Wicket Labs, Deltatre, Penthera, Crackle Plus, and Pure Flix share insights at Future of Video

New Parks Associates research finds the overall annual churn rate for OTT services, representing those subscribers who have cancelled a service as a percentage of the current subscriber base, dropped from 46% in 3Q 2019 to 38% in 3Q 2020. As a subset of subscription-based OTT services, vMVPDs experienced an even more dramatic drop, from 84% in 2019 to 49% in 2020. The research firm will discuss current consumer video habits and analyze long-term impacts at the third annual Future of Video: OTT, Pay TV, and Digital Media, a virtual conference on December 14-16.

Future of Video features the session “Retention and Churn in OTT” on December 15, with a visionary insight from Marty Roberts, CEO & Co-Founder of Wicket Labs, and executives from Deltatre, Penthera, Crackle Plus, and Pure Flix discussing customer acquisition and retention efforts, satisfaction with current services, and the impact of churn on the market, as well as the ideal time period for OTT service trials.

“Households across the US continue to be primarily homebound or more homebound than they have been in prior ‘normal times,’” said Steve Nason, Research Director, Parks Associates. “They have much more time and opportunity to engage and interact with OTT services and are deciding to stick with services, including midsized and smaller ones, longer than normal. Consequently, we are seeing a lower overall churn rate for OTT services.”

Parks Associates finds the key challengers to the Big 3 (Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Hulu) are experiencing churn rates considerably lower than the overall average for all OTT services. Disney+’s churn rate is at 13%, and HBO Max, Apple TV+, and Peacock have churn rates at around 20%. For vMVPDs, their churn rates are still high, but COVID-19 has accelerated the migration away from traditional pay-TV services via a cable or satellite provider while also encouraging extended subscriptions.

“vMVPDs, online pay-TV services that offer bundles of live channels, are a direct beneficiary of the move away from traditional pay-TV services,” Nason said. “This trend, along with the return of live sports, is a huge growth accelerant for vMVPDs such as YouTube TV, Hulu with Live TV, and fuboTV. As a result, the churn rate for vMVPDs, while still hovering near 50%, has been significantly reduced in this latest release.”

At Future of Video, Parks Associates highlights in-depth consumer and industry research on OTT services, the value of content, technology innovations, and best strategies for building successful video services. Event sponsors include Salesforce, Comcast Technology Solutions, ContentWise, Verizon Media, You.i TV, Amdocs Media, Penthera, and Verimatrix.

In the virtual session “Retention and Churn in OTT” on December 15, Marty Roberts, CEO and Co-Founder, Wicket Labs, will deliver the Visionary Insight “Acquire, Engage, Retain – Data-Driven Best Practices for Video Services,” followed by a panel discussion featuring the following speakers:

• Marc Beckwitt, EVP - Business Affairs & Development, Pure Flix
• Alex Drosin, Head, Worldwide Business Development, Deltatre
• Dan Hurwitz, Chief Revenue Officer, Penthera
• Jason Schaeffer, SVP Growth, Crackle Plus

About Future of Video: Business of Streaming

Future of Video brings together senior leaders to share insights on new trends in the video and connected entertainment industries, with insights on consumer adoption, churn, and spending. The event provides insight into successful OTT strategy deployments, challenges for pay-TV providers, the role of connected CE in the growth of video viewing, new content formats, and the overall impact to the video market. www.futureofvideo.us