(Versión en español) Consumers in Latin America are spending around $444 per year on subscription-based streaming services, according to the findings of a new survey released on Thursday.
The report, released by technology firm Bango, evaluated responses from more than 6,400 streaming customers in six Latin American countries — Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru. It concludes that the streaming TV market in those Latin American countries is maturing at a good rate, but consumers might be feeling the strain of all those premium choices where it counts the most: Their wallets.
Around 68 percent of consumers surveyed by Bango said they couldn’t afford all the subscription services they wanted to watch, the company said. Streamers in Brazil were most sensitive to those conditions, where 73 percent said they feel like they can’t purchase all the streaming services they desire.
Subscription fatigue is also settling in among consumers in Latin America, with 27 percent saying they can’t stay on top of their monthly streaming-related expenditures. One out of three consumers surveyed by Bango said they are paying for services they don’t use.
“As the subscription economy in Latin America continues to grow, the challenges of subscription fatigue and management become more pressing,” Luisa Muneratti, the Senior Vice President of Sales for Iberia and the Americas at Bango, said in a statement. “Super Bundling offers a viable solution, promising to enhance user experience, increase subscription uptake, and foster greater customer loyalty.”
Not coincidentally, Bango has just the thing that could cure what ails Latin American streamers. The company has developed technology that allows subscription-first service providers like telecommunications firms to offer other types of subscriptions like streaming video products.
The model has been put to the test in more-mature streaming video markets like the United States and Australia, where Bango helps power numerous streaming marketplaces that allow telecoms to present streaming bundles to their customers.
“Where we come in is we help them sell those products easily — they connect to our platform,” Giles Tongue, Bango’s Vice President of Marketing, told The Desk in an interview earlier this year. “We connect with different service partners and handle the sell-side transactions, including payments. When a subscriber purchases a particular offer from the telco, Bango checks with the content provider that the subscriber is eligible for that offer (for example, that they haven’t had that offer before), and then gives the green light to the telco to complete the purchase, and grant access to the service. This all happens more or less instantly. Bango makes something quite complex, very simple for all parties.”
Bango has more than two dozen relationships with telecoms around the world. In the United States, it helps power Verizon’s Plus-Play (Verizon +play) streaming marketplace; the company has leveraged a Bango product called the Digital Vending Machine to resell third party streaming video subscriptions and create unique bundles, such as its Netflix-AMC Plus bundle that costs $26 per month. In Australia, Bango works with Singtel’s Optus, which operates a marketplace called SubHub that also connects to the Digital Vending Machine for the same purpose.
The bundles developed by Bango’s clients tend to be price-attractive — they cost less than what customers would pay if they purchased each streaming service on its own. The catch is that a streamer has to maintain an active line of service with a Bango telecom partner if they want to maintain bundles purchased through the telecom’s marketplace.
Telecoms see it as a winning formula, because it helps increase customer satisfaction and loyalty while reducing churn. Customers see it as an added value for streaming services and other subscription-based products that they would likely pay for anyway.
According to investor materials reviewed by The Desk, Bango has at least one client in Latin America: Mexican telecommunications firm América Móvil, which utilizes Bango’s micropayments technology that gives customers the ability to purchase goods and services through their mobile phones.
Around this time last year, Bango was in active discussions with América Móvil and one other service provider, TIM Brasil, about possibly utilizing the company’s Digital Vending Machine, the materials showed. It isn’t clear how far those discussions progressed; when asked about Bango’s client relationships last month, a spokesperson affirmed that the company has “a background in direct carrier billing…so we have a long list of customers,” but did not address specific arrangements.
Still, Bango is clearly interested in the Latin American streaming video market, and it is hoping telecoms based in those countries have a similar interest in what Bango has to offer them.
The report published on Thursday suggests consumers are already craving the types of bundles that Bango’s technology can make possible: Fifty-five percent of consumers surveyed said they would like their mobile phone operators to provide a discount bundle — Bango calls them “Super Bundles” — while 30 percent said they’d like to see the same from their home Internet providers.
“Super Bundling offers a viable solution, promising to enhance user experience, increase subscription uptake, and foster greater customer loyalty,” Muneratti said. “With the potential to revolutionize how subscribers interact with their services, Super Bundling stands at the forefront of the next wave of subscription innovation.”
To download the Bango report “Subscription Wars: Super Bundling Awakens – Latin America,” click or tap here.
