The streaming industry is waking up to a brutal truth: consumers are done with your bloated business models. The Q2 2024 TiVo Video Trends Report underscores what many insiders have feared—streaming fatigue is at an all-time high, and viewers are getting smarter about where they spend their money. If the message wasn’t clear, our favorite cartographer from…wait, where was I going with that? Evan Shapiro made sure to hammer it home with some cold, hard facts: streaming is a tough, “shitty” business, and unless the industry wakes up, it’s headed for a rough road ahead.
Ad-Supported Streaming is the Future (Like It or Not)
The days of blindly chasing Netflix’s ad-free utopia are over. The TiVo report confirms what we’ve all seen coming—the once-glorified ad-free SVOD model is losing steam, with an 18% year-over-year decline in ad-free subscribers. Instead, ad-supported tiers are booming, and viewers are happy to put up with a few commercials if it means cutting costs.
Evan noted in his THR interview how Amazon got it right by slipping ads into Prime without rocking the boat too much. Meanwhile, Netflix fumbled its ad-tier rollout with overpricing and limited content. The message is clear: get your ad strategy right, or your audience will start looking elsewhere—FAST (yeah, pun intended).
The Discovery Dilemma: Fix Your UI or Die
Let’s talk about the 73% of consumers who now have to hop between multiple apps just to find something to watch. That’s right—your platform’s recommendation system is a disaster, and your viewers are tired of it. 84.5% of people browse endlessly before they settle on something. This isn’t a minor UX problem—it’s a ticking time bomb.
Here’s the brutal truth: streaming platforms are sitting on mountains of data, but most are too clueless to use it effectively. If you’re not fixing discovery, you’re driving your users to frustration—and, eventually, straight into the arms of your competition. Which, by the way…your competition is literally anything that can demand attention: sex, drugs, rock and roll, social media, gaming, and, I guess, other streaming video services too.
Consumers Are Spending Smarter, Not More
Consumers aren’t just cutting back out of necessity—they’re cutting back because they’ve wised up. The TiVo report shows the average household has gone from 6.9 paid services to 5.7. They’re done with piling on subscriptions just to keep up with every new platform. People are getting picky, and that’s bad news for any service that thinks it’s indispensable.
And here’s a twist: broadband-only households now spend more than pay-TV subscribers. Cord-cutting was supposed to be the magic bullet, but all it’s done is create a tangled mess of subscriptions—fewer cords, more headaches. As services keep jacking up prices, consumers are finding creative ways to save, like switching to free, ad-supported platforms.
Cord-cutting isn’t a Done Deal
Despite all the noise about cord-cutting, Pay-TV isn’t dead yet. A sound 67.7% of people still hold onto their subscriptions, and only 19.6% plan to cut the cord in the next six months. Why? Sports, live events, and local programming. If you’re a streaming service and you think you can win this battle without offering any of these, you’re on a fast track to irrelevance.
Here’s the real problem: media companies are not listening to their audiences. They’re too busy making decisions that keep shareholders happy, deteriorating the user experience. If platforms don’t get serious about offering live and local content, they will lose The Streaming Wars. For what it’s worth, all of us at The Streaming Wars agree there won’t be a single winner of this shit. This is not a zero-sum game. But, my friends, there will be losers and casualties along the way.
The Rise of Free: AVOD/FAST is the Silent Winner
While everyone’s scrambling to boost subscriptions, free ad-supported streaming (FAST) is slowly eating their lunch. 66.7% of viewers are tuning into services like Pluto TV and Tubi, racking up serious screen time. If you’re still stuck chasing subscription dollars, it’s time for a wake-up call—free is the new frontier, and it’s capturing more watch time than ever.
The bottom line? Get your ad game in order or get left behind. The ad-supported model is no longer just an alternative—it’s the future. Netflix botched its entry into the ad space by misunderstanding the market, but Amazon nailed it by seamlessly integrating ads. Platforms that ignore this trend do so at their own peril.
TL;DR
In the end, the message is clear. Consumers are savvier, spending less and demanding more. Streaming platforms must fix discovery, get serious about ads, and stop coasting—or watch their audiences slip away. The future of streaming is still wide open, but only for those willing to adapt. If you keep coasting on outdated models, your audience will find someone else to meet their needs.
