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THE SUBSCRIPTION GAP · The Media Odyssey

• TMO - Bango (audio) === Evan Shapiro: [00:00:00] 48% of Gen Z say they search for 30 minutes looking for streaming content and 56% of Gen Z in the UK. This is an existential crisis, I think in the ecosystem. Marion Ranchet: Welcome back to The Media Odyssey podcast. That is Evan Shapiro, Evan Shapiro: and that is Marion Ranchet. Marion Ranchet: Today we are digging into a report that just got dropped during StreamTV Europe Lisbon, and we jumped on it. We actually, as always, I had a little bit of a preview and were able to dig into the latest report from, called Subscription Signals 2026. Evan, did you have time to take a look at it? [00:01:00] Evan Shapiro: We did get it before StreamTV, thanks to our friends at Bango, and we did the same report with them last year. So it'll be interesting to watch what happened year on year. If you don't know, Bango is a subscription bundler, so a lot of the bundles, like HBO Max and Netflix or Verizon plus those two that you may be subscribing to is actually powered on the backend by a provider like Bango in that specific case. And so they allow these different platforms to bundle and create economies of scale for the consumer. But they don't have to go through all the rigamarole and mechanics of wiring it together on the backend. Bango does that as a white label service. So this report is a comprehensive look at attitudes towards and actions around subscriptions in the US and the UK. They do this report every year. They give us an advanced look. I did have a chance to look at it before Stream TV in Lisbon, which was [00:02:00] unfucking amazing. Thank you for such a good time, Lisbon. Thank you Marion for being there and being such a great contributor. Your event prior was amazing. So anyway, we're gonna be doing StreamTV in Denver this summer in June, and if you use my code Shapiro 10, you get a 10% discount for that conference. It's June 16th through 19th in Denver, just before Cannes Lions. So I'm flying to Denver and then from Denver to Cannes to see you Marion in France where you're from. Marion Ranchet: Absolutely. Evan Shapiro: But let's dig into this. Let's dig into this report. It's, it's full of fascinating facts. I'm gonna let you drive this. What was the thing that most stood out to you about this study that Bango did? Marion Ranchet: Honestly, there's so much data in there, it's very hard to make a decision. I have to say, I'm always keen to see how many subscriptions per person you [00:03:00] have because I do feel that we're nearing more and more that glass ceiling where people are like, I have too many, I gotta cut and I do it myself regularly. I actually, some subscription come and go. We've spoken about this as the serial churner. But so that data, fascinating to see that, looking at the US versus the UK has more. UK has more subscriptions. So for those of us joining us on audio platform, 5.7 subscription per person in the UK versus 5.2 in the US. And then, knowing that one has more than the other, I understand why the UK is spending on average, so 68 pounds, $90 versus the US $69. But where I don't completely get it is that historically, a lot of the tiers in the US were more expensive than they were in the [00:04:00] UK. So this got me puzzled, but perhaps you have an insight on this. Evan Shapiro: Yes. If you are listening, we'll walk you through it, but this is a good episode to watch on YouTube because it has a lot of visuals with charts and graphs that we created to represent the data. And you're right, 5.2 subscriptions on average in the US 5.7 in the UK, $90 a month in the UK versus less than $70 in the US. And think there's reasons for this, most notably, Sky, which is really the only, there are others, but it's the biggest pay TV provider in the UK, doesn't have as much of share of the market as the pay TV providers here in the US. So the pay TV providers here in the US bundle up a bunch of different stuff. And that looks like one subscription to the home right? Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: And I think it creates economies of scale that you can't necessarily find [00:05:00] in the UK. And remember, the other thing is these subscriptions aren't just for television either. These are for other things as we'll see a little bit later. So it's maybe pay TV and SVOD or premium, streaming. But it could also be things like news, or food. There's a category that's goods, physical goods shipped out on a monthly basis. So I do think there's a number of different contributing factors and we're gonna have Giles from Bango on a little bit later in the pod. And I think we can dig into this with him, but I think we can also ask him maybe in the next study to ask, what comprises this in the average home? What is the suite of services? It's a complicated, that's not a non-linear question to ask. So I can also appreciate how hard that would be to survey, but this was surprising to both of us. It's like 25% increase in the UK [00:06:00] versus the US per home. Really interesting. Also I would say, another thing, the US is a much larger country and so there is just a wider diversity of economic strata in the US to a certain extent because of the size of the geography and the population. Think it's six times larger by population. So I also think that's a contributing factor as well. