One in seven viewers of online content are ‘borrowing’ an accounts in order to view the content.
In new research, Ampere Analysis defines an account borrower as anyone who says they are using a login for a subscription online video platform from someone outside of their household to access a service.
Examples include film and TV services such as Netflix, Hulu or Amazon Prime Video, but also services that include sports and niche content.
Minal Modha, Consumer Research Lead, Ampere Analysis says: “With 50 million account borrowers paying for another subscription OTT service and more than two-thirds taking pay TV, it’s clear that these consumers are not averse to paying for content. Subscription OTT players need strategies to respond to an increasingly saturated market and entice consumers with a finite budget for content to pay for their programming – even if that means changing tack and allowing them to dip in and out of subscriptions or for bite-size chunks of content.”
In the past 12 months, the proportion of global Internet users that are borrowing an account has increased, rising from 8% in Q1 2019 to 11% in Q1 2020. Ampere estimates that there are 70 million households borrowing one or more OTT accounts – an equivalent to one in seven households – the trend is highest in India, followed by the Netherlands and France, and lowest in Japan.
