REVOLVING CORE

The Roiling Waters of Serial Churn

Happy Tuesday War & Peaceniks! Let’s burn and churn!

Antenna just published new data on SVOD Churn, further demonstrating that Serial Churners are today's Channel Changers.

In 2023, 33% of all new sign ups for premium SVOD services are Serial Churners - subscribers who actively manage their SVOD subscriptions by signing up, canceling and then potentially rejoining the same services later. That's a 230% increase in share of Serial Churners in new monthly subs from 2019 - a 14% increase from last year.

That's not to say these Serial Churners are lost forever. One-third of these constant cancellers come back to the SVOD they left within 12 months. However, even that soft loyalty diminishes over time.

"Users who subscribed to a Premium SVOD service for the first time had a 12 month survival rate of 45%. That survival rate dropped -9pts to 36% on their second lifetime, and -19pts to 26% for users on their third or more lifetime."

- Brendan Brady, Antenna Media & Enetrtainment Lead

This is the new normal of the User Centric Era, and points to one of the hard truths subscription publishers will face moving ahead: Most US subscribers will have three-ish SVODs at any give time - just not the same three all of the time.