What Impact is the Number of Streaming Options Having on Consumers?

Streaming services are always a hot topic. With over 200 streaming options available, KS&R’s Social Insight Exchange (SIX) Team hypothesized that the number of options in the market might be overwhelming to consumers.

How often is streaming being talked about on social media?

With ~21 million mentions over the past 3 months, streaming certainly generates a lot of buzz. Social conversations have held fairly steady over the past 3 months but spiked a few times (around July 24th and August 20th). Overall sentiment related to streaming on social media also stayed fairly consistent over the past three months with the conversation being slightly more positive than negative.

So, what are people actually saying about streaming?

We narrowed in on the top sentiment drivers over the past 3 months. What we found is positive words / phrases like “watch”, “not stop” and “miss”, form the top tier of behavior sentiment drivers. On the other hand, words / phrases like “not afford”, “stop”, “cancel”, “quit”, and “not watch” also pop as top sentiment drivers.

• “Dropped 2 of our 5 streaming services.” Twitter
• “I can’t afford streaming, lmao.” reddit.com
• “Sorry can’t watch, can’t afford a 7th streaming service.” Twitter
• “It’s just annoying. Like I can’t afford 10 different streaming services. I have YouTube TV as my cable and it’s awesome and Netflix.” reddit.com

This could mean some consumers find the number of options available in the market overwhelming, causing them to cancel. Along with this potential issue, consumers also face advertisements as part of the streaming experience – whether they like it or not.

Ads and Streaming
Free ad-supported streaming (FAST) seems to be generating a good amount of buzz on some communication channels recently, but is it coming out in social conversation? The short answer…no. We are not seeing the topic come out organically, but we filtered the social conversation to understand what people are saying about FAST (among those talking about it). There have been around 8,000 mentions of FAST over the past 3 months. Much of that conversation is from news articles and sources with Warner Bros., Amazon, and Samsung forming the top tier of brands mentioned related to FAST streaming.

• “Warner Bros Discovery slumps after announcing a possible move to free, ad-supported streaming.” finance.yahoo.com
• “It’s [Freevee] Amazon’s free (ad-supported) streaming service.” reddit.com
• “The Samsung TV Plus is getting a major upgrade in terms of streaming. Samsung’s free ad-supported TV (FAST) and video on-demand service platform now adds more exclusive and free content for its users to enjoy.” itechpost.com

What’s next?
The SIX Team will continue to keep an eye on the discussions surrounding streaming services and check in again in a few months to see how it has evolved.

KS&R’s Social Insight Exchange (SIX) provides businesses a view into unsolicited consumer and business opinions by capturing online conversations. For more information, please contact SocialInsightExchange@ksrinc.com.