Providing Market Intelligence for 40 Years

In The News

On a Netflix free trial? A third of you will likely pay up

Almost one out of three people who use a free trial to try out a streaming video service end up subscribing, researcher Parks Associates said Monday.

That "sizeable portion" of trial users dwarfs the amount of people who abuse free try-outs, Parks senior analyst Glenn Hower said.

"There is a potential for free trial abuse, but only roughly 1 percent of consumers are 'serial trialers,'" he said. "Most consumers use trials for their intended purpose of trying out a service before deciding whether or not to continue as a paid subscriber."

Services, such as Hulu, Netflix and live-TV streamers like Sling TV, often offer a free period, one of the consumer-friendly patterns that have become standard for online video competitors -- and have made it easier for people get a sense of life as a cord-cutter. Traditional TV providers like cable and satellite have grappled with dwindling customer growth as more people opt for online alternatives.

From the article "On a Netflix free trial? A third of you will likely pay up" by Joan E. Solsman.

Previously In The News

Editor’s Corner—How far can Amazon reach into pay TV?

Parks Associates’ Brett Sappington said during the Pay TV Show, an event produced by Fierce parent company Questex, that Amazon is the only company to get a la carte TV right. On top of that, he said...

Apple TV app coming to Roku players, Roku TVs today ahead of Apple TV Plus

With the launch of the TV app on Roku, Apple expands the potential audience of Apple TV Plus significantly. Roku is the most popular streaming media platform, with 39% of the installed base of media s...

Deeper Dive—Nothing’s dying in pay TV, it’s just getting segmented and iterated

In fact, I heard all of those questions posed—some of them multiple times—at our first annual Pay TV Show in Denver a few weeks back. The answers were always nuanced, often vaguely unsatisfying … and...

Walmart partners with MGM to boost video-on-demand service Vudu

There are currently more than 200 video services that bypass cable providers and stream content directly to a TV, laptop, phone or game console. That is up from 68 services five years ago, according t...