A new report released by payments technology developer Bango makes a strong case for premium streaming services incorporating clips and highlights of their programming into their platforms as a way to drive higher engagement and attract new customers.
The report, called “Subscription Snapshot,” says 40 percent of Americans surveyed by Bango would use their streaming subscription more often if the platforms offered clips of the shows they are interested, and nearly one-third of those surveyed said they actually prefer clips of programming to full episodes.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the number of Americans who said they prefer clips over full episodes rises as the demographic gets younger. Fifty-three percent of Generation Z consumers said they prefer clips over full episodes, according to Bango’s research.
Many streamers are already finding clips on platforms, and that has led to an uptick in usage among apps that offer them. Thirty-seven percent of overall consumers and 47 percent of Millennials surveyed said they open apps more frequently to watch clips, Bango said.
Short-form programming could also help streaming services attract paying subscribers: Fifty-one percent of respondents said clips help them discover television programs worth paying to watch, while 40 percent said original or exclusive short videos could help justify subscription prices.
“It’s tempting to read these findings as evidence that nobody has the patience for a full episode any more,” Bango CEO Paul Larbey said in a statement on Tuesday. “But people still value the shows they follow.”
To that end, 65 percent of streamers surveyed by Bango said full episodic programming still matters when deciding whether they keep a subscription, and a service’s exclusive TV and movie catalog is important to 64 percent of consumers. Only 50 percent said the availability of live sports mattered to them when determining whether to keep a service.
Still, clips and highlights are becoming an important engagement tool for premium streamers — and many are leaning into offering them as a way to attract and retain viewers. Two years ago, Roku struck a deal with Comcast’s NBC Universal to offer short-form comedy clips within its free streaming app The Roku Channel. Paramount and Netflix recently rolled out vertical-format highlights of their original programming within their apps, and Disney is incorporating the same into its Disney Plus, Hulu and ABC News apps.
Clips aside, Bango’s research also examined how subscription bundling influences customer retention. Sixty-one percent of respondents said they would be more likely to maintain a streaming subscription if they could obtain it at a lower price through a bundle. Among Gen Z consumers, 21 percent said they had switched from purchasing a subscription independently to obtaining it through a bundle to save money during the previous year.
Twenty-three percent of respondents said including a music subscription would make a streaming package more valuable. Food delivery memberships followed at 20 percent, with shopping memberships at 19 percent. Gaming subscriptions appealed to 15 percent of respondents overall, increasing to 23 percent among Gen Z.
Bango said streaming providers, telecoms and other subscription distributors could use short-form content and discounted bundles to improve customer engagement and retention — findings that track some of the company’s prior consumer surveys.
Bango develops payments processing technology that allows companies with regular consumer billing to offer added-value subscriptions to their customers. Many of its clients are wireless and land-based telecom providers, like Verizon, who use the company’s proprietary Digital Vending Machine to power subscription-management platforms where customers can purchase individual or bundled streaming services like Netflix, Disney Plus and YouTube Premium.