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. You said something about Sky and I think whether that's Sky or other telcos in the UK but in Europe at large, historically they were very keen on bundling, mobile internet, TV. And then lately SVOD. But it was done in such a way that you could build your bundle. So those were add-ons. And the thing is that a lot of subscribers and will come to that afterwards, people actually wanna save money. And so what Sky has been doing, they just launched a couple of weeks ago, a master [00:07:00] bundle, that is like 24 pounds per month. Something like ridiculously cheap, and you have Disney, HBO, Netflix, et cetera. You have five, six different services in there. So your point about, Evan Shapiro: Plus your mobile right? Marion Ranchet: Yeah. I think, I'm not sure actually. I don't know if, you have the internet for sure, but we can ask Giles. I'm not sure if mobile is included, but that's like a massive, pay TV slash SVOD bundle and, and I think they understand that they need to do a bit more of those hard bundles versus you just do add-ons, exactly to that point, right? To make sure that people feel like they're not spending as much, but they have a lot to chew on. Evan Shapiro: And that's more of a de rigor, again French, here in the US where you're, typically if you're getting broadband and pay TV, you're, they're bundled together and very often phone, not just landline, which is going away, but mobile is bundled [00:08:00] in there as well. So Charter does that and has been doing that for a while. Comcast does that and has been doing that for a while. A lot of, smaller providers also do that. But to your point, the new thing is now Disney Plus and ESPN Plus and other things are being bundled into the pay TV. So I do think you're gonna see this price go down. There's telling data here. let's, we'll get to that in a second, around people believe they're paying too much. And I think that's one of the major reasons why the price will be forced to come down. But here are the rankings. Subscriptions. So these are the subscriptions. People say they have ranked by the share of people, and this is across UK and US, the share of each, the share of the population that has each subscription. And SVOD is number one by a lot. Which I is I think remarkable given, in the grand scheme of things, premium streaming is a relatively new product, right? Compared to let's say, mobile phones or pay TV [00:09:00] or even newspapers and things like that. And yet it is dominant. It is by far and away, number one. Number two, and this was true last year, but this is still surprising to a lot of people after premium streaming. The number two, and again, there's a huge distance between second place and third place is retail. So this would be Amazon, but other types of retail subscriptions. Tesco has one, Walmart has one. And it's just, I found it, I find it remarkable that it's almost 20%, almost 50% higher. Almost, I'm sorry, almost a hundred percent higher than music subscriptions. We all have, I thought we all have Spotify or Apple, music or some kind of music subscription, but in reality almost twice as many people have a retail subscription, as have a music subscription. Marion Ranchet: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. The retail piece is surprising to, me still because aside from Amazon, I'm saying that, and I had a [00:10:00] retail bundle, a while back with, the local, super market chain here in the Netherlands. So I guess that's that. And I think they're underplaying, that they're not offering enough. Historically they've just focused on you pay X and then you get, it's not actually free delivery, from, for most of the time. And like Amazon, it's reduced delivery fees. But they should capitalize on the fact that they have that relationship and that they could build on top of that. And that's what Walmarts did. I do have a suspicion that this bundle with Paramount and Peacock is gonna go away, at least Paramount because I've heard, we were looking at the Paramount investor deck and they said something about a bundle that would go away. Perhaps that's this one. Evan Shapiro: That's interesting. Marion Ranchet: It would be a biggie for Paramount. Evan Shapiro: Yeah, I think if Walmart drops Paramount as a bundle, that I think you're right, that will really hurt Paramount plus probably, [00:11:00] disproportionately over it hurting Walmart. Because if you think about who would buy that bundle, that's a pretty large group of humans, and I understood