Faced with growing concerns about subscription cancellations, publishers must put content first and convince customers that their products are simply worth the money, according to the newly-launched Media Moments 2022 report.
Digital subscription cancellations grew 34.4% in the second quarter of 2022 compared to the first quarter of 2021, according to INMA’s Subscription Benchmarking Service. Even Netflix lost nearly 1 million subscribers from April to June this year.
What happened with Netflix, however, was temporary, as it was lacking fresh contents during the second quarter, said Esther Kezia Thorpe, one of the authors of Media Moments 2022. Once Netflix put on new shows in the subsequent quarters, customers started coming back.
“You’ve got to be valuable to the audience. You’ve got to have something that they want to subscribe to,” Thorpe said during Media Moments 2022 launch on Wednesday. “If the content starts to go down the toilet, so does the subscription.”
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Jack Marshall, the co-founder of consulting company Toolkits, offered a similar view when invited to Media Voices podcast: “More than anything, publishers just need to be honest with themselves about whether they really have the content and products to support subscription models sustainably in the long term.”
It is also crucial for publishers to be open to partnerships to attract new customers, said BuzzFeed Commercial Director Caroline Fenner. She mentioned The Athletic’s partnership with Google, which allowed the former to hire more journalists and expand its coverage of professional women’s sports.
“It’s allowing them to put content in front of the paywall that, in turn, could actually lead to more people signing up and driving subscriptions,” Fenner said.