While gross additions have remained relatively stable, Netflix saw 3.6 million cancels in the first quarter of 2022 — over one million more than the service dealt with in both Q1 2021 and Q4 2021, Antenna revealed in its latest report, which aimed to unpack the behavior of these churned subscribers and their engagement with other SVOD platforms.
According to Antenna, Paramount+, Peacock and Disney+ were the platforms these users were most likely to sign-up for in the first quarter of the year, accounting for 51% of all new sign-ups in the period. Disney+ and Apple TV made up a relatively large percentage of new sign-ups for the churned Q1 2022 Netflix users when compared to their market share of all new Q1 2022 sign-ups (accounting for 23% of churned Netflix subscribers sign-ups vs. 11% for the market as a whole).
Conversely, Paramount+ made up a smaller percentage of new sign-ups for the churned Q1 2022 Netflix users when compared to their market share of all new Q1 2022 sign-ups (17% vs. 22% respectively).
There has been much ado about the possibility of Netflix launching an ad-supported plan. While it remains to be seen if this will be the case, Antenna data suggests that churned Netflix users were not disproportionately likely to enroll in ad-supported plans in the first quarter of 2022. In aggregate, 35% of total new sign-ups were to ad-supported plans. Excluding those services that did not offer an ad-supported plan, 54% of all new sign-ups went to ad-supported plans.
These trends are consistent with the behavior of the general market, where 35% of new sign-ups went to ad-supported plans (and 53% of sign-ups when excluding services without an ad-supported option).
The cohort that churned from Netflix was significantly more likely to select a plan with ads for Peacock (80% vs. 20% for ad-free). For Paramount+ & Hulu, it was roughly split evenly. HBO Max was the service that saw the greatest percentage of these users elect an ad-free plan (65%).
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