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Hollywood Earnings: NBCU Slips While Apple TV+ And Prime Video Grow Revenue
A mix of legacy and tech Hollywood players report earnings on Thursday as Wall Street considers who can compete with Netflix long term, and which success metrics will move the needle going forward.
Comcast’s NBCUniversal has dropped below Netflix in a key audience demand metric, and Parrot Analytics will reveal historic ARPU and churn data on Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV+ for the first time, in lieu of those parent companies breaking out SVOD results.
In Q3 2024, Netflix jumped ahead of NBCUniversal in corporate demand share — that is, demand for all original TV content produced under a company’s corporate umbrella. This is the first time that Netflix has led a legacy studio in the category. While this is a telling sign of where things are headed, NBCUniversal is in overall solid shape compared to its legacy media brethren — the debt saddled Warner Bros. Discovery and ownership-transitioning Paramount Global.
Peacock Post-Playoff Game Churn
Peacock generated positive headlines in Q3 for its handling of the 2024 Paris Olympics — which will likely lead to strong subscriber growth for the quarter. The real question is how will the platform retain those new sign ups? Early evidence suggests one-off sporting events may not drive long term subscriber retention.
Parrot Analytics Streaming Metrics shows that Q2 2024 marked the sharpest quarterly increase in Peacock’s churn rate in more than three years. This occurred in the quarter following Peacock’s highly touted exclusive NFL Playoff Game in January, which drove record sign ups (at the time). Watch for post-Olympics Q4 churn as a sign of long term health for Peacock.
One of NBCUniversal’s key moves from the pre-Streaming Wars era is paying off — licensing Paramount Network’s Yellowstone to Peacock. The hit cable series has accounted for nearly 4% of Peacock’s subscriber acquisition in 2024, second among all titles only to the Oscar-winning film Oppenheimer for the platform.
Tech Giants
While Amazon and Apple do not break out metrics from their video streaming divisions, Parrot Analytics Streaming Metrics can provide insight into the black boxes of the performances for both streaming services.
Apple TV+ has carved out an increasing share of Apple’s total global services revenue, more than doubling its share from the launch in Q4 2019 to Q2 2024 (Apple’s Q3 2024). In the quarter ending in June, Apple’s services generated a record $24.2 billion in revenue.
Both Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime Video have seen significant ARPU gains in the last year, led by pricing changes and hit seasons of flagship shows like Ted Lasso and The Boys. Both tactics — a price hike and introducing ads — increased ARPU and revenue for these platforms but reduced subscribers in the short term.
Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime Video APRU
- Apple TV+’s major price hike and Amazon Prime Video’s addition of an opt-out ad tier have driven the most significant jumps in ARPU and revenue for both platforms, despite leading to an immediate uptick in churn.
- Both platforms saw a significant jump in revenue in the quarter in which these changes were implemented. Apple TV+ saw a 33% jump in quarterly UCAN revenue in Q4 2023 after its price hike. Amazon Prime Video saw a 19.2% increase in revenue after introducing ads with the option to pay for ad-free at the beginning of the year.
- While the 43% price increase for Apple TV+ led to increased churn, it helped the platform better monetize its subscribers like a traditional SVOD business model and resulted in a substantial jump in revenue.
- Both platforms appear to have executed an effective price increase that boosted revenue in ways tailored to the respective business models.
Yellowstone Driving Subscribers to Peacock
- Yellowstone has accounted for 3.71% of subscriber acquisition for Peacock in 2024. It has been the highest performing TV series on Peacock in terms of subscriber acquisition, surpassing well-known titles like Saturday Night Live, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and the Law and Order franchise — some of Comcast’s most valuable IPs.
- Audience Journeys also provides insight into where Yellowstone’s audience is coming from. Around 18% of viewers came via Max, the same percentage as Netflix, while 15% are drawn from Hulu.
- A relevant share, 8%, came from Paramount+, which has a smaller catalog than other platforms mentioned. This reflects the high affinity between Taylor Sheridan’s shows, most of which are exclusive to Paramount+.
NBCUniversal slips in Corporate Demand Share
- Corporate demand share assesses the long-term viability of the top media companies as they look to consolidate their original content’s availability exclusively onto their own platforms, and can effectively help value a conglomerate’s legacy and library content in aggregate.
- For the first time ever, Netflix has overtaken one of the legacy studios in this category, which accounts for demand for all original TV content produced under each company’s umbrella.
- Netflix has steadily cut into NBCUniversal’s fourth place position of late, from trailing by -0.9% in Q1 2024, to -0.3% in Q2 2024, to now leading by 0.6% in Q3 2024.
- In other words, there is more demand for Netflix’s original TV catalog — which started in 2012 — than that of NBCUniversal — whose original TV programming dates back to the 1940s.
Parrot Analytics
Global television demand measurement
Parrot Analytics is the leading global content demand analytics company for the multi-platform TV business. With the world's largest TV audience demand datasets, the company currently tracks more than 1.5B daily expressions of demand in over 100 languages from 200+ countries to reveal the content consumers engage with and watch the most across platforms.
As a trusted partner to some of the biggest media companies and content creators in the world, Parrot Analytics optimises content workflows in real time. The company's TV analytics products result in better production, distribution, acquisition and marketing decisions, as well as accelerated SVOD platform success.
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