Most Non-Netflix Streaming Services Have About a Quarter to a Fifth of the Market

Most Non-Netflix Streaming Services Have About a Quarter to a Fifth of the Market

Surveys show there is a ceiling to what subscribers are willing to pay for streaming services.

A new survey released Thursday by What If Media Group found that other than Netflix and Amazon Prime, most streaming services currently have market penetration between 12 and 20 percent.

The survey found that of those surveyed, 43 percent currently subscribe to Netflix, 40.1 percent to Amazon Prime, and 38.3 to YouTube TV. Beyond that, 24 percent have Hulu, 23.6 percent subscribe to Disney+, and 22.6 percent have HBO. An additional 26 percent say “other.”

YouTube TV, as opposed to the others, is a vMVPD and not a subscription video on-demand service, and it’s unclear if those surveyed are all subscribers to that, or merely users of YouTube’s main product. It’s also unclear if “HBO” refers to HBO Max, or all services offered by HBO.

“For today’s value-focused consumers, the discounted bundled offering from Disney+ not only fits the ideal pricing model identified by our survey data but seems to be specifically designed to gain share in a landscape where some of the more established players are seen as a given,” Jordan Cohen, Chief Marketing Officer of What If Media Group, said in the release.

What If Media has also found that more than three-quarters of survey respondents say they “have a maximum ceiling of just $10 for a single streaming service,” while around the same amount of people see the ceiling of what they’re willing to pay for all streaming subscriptions put together at about $30.

In terms of customers’ plans for the next year, 29.7 percent say they’re planning to subscribe to Netflix this year while an additional 10.5 percent say they’re thinking about it. Only 9.3 say they will subscribe to Hulu but 30.7 percent say they’re considering it, while 5.1 percent say they will subscribe to Disney+ while 20 percent are thinking about it.

“With the market for these services becoming an every-more-intense battlefield, it’s clear that providers need to be smart and aggressive to gain market share,” Cohen added. “The ability to effectively compete obviously starts with a clear sense of consumer preferences around content and pricing, but goes far beyond simply assessing price sensitivity on a single offering. Knowing when to try to convince a consumer to switch services versus adding an additional one, for example, can lead to vastly different outputs from marketing—and vastly different results.”

More new numbers about streaming this week found that Disney+’s WandaVision has emerged as the most in-demand TV show in the world. According to Parrot Analytics’ methodology, the Marvel show is 111.2 times "more in-demand globally than the average TV show worldwide.” 

 Stephen Silver, a technology writer for The National Interest, is a journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to Philly Voice, Philadelphia Weekly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Living Life Fearless, Backstage magazine, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.

Image: Reuters.