that it was a, was one of the most successful bundles out there. I also think, do you have an Amazon Prime subscription? Marion Ranchet: I do not actually. Evan Shapiro: You don't? Marion Ranchet: My husband does, but ever since I've moved here, actually the Netherlands. Evan Shapiro: But then your home does. Marion Ranchet: Yeah, my home does, but I thought we didn't have it. And because, let me say, we've been in the Netherlands for eight years and Prime in the Netherlands is tiny because the historical player is called ball.com, and it's like the Walmart of here. Evan Shapiro: Got it. Marion Ranchet: And yeah, I really don't use Amazon and I try to buy as little as possible from those platforms anyway. Evan Shapiro: Yeah, same. But so you, hinted at this, Amazon is I think probably one of the largest [00:12:00] subscriptions on the planet Earth. I think it's probably closing in on 300 million total users in some form or fashion. And when I ask audiences, when I'm in front of them live, I say who here has an Amazon subscription? The whole room raises their hand. Amazon Prime membership. They all raise their hand. And then I say, has anyone thought about canceling despite the fact that the price keeps going up and no one raises their hand? Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: But because Jeff Bezos is a human dick. I decided look at him. He just looks like one, his rocket looks like one. Everything about a symbol for the Amazon looks like a penis. He is penis obsessed. And he is going through the greatest, largest midlife public crisis other than Elon Musk. Marion Ranchet: The big yacht? Evan Shapiro: Not just a yacht, but a yacht so big it gets stuck in a canal. The largest yacht in the history of mankind and just the, he marries the trad-est of trad-wives. Anyway, but because he also is destroying the Washington Post and is just a, just an all [00:13:00] around bad person, I broke my subscription to Amazon to see if we would notice and that's been over seven months and we do not notice. Here's the thing about Amazon. You're paying for shipping. You're not paying distinct on each ship. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: But you are absolutely paying for shipping and you're also shopping more because you think you get free shipping. And so my, I believe that there's gonna come a time, and there's data in this survey that I think that supports this, that people realize that this is a ripoff and that they're gonna start canceling Amazon because it's so expensive and they're not gonna notice a difference in their lives. And that's gonna be a bad moment for Amazon. But, what's interesting here is, so AI, social people, more people are paying for social media. More people are subscribing for pay to social media than do AI. And news by the way. That's amazing, don't you think? Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Yeah. But we were surprised last year, but I guess, I'm [00:14:00] a, I'm an old one, so I'm the oldest millennial, so I'm like, social media, a subscription ad free, show me. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. Marion Ranchet: I did not even know that existed. And I think it's things like Snap, Snap has one. Evan Shapiro: But you also pay for other super user benefits that you don't get without paying. So I, that hasn't really grown all that much, but neither has AI with all the AI hype that's out there, right? I don't think that the individual subscriptions to AI is on a growth cycle. In fact, if anything, with the canceling of the destruction of Sora which we heard about last month, I think the era of trying to sell distinct AI subscriptions to individual human beings, I think we're coming to the end of that era and that it's gonna be much more a bundle that you're gonna get your AI in. Think about this, do you pay for Gmail or email at all? Do you pay for search? Now you get it inside a suite of services which incorporate [00:15:00] advertising or some other set of economics, and I think that's the way that AI is going to go. What I also found surprising, so I think we're coming to the end of the individual D2C AI other than super users, but also like news 10%. Only 10% of consumers pay, do you subscribe to news at all? Marion Ranchet: Yeah. I actually have one subscription. Yeah. It's more, it's less news-news. It's a, it's a publisher. It's a magazine. it's not Le Monde or the New York Times, but I do have one. Yeah. Evan Shapiro: And I have several. yeah. And yet there, 90% of the public between UK and US don't. Yeah. I found that interesting as well. Alright, let's move on to this. This is the one where I think the indication of churn is gonna increase. And also that, that you're gonna see a culling of subscriptions to your point from earlier, this question is, I spend more than I can afford on subscriptions. [00:16:00] And not surprisingly, UK was higher than the US almost a third of people in the UK. And I imagine that the younger you get, we can ask Giles whether or not there's a cut on this for Gen Z. But the younger you get, the more true this is. And almost a quarter of us folks think that they're paying too much for subscriptions. I think this, there's a, there's a churn-pocalypse acceleration that's gonna happen across subscription because of this data right here. