Executive Summary

The streaming video space will become even more fragmented as new high-profile streamers from Disney, Apple, NBCUniversal and WarnerMedia emerge this year. Because several popular streaming services give viewers the ability to see content without ads, advertisers are testing more ways of indirectly reaching people.

What’s the latest on cord-cutting?

The number of cord-cutter and cord-never US households will total 48.9 million this year and will grow to 61.5 million in 2023.

How much are people willing to pay for their streaming services?

Polls show that most people don’t want to pay more than $30 per month total for their streaming subscriptions.

What’s being done to fight subscription churn?

New services are getting discounted and bundled with other products, giving viewers the temporary perception that their entertainment budgets aren’t rising yet.

How are marketers reaching users of ad-free streaming services?

Product-placement deals, targeting users elsewhere with automatic content recognition (ACR) data, funneling money to affiliated networks, and using contextual signals to inform ad buys are a few ways that marketers are indirectly finding these viewers.

WHAT’S IN THIS REPORT? This report examines US subscription video trends and data.

KEY STAT: The time that people spend on Netflix each day is growing—but Netflix’s share of US daily video time peaked in 2019 at 27.0% and will decline to 25.7% by 2021.