TiVo Sees Two Kinds of Pay TV Customers: The Fickle and the Loyal
Some pay TV customers are loyal and some are very willing to jump to a new service. Video providers need to understand the difference and craft specific messages for each.
That's the take home lesson from TiVo's 2017 survey of pay TV and over-the-top (OTT) customers, released today. TiVo questioned 8,500 customers from 7 countries through an online survey. Roughly 2,500 of those were from the U.S.
Analyzing the results, TiVo found two distinct groups of customers: loyalists and fickle newbies. Loyalists have been with their pay TV provider for over 4 years. In the U.S., they represent 55 percent of pay TV customers and are a bit older. The fickle have been with their current provider less than a year.
About half of loyal pay TV customers also subscribe to an OTT service; the number is higher for the fickle group.
With the fickle group at a higher risk for churn, TiVo advises pay TV operators to keep them happy by staying current, offering access on a range of devices and constantly matching innovative OTT services in order to stay relevant. The loyalists typically spend more on pay TV services so they're a more valuable asset. Keep them happy by bringing OTT offerings into the company's interface so they can try streaming options from the same remote.
The proliferation of OTT services is leading to frustration for some viewers: TiVo says 50 percent the total survey group thinks finding content should be easier, 38 percent shut off their devices when they can't find something to watch, and 26 would pay more for a simple content discovery system that works across all services.
"We think that all of this is representative of the fragmentation of the marketplace that's in transition right now," says Paul Stathacopoulos, vice president of strategy at Tivo. "Consumers having access to services with a differing mix of content is causing some confusion, and they're indicating that they're willing to open their wallets to solve that problem."
To read more, download the full report (no registration required).
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