What Consumers Want From Streaming in 2025: A Q&A With Hub Entertainment Research’s Jason Platt Zolov
Hub Entertainment Research has the mission “to provide [its] clients with the insights to understand new behaviors best, and act on them first.” The company produces reports on a variety of topics, including AI and Peak TV. Recently, it published “2025 Monetization of Video,” the latest in its series of Monetizing Video studies that began in 2018. You can register to download a free excerpt.
For “2025 Monetization of Video,” Hub surveyed 1,600 U.S. TV viewers who have broadband access at home and are ages 16–74. The report aimed to discover “[w]hich distribution models … consumers find most valuable, and how … they prefer to pay for content.” It points out that the challenges consumers are facing include economic concerns about rising prices and identifying the right mix of services they want. The following are the key findings Hub has shared.
Monetization of Video 2025: Key Findings
“Consumers paying for three or more subscriptions are spending more than they’d like.” The average consumer spends $83 per month on TV services and is only willing to spend $86 total. Users subscribing to five or more services are currently spending $98 per month on average and would be willing to spend only $1 more for a total of $99 per month. 
“New streaming bundles are a win for consumers and clearly reduce churn.” The report shows that 42% of consumers are more likely to keep a bundled service versus an individual service, and 44% are no more or less likely to keep a bundle versus an individual service, meaning a total of 86% are either pro or indifferent to bundles when it comes to churn specifically.
“Low price (including ‘free’) is an obvious top attraction for TV services, but users will still pay for the right combination of content and features from a TV service.” Hub asked respondents to rank what they value most when they choose a service. Low price is #1, followed by the availability of all seasons of a show, the availability of all episodes (instead of weekly drops, which means a season might not be complete yet), no ads, the availability of recent theatrical releases, exclusive shows/original content, live sports, and a choice of plan tiers.
Hub digs deeper on the last finding, noting differences between last year’s report and this one:
- ‘Low price’ by far still matters most to the value of a TV service (hence the growth of free services like YouTube, Tubi, and the Roku Channel).
- Having access to full seasons and being able to binge watch have grown in importance; Netflix has made these attributes table stakes.
- Tolerance for ads has increased: having ‘no ads so you can avoid ads’ is less important vs. last year, as users lean into using free services with ads.
- Demand for new theatrical movies on TV services has decreased as theater-going remains soft and viewers lean into plentiful original content from streamers.
- As leagues have sold more sports rights to streamers, live sports have become more important to consumers in how they value favorite teams and games.
- New, cheaper streaming tiers introduced since 2022 have softened interest in plan tier choices as they embrace new bundles of services.
I spoke to Hub’s senior consultant, Jason Platt Zolov, about these findings and some others in the report.
Hub Entertainment Research Senior Consultant Jason Platt Zolov
Brandi Scardilli: Streaming is a completely different landscape from when Hub started doing these reports in 2018. Some major players didn’t exist yet (Apple TV+, Disney+, Peacock), some had different names (CBS All Access, now Paramount+, and HBO’s evolving branding), and Netflix was still adhering to its “no ads” policy. FAST services were around, but they weren’t in mainstream conversations. What’s the biggest change in consumer attitudes you’ve seen since you’ve been working on these reports? What’s something that Hub is paying special attention to this year that it might not have had on its radar in 2018?
Jason Platt Zolov: There are far more services to use today than in 2018 when we started tracking this. Viewers are using more services and are excited about the quality and selection of shows. But their biggest frustration is the complexity of trying to navigate and use all the platforms they subscribe to. Price increases on these services have also contributed to this frustration. So, the biggest thing Hub is paying attention to these days are initiatives that make TV simpler—especially bundling and aggregators—e.g.., Amazon Channels, streaming bundles like Disney+/Max or Fox/ESPN, or streaming platforms being included with cable TV bundles.
Does Hub break any data down by age in the survey? I can imagine the way a 16-year-old streams is very different from how a 74-year-old streams. What have you found with regard to how age plays a role in Hub’s research?
