Having experienced an unprecedented boom after self-isolation and the hardest time of the pandemic, streaming platforms seem to live from the end of 2022 and especially this year 2023 his special hangoverwith Netflix at the head… Or maybe not?
News about the loss of subscribers does not cease to appear in the sector. Netflix first hit by first crash in 10 years. In that context, the announcement of the cheap plan with ads six months ago and the departure of Reed Hastings seemed to acknowledge the change in model. Yes, OTT remained, but its economy was not dynamic enough to replace the huge ecosystem of cinemas.
Bad news for the red giant also came from different markets. Specifically in Spain, we recently learned that a ban on account sharing resulted in a reduction of around 1 million followers.
And all this, overshadowed by the more subjective aspect that Netflix, while pioneering and leading the way, has some of the weakest and least edifying content of the competition. Thus, the thesis that Netflix is in decline has become widespread.
The problem arose when other platforms also started reporting results.
With streaming in decline, the Lindy effect plays into the hands of Netflix.
All major companies presented their latest quarterly results a few weeks ago. Netflix barely earned just over 1 million subscribers. Later we also learned that their ad-supported plan (now improved) allowed them to attract about 5 million more active users.
Be careful, these are active users, not subscribers. In any case, it also seems that the profit per subscriber in this new plan for Netflix is more profitable. It makes sense: a cheap subscription makes money from subscriber memberships as well as advertising.
Disney, for its part, has joined the decadence party. Disney Plus reported a loss of 4 million users and pulling out dozens of content to try to make their costs profitable by offering it to other windows, i.e. competitors. Some of them are as striking as a new adaptation Willow. He also announced that he would merge his brand with Hulu to eventually form a powerful conglomerate.
HBO Max, in the midst of a name change, also posted lukewarm results. The following chart shows the latest ads from some of the major platforms where you can see their user growth and their loss. Paramount+ is only available in select countries. For example, his proposal to Spain was received by SkyShowtime.
As we see Despite the big fuss that was raised around Netflix, he defended his position much better than Disney Plus itself.. Explanation? It could be your ad plan, which Disney and MAX also have, or it could just be the weight of it being the longest.
Lindy effect, popularized by the analyst and mathematician Nassim Taleb, argues that in changing contexts, those sentences that have been around the longest survive or stand the best chance. In the context of culture, it explains why theater continues to exist despite the loss of popularity, why classics continue to be read, and in the context of cinema, why theaters and Netflix, as the oldest platform, have more voices to come out gracefully.
The top five streaming services, excluding Amazon, added just four million customers worldwide in the first quarter. Disney Plus was the worst of the bunch, losing four million dollars.
After all, Netflix has a better chance than other platforms thatthe art of its 230 million users are in the habit of paying and consider their subscription as something included in their lives.
However, there is a rather large elephant hiding in the room in the background: Prime Video. Amazon's platform is already the most popular in many surveys, although the company doesn't offer active user data. And since it's included with the Prime subscription, the mystery will remain open until it's solved.
Advertising seems to be working: long live the old TV
After all, it seems that streaming has come to bring TV back to us. More than half of new Netflix, Disney+ and HBO Max customers opted for ads in February and March, according to Antenna research.
Although Netflix has repeatedly denied the possibility of including advertising, it is a thing of the past and is now one of the only areas of potential growth for these companies, and it looks like it will continue to do so.
Netflix also continues to be the number one watch series.
But Netflix's hegemony isn't just about the smallest losses. His series are really large-scale, and this also has weight.
The most popular streaming show of the last year was strange things. The second one was maritime police, police series that aired on CBS since 2003. The data is taken from the Nielsen analysis, which advanced bloomberg.
Netflix makes up 7% to 8% of the monthly TV audience., according to Nielsen. No other service other than YouTube exceeds 4%. People spend more time watching Netflix each month than Hulu, Disney+ and HBO Max combined.
This chart, with Netflix highlighted in blue, shows the top 10 series by platform in their weekly evolution through 2022. Disney Plus is the second largest contributor, followed by Amazon and HBO Max.
These top 10 lists favor Netflix's binge eating model because people can watch all episodes at the same time, which increases watch time in the first two weeks. But Netflix continues to dominate week after week.
Thus, it seems that in difficult times for platforms Netflix, which is increasingly moving towards becoming more profitable, has a better chance of persevering than others, which, however, have the support of large conglomerates to also achieve this.
Source: Hiper Textual
