There are an estimated 100 million subscriptions in the U.S. to ad-supported plans for premium subscription video-on-demand services (excluding Amazon’s Prime Video), and ad tiers now make up 46% of all subscriptions for those services that offer them.
What makes that data, culled from Antenna’s latest quarterly “State of Streaming” report, so interesting is the context. Just two years ago, the research company points out, half of premium SVOD services didn’t even offer an ad-supported plan, and only about one in three subscriptions was to an ad plan. About half of the streaming population, Antenna also noted, had never even tried an ad-supported premium SVOD plan. (Antenna’s measurements include Discovery+, Disney+, Hulu, Max, Netflix, Paramount+ and Peacock.)
Advertising, the company notes in its report, has very quickly become “an entrenched and intrinsic part of the streaming landscape and business model.”
Indeed, “with ads” plans are driving U.S. SVOD growth at this point. As the graphics below reveal, ad-supported tiers for Antenna’s panel of premium SVODs grew by 24.1 million net subscribers from April 1, 2024 to April 1, 2025.
Ad-free tiers only expanded by 7.3 million subscribers over the same span. Antenna further states that ad-supported tiers drove 71% of signups for its measured services over the nine months ending March 31.
According to Antenna’s data, ad-supported tiers carry roughly the same “survival rate” - a measure which tracks loyalty, controlling for tenure and time of entry - that ad-free plans do. Forty-three percent of subscribers who signed up for an ad-free plan on one of Antenna’s measured services during the first half of 2024 kept their subscription for at least nine months, almost flat with that of ad-supported plans (42%). Survival loyalty rates were also the same between tiers at one, three, and six months.
However, ad-supported plans have higher rates of churn, the research company found. With-ads tiers churned at 4.96% in March, 0.83 points higher than ad-free tiers. But the research company explained that part of that numerical outcome stems from the weight of legacy Netflix subscribers, “who represent a meaningful portion of the ad-free churn denominator and are highly unlikely to cancel.”
Finally, Antenna divides the subscription streaming market into four quadrant: “ad avoiders,” who shun plans with commercials; “ad takers,” who will only subscribe to less expensive with-ad tiers; “ad oblivious” folks who have never had to make a choice between the two types of plans; and “ad managers,” who actually weigh the cost-value equation of each service they take, and purchase a combination of plans.
Increasingly, Antenna finds, the ad managers are taking over.
