The Profound Impact of Churn and Wurl’s Revolutionary New Solution

In the cable TV industry, ‘churn’ is that deadly term that means you’re losing subscribers. And in the over-the-top (OTT) world, the challenge for subscription-video-on-demand services (SVODs) is even more amplified. SVODs are having to replace churned subscribers at a quick and costly rate in order to stay on track to meet their subscriber goals, needing to sell three subscriptions in order to account for one after the rate of churn. 

Wurl Analytics, the research division of Wurl, recently released The 2021 Churn Analysis Report,  its first data-driven report focusing on the financial impact of churn. 

Looking at estimated lost U.S. revenue for four of the top SVODs due to churn, Wurl Analytics calculated that HBO Max lost $33.1M, Netflix lost $17.3M, Hulu lost $15.1M and Disney+ lost $14.7M in the month of April 2021 alone. Disney+, HBO Max and ViacomCBS experienced monthly churn rates ranging from 2% to 7%. This equates to huge subscriber losses requiring substantial investment in marketing and content in order to attract new subscribers to replace lost ones. To meet their publicly-stated goals, large SVOD services must add hundreds of millions of subscribers just to replace those that churn.

Request the 2021 Churn Analysis Report 

Introducing Wurl Perform™, a revolutionary new performance marketing service, which was designed to address this challenge. Like the performance-based marketing services that revolutionized customer acquisition for mobile apps, Wurl is bringing data-driven targeting and measurement to television promos for the first time. 

Wurl Perform is a machine learning-powered service for streamers to run targeted promo campaigns on ConnectedTV that drive precisely measurable viewer acquisition. Wurl Perform offers 100% measurable customer acquisition and conversion and uses machine learning based on hundreds of millions of TV viewers to precisely identify those with a high-ranked interest in promoted content. In other words, it’s a first-to-market, performance marketing service that identifies high-affinity viewers and brings them to your channel or platform. This service is now available for SVOD, AVOD, and FAST apps and channels in two ways: “Paid Campaigns,” where you run paid media with us to drive viewers. And for FAST channels on Wurl’s global  network, with available inventory, we can run “Free Campaigns,” which not only help monetize your unused inventory and decrease ad-fatigue on your FAST channel, but also help acquire new viewers and increase engagement.

Using Wurl’s proprietary machine learning and performance algorithm, Wurl helped 25 streaming channels that participated in a beta test, micro-target their promos using inventory from each channel.  The channels that participated included AMC Stories, Bloomberg TV+, Cheddar, Gravitas Movies, and others. The analysis was done on over 4 million viewers of FAST channels in North America from May to August 2021, serving 10 million impressions. Key findings from the trial include:

• The average return-on-ad-spend (ROAS) for each individual channel was 4x, and some as high as 20x.
• FAST channel CTV viewers on average typically watch 1.8 channels, but our beta test saw them watching an average of 5.3 channels—a 194% increase in new channels watched per viewer.
• Among viewers who watched the promos, 16% converted and as a result watched on average 70% more hours of viewing (HOV) and 200% more channels during this month.
• The FAST platform where we ran the beta saw an 8% growth in HOV.
• There was a 20% increase in daily average viewing for each FAST channel. 
• Ultimately, we found a significant correlation in our machine-learning algorithm between past behavior of the converted viewers and the conversions. Now that we have this analysis completed, we can apply it to any kind of marketing whether with FAST channels, AVOD, or SVOD customers.

Learn How Wurl Perform Can Help You Acquire Viewers & Reduce Churn 

“Wurl Perform is the world’s first and only performance-based marketing service for TV,” continued Doherty. “Wurl processes over 120TB of data daily related to viewing activity on streaming apps, allowing for targeting precision that has previously only been available on mobile apps and the web.  During our beta, Wurl Perform produced outstanding results for the 25 companies that used the service. Our beta customers saw conversion rates increase 10%, with an average return on ad spend of more than 4x, and as much as 20x for some participants.”