The rise of multi-subscription households in Asia-Pacific

This morning I presented a deck on the impact of seasonality as a key factor behind OTT video buying behaviour in Asia-Pacific.

As part of our global consumer research study, we talked to customers in Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and South Korea. We asked them tons of detailed questions on what's important to them when they buy OTT video services, what's important to them as subscribers and what they expect from customer services. Why do they buy more than one service at the same time? And why do they stay with a service when they buy additional services?

The numbers obviously vary from market to market, but the key trend is a move away from single-subscription households. This is true for the Americas and EMEA, just as it is for Asia Pacific. In 2020, households with 2-3 services are becoming the dominant kind. A small niche of about 10% of households currently buy more than 3 services concurrently, but I expect they will remain in minority for the foreseeable future.

As everyone knows, the key driver for OTT video is gaining access to desirable content. Typically households will have a generalist service such as Netflix or more often than not a national and local streaming service as the anchor, supplemented by one or two other other services. Crucially, it is these supplementary secondary or third services that customers will alternate depending on content seasonality.

Our research found that seasonality is one of the key drivers behind OTT video churn. But importantly, customers that churn from a service in this manner tend to return once new content is once again released. Most big streaming services knows this and will actively try to promote high-engagement content and behaviour to seasonal users - whether by promoting multi-season TV dramas or by encouraging more multi-device usage.

To find out more about this research, please reach out to Omdia and Salesforce for access to the full report on 'Binge & Churn: Seasonality in online video streaming'.