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Actually the data says that in the US it's almost double that. So 41% of Gen Z in the US think that they're overspending. And so what's interesting though is people still feel like that. And we're, what, two, three years into ad supported tiers. The data also digs into the ad tolerance, right? Are people ready to actually get ads, on paid tiers, et cetera? And, in 2024, Bango said it was 78% [00:17:00] were against it. Strongly objected to that. And now 36% of American would double their ad load for lower price points. I found that crazy. I have to admit that I'm not spot on there, because I really don't like ads. so I'm ready to pay more, but I'm ready to then cut someone else's subscription. So I cut. No, I'm not gonna say who, but I cut someone just recently, just to keep you know the rest without any ads. Evan Shapiro: And then when you look at the younger demographics, it's, half, of, yeah. Millennials in UK, almost half in the US half of Gen Z in the US, almost half in the UK say they would take twice as many ads if they could lower the price. There are subscriptions and there, there are certain services like Netflix where I pay the higher price to avoid ads. But there are services I would not subscribe to if they didn't have a lower tier [00:18:00] with ads. Peacock being the most, the biggest example of that, I would just not watch Peacock ever if they didn't have a lower price ad tier. I suffer through an incredible ad load of the same ad over and over. Same thing with Hulu. Over and over. But because I don't want to pay for 25 premium ad free tiers, I, do this and I think this is the calculus, this is the algebra that all consumers are in the midst of doing in their home right now. But I think it's especially true of millennials and Gen Z who are, I think, more cost conscious, than let's say Gen Xers like you and me. Marion Ranchet: Yeah, absolutely. Fascinating to see also some, data on, sharing passwords. So 20% of Americans say that they still do that, right? 19% say they have no idea who's using. And in the UK, it's even higher. [00:19:00] I, have to say, I shouldn't, but, I, yeah, I, do share that. It's funny, there's one that I share with my dad. It's not my dad sharing it with me. I'm sharing it with my dad. Evan Shapiro: That's what happens. You reverse trend. You become a parent. Marion Ranchet: Yeah, exactly. And every time I travel there, it's can you put it off me for the next 30 days? And then he hopes I'm gonna come back within 30 days to benefit from it. So people have been able to circumvent it. Evan Shapiro: But, it's, I think this number is a lot lower than it used to be of password sharing because Netflix really cracked down. And then now Disney's cracking down and so you log onto your service and you can't get in because someone else is using it. So I think that number gonna continue to creep down, because it's becoming physically impossible to password share. Yeah. This one I found, I, not surprising, but I think it's a really neat data point that's incredibly telling. [00:20:00] Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: Which is 60%, so almost, two out of every three consumers in the US and the UK, 59% in the us, 60% in the UK, are much more loyal to an individual show than they are the platform that delivers it. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: And this goes to your point of serial churns earlier, whenever I'm in front of an audience, I always ask, who here has signed up for a premium streaming service, watched the fuck out of a show, binged it, and then canceled before the next billing cycle? Almost everybody in the room raises their hand. So the serial churner is now basically the norm, for I think everything other than Amazon and Netflix to be blunt. I think everybody else, basically serial churns based on what's on that service, per month, or not everyone, but most. And I think that's gonna only increase over time, which to me speaks to the need for a free version of every service if you truly wanna keep that consumer around and sell advertising to [00:21:00] them, it's crucial that they never break up with you. Even if they stop paying, you keep them in for a free service, so that you can sell ads to them. That'll only, that'll help you reduce churn overall, but also I think it'll help you drive up your average revenue per user on a monthly basis. