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MediaEveryone wants one platform. Few will pay for it
Audiences are clear about the experience they want and equally clear about what they will spend on it.
Eighty-six percent of consumers say they would like a single platform that gives them everything they subscribe to. Forty-one percent say they would pay for it. The distance between those two numbers is the entire strategic problem of the industry.
Aggregation is what audiences want. Someone has to fund it, and the party best placed to build it is usually the party with the most to lose.
The friction is measurable
Eighty-five percent report frustration with inflexible viewing options and seventy-two percent say it is hard to find something they want to watch. Discovery has become the bottleneck, not supply.
Every additional service adds catalogue and subtracts from the odds that any given title is found.
Churn is the honest metric
Subscriber additions can be bought. Retention reveals whether the service is a habit or a purchase made for one title.
Services with strong retention almost always have a recommendation experience people trust, which is a data and product problem before it is a content problem.
Bundling returns, in a new form
The industry spent a decade unbundling and is now reassembling packages through partnerships, carrier deals and ad-supported tiers.
What is different is that the bundle is now assembled around the customer relationship rather than around distribution infrastructure.