Age plays a huge role in how consumers are streaming—both in terms of the platforms they use to watch and the specific content that younger people gravitate towards vs. older people. When we ask viewers where they “turn to first” when they want to watch something, twice as many 18-34s (35%) say they turn to Netflix first compared to older people 55+ (16%). And the exact opposite is true for older people 55+ who turn to cable TV first (34%) vs. Netflix (16%). We also know that younger people are more immersed in social video platforms like TikTok and Instagram compared to older people, creating a more crowded landscape vying for younger people’s attention.
The report shows that bundling strategies are proving to reduce churn. What else do you think streamers should be doing to engage customers between seasons of their favorite shows so they don’t unsubscribe? Is some amount of churn a fact of life for the streaming industry?
Churn always has been a challenge for the industry, going back to the heyday of cable TV—and this study suggests that about 12% of consumers are “serial” churners—those who frequently sign up, cancel, and resubscribe so that they are only paying when there is something they want to watch. That segment is one that is responding positively to bundling strategies that can help to reduce churn.
Between seasons, keeping “fandoms” engaged with other content and experiences is critical and can keep streaming brand relevancy top of mind. Supporting fans with podcasts, official (and unofficial) fan sites, gaming content, and retail/live experiences are all great ways that studios are giving fans ways to go deeper on the content they love between seasons. Disney, Netflix, and HBO Max are all pursuing these strategies with titles like [anything from] Marvel, Squid Game, and Harry Potter.
The report notes, “The value of live sports via streaming has increased.” Do you think streamers’ bets on buying expensive premium sports rights—like Netflix paying $150 million to stream two NFL games on Christmas Day—are paying off yet?
Netflix is playing the long game on live programming to help support and build out the growth of their ad tier. Engagement and sub gains with NFL (and WWE) in the first half of 2025 have been big—but they are more focused on single, bigger event programming vs. league rights. Their ad tier, reporting more than 90M global users, is clearly the revenue growth engine for the company as their paid tiers plateau. The fact that they are no longer reporting subscriber counts supports that.
Ads are one of the revenue sources that streamers were wrong about: The report says that tolerance for ads has increased this year. However, the report also shares, “Those paying extra for ad-free services have higher perceived value and loyalty to those paid services.” What kind of ad loads do you think viewers are willing to tolerate?
One thing Hub has consistently found in our ad research: Most viewers are perfectly willing to accept advertising if it saves them money on video subscriptions. That’s very different from those who pay extra for services to avoid ads (and have stronger loyalty to those ad-free services as a result). Since 2022, we’ve seen that the minority of viewers who “can’t tolerate” ads has shrunk from 17% to 11%—suggesting that these price-sensitive viewers will tolerate heavier ad loads to get the stuff they want to watch. The growth of YouTube and Tubi is proof positive of that.
In the ranking of what consumers value when they choose a streaming service, I was surprised to see that the availability of all seasons of a show was the second-most-important to respondents instead of something like offering original content. There are different factors in play when it comes to having some seasons and not others, mostly involving licensing deals or switching between streamers, as with Peacock canceling Girls5Eva and Netflix picking it up for one more season. What can streamers learn from the data in the report about consumers’ loyalty to particular shows and their interest in watching a show’s complete story all at once in a binge model, not weekly?
The high demand viewers place on “availability of all seasons” (9.2% “value” share) speaks to both viewer desire to catch up on their own time and their strong frustration when they can’t find the show they want to watch. But original content is still a top value driver (~6.7% “value” share) that matters to viewers, and is a top reason in general for why people sign up for streamers.
Streamers’ scheduling strategy should aim for a balance that helps meet the needs of binge viewers but also supports building a social conversation, which is easier when shows are released weekly vs. all-at-once. HBO Max’s The White Lotus is a great example of that, which built huge buzz with weekly releases that played out over 8 weeks. This is particularly true for streamers that don’t have the giant programming slates that Netflix has: spreading out signature shows weekly (vs. all-at-once) can help to build the social conversation and still breed viewer loyalty.
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