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. I think Fubo in the US virtual MVPD did that right a couple of years ago. They did built a front porch. Canal plus. Evan Shapiro: DirecTV. DirecTV has one. Dish has one. Sling has one as well. Yeah. Marion Ranchet: But streamers don't wanna do that. And actually, I think Crunchyroll used to have one. They've stopped it, streamers historically, they, they've never liked that, having that front porch. So let's see what happens. I think that there's a lot of pressure coming from people consuming content on Tubi, the Roku Channel or Pluto. Maybe that will push, the paid streamers to go one step further. And, also, let's be clear, all of these guys still have miniscular advertising [00:22:00] businesses within, the bigger, the bigger company. Evan Shapiro: And I think the pressure to, Marion Ranchet: It's 5%, right? Less, even less than that. So I think it's an opportunity to bring a bit more scale. and what's fascinating though is, what I read here and it's less about the bundle discussion that we're having now, but it does mean that you need to have a very IP-led strategy, whatever you do. Because what's the point? People do not really, except like you said, Netflix and Prime people are not loyal to your service. They're loyal to your content. Then this is where you put your effort. Yes, you need to work and make sure you know that you get some sort of attribution. But again, people, reading, diving into the report will see that people are incapable of saying, who, who has what? We know because we're in the nitty gritty of this, but only 20% of UK respondents [00:23:00] put Star Wars on Disney+. 13 Severance Apple TV, etc. Same for Game of Thrones. Evan Shapiro: Only 13% of the people who watch Severance know it's on Apple TV. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. True. Evan Shapiro: That's mind boggling. Marion Ranchet: True. But even like Game of Throne, that's huge. So I know it's HBO, I thought everyone else knew, and only 18% said it was HBO. Most people said it was Netflix. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. Marion Ranchet: That's quite fascinating. Evan Shapiro: And Netflix. Netflix, and it seems like Netflix gets over attribution. I most people said that they could identify the shows that's on Netflix, but I think that's also because they're attributing too many shows to Netflix. I think they watch more shows on Netflix than they actually did. Marion Ranchet: But there's one thing is that lately Netflix has, made a major push in licensing third party content, and it's, especially shows. And it's crazy because actually everything I'm seeing right now, I, feel like I'm, [00:24:00] 10, 20 years back. So you have ER lately, front end center on Netflix. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. Marion Ranchet: Person of Interest, like a lot of kind of old shows that. Evan Shapiro: No, that's, the Suits phenomenon, I think convinced them that they needed to do that. But then there are also, we talked to Jordan Schwarzenberger about this who works with the Sidemen? He showed that the side men being on Netflix didn't add new viewers to Sidemen, but it added new viewers to Netflix. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: So the people are following not just their favorite IP, but their favorite talent, Ms. Rachel, Mr. Beast on Amazon. You're seeing the talent basically move around from platform to platform and consumers following them. This is to me though, probably one of the greatest issues facing content, right now in the content business right now. And we've talked about this a lot. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: In the US 30% and in the UK [00:25:00] over 40%, 41% say they search for 30 minutes or more on streaming looking for content. And when you go to Gen Z, it's 48% of Gen Z. Say they search for 30 minutes looking for streaming content and 56% of Gen Z in the UK say they spend 30 minutes or more searching for content on streaming. This is an existential crisis, I think in the ecosystem. Marion Ranchet: We suck at fixing this. And I'm, I'm thinking no one wants to. So actually, where was I a few weeks ago where someone a CTV platform was, saying, oh, it's so great, people come x time per day on our own page. And the play was very much,= we're selling against that real estate, da da da, But what they don't realize is that we're wasting time on that own page, Evan Shapiro: Right. Marion Ranchet: [00:26:00] Great. You're monetizing it, but I'm sorry, you're gonna lose long term. You are gonna lose on the new acquisition, the retention, and the time spent. So I think people do not wanna fix this problem. Evan Shapiro: I don't know that I agree with that a hundred percent. We talked about this at the beginning of the year. I'd made a prediction, that along with Roku had put this prediction out there, and I Yes anded it. Which is that the ad free viewer's gonna go completely away, that there won't be anything, there won't be any, anything like an ad free viewer anymore because most televisions in the world now have a home screen ad that is sellable. And so you're gonna see an ad before you, get to whatever it is. Even if you're going to an ad free service, even if you're going to gaming, when you turn on your television, you're gonna see an ad. