming
could lend itself to less customer spending, it appears the inverse is
happening. The more choices, the more temptation to get access to a specific
library.
Viewers increased their streaming subscriptions to an
average of 4.5 streaming providers in June 2021 from 3.9 streaming providers in
December 2020, the survey finds. Meanwhile, the average monthly household spend
on all streaming services increased commensurately to $55 from $47. That’s up a
whopping 45% since last April.
What accounts for that change in spending? Report author,
Ian Greenblatt, MD of TMT Intelligence at JD Power One, fingers one culprit as
price increases.
Netflix got the ball rolling in October 2020, increasing the
price of its premium service. In March, Disney raised the price of Disney+ to
$8 a month, or $80 per year. Disney has also given ESPN+ two price increases
this year, the second which goes into effect on August 13, which has forced the
service’s annual plan increase by about $20 this year alone.
“Streaming services continue to add value to justify any
past or future hikes,” Greenblatt says. “The race for big intellectual property
has intensified, as each platform looks to gain a leg up on what it can offer
its customers.”
Among them: Disney $400 million per year seven-year pact to
air NHL, some of which will air on ESPN+; Peacock’s deal with Universal to
bring its movies to the platform no more than four months after theatrical
release; Netflix plan to stream games on the platform within the next year.
“And that’s on top of the increasingly ambitious original
programming slate that each service continues to pursue,” Greenblatt says.
Separate hardware platforms like Roku, Apple TV and
Chromecast also got sizable boosts for reasons that could run the gamut from
retrofitting a non-connected TV to make it “smart,” or accessing services that
may not be available on specific brands of smart TV.
Surveying the responses of more than 1200 US adults to
subscription-based services, J.D. Power finds 79% of people are spending the
same or more time streaming than they did six months ago.
Of shows, that debuted in the May to June period it was
season 5 of Lucifer that was the most streamed show helping Netflix+
maintain its industry-leading market share.
And critically panned it may have been, but the Friends
Reunion special seems to have done the numbers for HBO. Not only did an
estimated 29% of streaming households watch is premiere on HBO Max, but the
trip back to Central Perk also helped give the original show a signal
boost. Friends was the third-most streamed show in June, which helped
boost HBO Max to a 41% subscription rate among respondents, up from 22% in
December and trailing only Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and Disney+, per the
survey.
No comments:
Post a Comment