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: and then to your point, the search process, which is getting longer and longer, which is actually gonna be [00:27:00] rife with ads. You're gonna see ads all over the place. They'll be contextual. And so I think they'll be a little less annoying than, let's say, social media ads, but they're still gonna be omnipresent during your search if you, unless you're in Netflix or you're in some other service, if you're on a Roku TV and you're searching for something to watch, they have all this inventory. If you're on a Samsung television, yeah, if you're on an LG television, you're gonna see all of these, whether if you're on YouTube while you're searching for content on YouTube, you're gonna see ads. So I do think you're right. This is intentional on behalf of the industry, but I don't think they understand the friction it does create for the consumer themselves. I think you're absolute correct on that. Marion Ranchet: No, I don't think so either. Yeah, absolutely. Evan Shapiro: So now let's look at bundles. So this data, and we'll bring Giles on to talk about this. 'cause this is bundling is really his expertise. This is his survey, but this is also his expertise. This is who consumers in the UK and the US say they expect to get [00:28:00] subscription bundle from. And it's not the TV provider, even though SVOD is the number one subscription by far that everybody uses, the people, the peoples expect and look to mobile and retailers for their bundle way ahead at least 10 points ahead of the TV provider. And then social media is almost right on the heels of the TV provider. So I found this incredibly interesting. And then there's this other data, and then let's bring Giles in to talk about this stuff. In the US, over a third of people who subscribe to anything, subscribe through third party bundles. 63% still subscribe directly to the Netflixes or the ChatGPTs of the world. But a growing segment of the population is now bundling for economies of scale. And it's even higher in the UK, which again, I found interesting 'cause it doesn't have [00:29:00] as big a tradition around pay TV. 39%, well over a third of people in the UK say they prefer and get their bundles of services through third parties like banks and telcos rather than subscribing direct. Now still 60% subscribe direct, but that number is going down year on year. I found this number growing at the pace that it is to be relatively surprising. Marion Ranchet: Yeah, I think there's a few things I will say in the UK, I'm not surprised, but because as a whole in Europe we are in the Abbott of using our mobile operator, broadband provider, et cetera, to bring on, so it can be paid TV, but it's been a lot of SVOD, it's been a lot of music. Etc. Telcos in the regions are trying, not very successfully yet to have a role in gaming subscriptions as well. at the end of the day, the reason behind this, yes, there's money. [00:30:00] But it's also ease of use and management. Evan Shapiro: Convenience. Marion Ranchet: You had only a couple of subscription. It was fine to manage this directly. we set it at the top, almost six subscription per person, in the UK and, in the US. It's, crazy. And so the value, and I see this very strongly and it's fascinating. I launched Netflix at Orange like 12 years ago I did that deal, and at the time, Netflix only wanted to allow credit card subscription, right? Because they wanted to control the relationship and be it direct. And we had to say, guys, our billing component is very strong. People like having stuff on their bill and they just pay one bill. And so they ended up doing it. They ended up doing it and they actually saw that the subscribers who were using the operator billing was actually, more engaged in terms of the number of hours they were watching per month that some of their [00:31:00] direct, customers. So I think this is a trend that can only grow provided that those people, those third party bundlers, still make it easy. Yeah. We, I, don't wanna have someone in the way of all of this. If it's not making my life cheaper and easier. Evan Shapiro: I completely agree. Cost is gonna be increasingly important, especially as the world is on fire and the price of everything goes up. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: Then secondarily, you're right. I don't wanna deal with 12,000 different middling little credit card bills at the end of every month. Okay. So, first of all, I wanna point out that you can download this entire report from Bango. The link to download it will be in our show notes wherever you're watching or listening to this, look for the link right below the show icon. But I have an embarrassing question to ask you that I think only you can answer, which is, it. Giles or Gilles? Marion Ranchet: That's a great [00:32:00] question. Evan Shapiro: As someone who pronounces his name, Shapiro, I'm very sensitive to this. And I love this guy. I, this is the happiest motherfucker you're ever gonna meet in your life. I love to see him at conferences. It's always like heartwarming to see him, but I am embarrassed. There he is. There he is. Giles Gilles. What? How do you pronounce your name? I can't say that, it's definitely not Giles. Marion Ranchet: Damn. I wanted you to be French, man. That doesn't work? Giles Tongue: Whatever you like Evan, you've got my name right about five times today, so don't ruin it. Evan Shapiro: Okay. Giles Tongue: Giles. Evan Shapiro: So Giles, that's what I thought. Okay. It is Giles. I, thought so. Alright, so Giles Tongue. Is it tongue? Giles Tongue: Yeah, that's right. Although people try and avoid that because they think it can't really be, can it? Evan Shapiro: Giles Tongue. Which is also a great dish at a delicatessen, Giles Tongue. But if you, it's a, that's a Katz's Deli joke. If, so Giles Tongue, welcome to the pod. You're a great friend of the pod, even though this is your first time [00:33:00] on. Your title is Head of Marketing at Bango. Giles Tongue: Yeah. VP Marketing at Bango. Yeah. I run all the marketing here. Evan Shapiro: I call you CMO and I think they should pay you as such. So this is your report. And first of all, did I get the description of Bango and what you guys do correct at the top of the show? Giles Tongue: Yeah. Perfect. We're, enabling subscription bundling for anybody who wants to be bundled. So third party distribution of subscriptions. You could think of it that way. Marion Ranchet: Nice. Evan Shapiro: And you're sitting in front of a vending machine for some reason, not because you like m and ms, but because you have this product that enables bundling that's really impressive. Can you just describe what your vending machine, your physical analogy, a vending machine means? Giles Tongue: So we call it, the product is called the digital vending machine. So it's enabling subscription bundling, which means we're handling all of the complexity around payments, entitlement, management. All the bits and pieces that are required behind the scenes to enable [00:34:00] a company like a mobile operator to effectively sell somebody else's product. And then we're joining the dots between those companies so that if you get Netflix free with your mobile plan, you can then quickly go and log onto net Netflix and you go. Evan Shapiro: So it's more complex than that. Your vending machine allows the consumer to mix and match it will, right? So it's not just the mobile says this is a bundle you can buy? To a certain extent, when a partner of yours uses this correctly, the consumer can go on and say, I want a little ai, I want a little social media, I want some TV, and all those things, right? So that it's, it, creates infinite choice for the consumer. Giles Tongue: Yeah, so we're behind the scenes as such, so we're enabling companies to be able to offer whatever they want. So whether that's, so let's touch one of the trends at the moment, which is multi-party bundles. So two companies, two independent companies coming together in a single price point. And that being a avail, let's say Netflix and Max, for example, in a single price point, we can enable that very easily. So we're handling [00:35:00] all of these complexities behind the scenes, and then it's up to the operator to choose what it is they want to offer. It could be a single bundle, or it could be a kind of marketplace situation where there's streaming, gaming, productivity, whatever, and we're, enabling all of that to happen. Marion Ranchet: And the subtitle of the report was The Great Disconnect. Do you wanna elaborate on that? What are you seeing? Giles Tongue: Yeah, sure. So a lot of the data you already touched on here, we wanted to explore what's around the corner, what's happening now, and what's around the corner for subscribers. In previous years, we've talked about subscription fatigue and the multitude of choice and how this is causing problems. People can't remember how and where they've subscribed. What we wanted to do was to go a little bit further this time and look at some of the attitudes. Try and understand if some of those questions around ad tiers and password management are still the case or if we've moved on. I think probably one of the more surprising elements in the study for me was the [00:36:00] attitude to ad tiers. So a few years ago where we all subscribed to subscription services to get rid of ads. Now the situation has evolved so much that we are in a mindset of I want to access all of these services, what's the most efficient way I can do that? So now people, we call 'em savvy subscribers. When you think of subscribing, you are thinking, where can I get the best deal? Is it through my bank? Is it through my retailer? Is there a discount here? Or at least a trial period. So they're looking at different ways, and the attitude to add specifically is, I can actually access probably more services if I take the ad tier. So it's kind of like a trade off there. Marion Ranchet: Absolutely. And so one thing that I've, we didn't touch upon that, but I wanted to have your take 'cause it's, it feels insane, but a lot of the respondents said that they were actually keen to have AI manage their subscription. And, to me that's this big black box. I would never do [00:37:00] that. Private information, credit card detail. So could you speak to, how much of the trends and especially I think there was a big dichotomy between Gen Z and Millennials or older. Giles Tongue: And that actually you've already observed, that's happened pretty much with every question. Yeah. The Gen Z/Millennial and the general response has been so very different. I think with AI we've got a couple of things happening here. We've got the popularity of AI services, let's just say the subscriptions, but as Evans already mentioned, how many people are actually paying for the subscription. I think we've seen a lot of people using AI. They're also spending 30 minutes plus for discovering something to watch, which is crazy. instead they're looking for recommendations. So they're turning to AI and particularly, voice AI about quarter people using voice AI. And there's a great service that was launched by Liberty Group, which is using AI with, it's called Super Search, [00:38:00] that they, developed that to help people with this discovery issue to say, and there's a great example Google TV Give, which is you're sitting there with your partner and you don't even describe who's there. You just say, we wanna watch something. And it knows your background, your taste. I'm into action, they're into drama, and here's some kind of ideal thing that you can watch. The next step from that is that the AI or the agent is then managing the subscription for you. So it's now proposed, oh, you want to watch this particular show. But to do that, you'll need the service and we'll subscribe you to that. So it's part of that discovery and access continuum Marion Ranchet: On the discovery piece I get it because I started doing that myself and I've actually, pushed a lot and that was one of the key trends I had for this year was for streamers and well content providers at large to find a way to have a GEO strategy. Because right now when I say, on Friday night, what could I watch? And I give a couple of info and then I have ideas. [00:39:00] Everything stays within a ChatGPT or else. And I think that's a massive loss, right? We could have a link that then takes me to a Netflix or x, y, z to then have me watch that particular piece of content that got recommended. So on that, I agree. But then on the subscription management, I think that's just, insane. It's like giving the keys to your house. But anyway, again, Evan Shapiro: But, I think so agentic AI. So agentic services is something that everybody's betting is gonna be the future revenue explosion for AI. I think you're right. I think giving access to AI, giving AI access to my bank accounts and my credit card numbers is a little scary. But let me ask you this. Do you have a banking app on your phone? Marion Ranchet: I do. Evan Shapiro: Did you read the terms and conditions of that banking app before you installed it on your phone? Marion Ranchet: No. Evan Shapiro: Okay. So you say it's not gonna happen, and yet you do give access to [00:40:00] Zelle or whomever it is, to all your freaking money on your app without understanding what they're allowed to do with that. Marion Ranchet: True. But it's a highly regulated environment. The bank and AI is not right now, it's just like the wild, wild west. Evan Shapiro: I agree. We've been talking about this for a while. Search is a lot of friction in the ecosystem, and then there's this great fear that AI is gonna replace all these jobs in show business, but the solution to both is AI is probably gonna replace task driven jobs. I don't think it's gonna create, replace the creative arena, but this is the perfect use of AI, which is find me something to fucking launch. And I don't think it's gonna be individual AIs that do it, I think too Giles' point, it's gonna be wound inside, or to your point actually, the Liberty is a, the liberty is a pay TV [00:41:00] provider. They're the perfect one. They also have all the data of all IP on the planet Earth that comes across their platform and they have deterministic data of their users. These are credit card numbers, home addresses, phone numbers, emails, so they can really predict with tremendous amount more certainty that this consumer's gonna wanna watch this. Netflix should be introducing this. Disney should be introducing this. They should be building their own models for their own platforms to solve this problem. And then you don't necessarily have to give your bank account to the agent. Giles, is that your takeaway? Giles Tongue: Yeah, I think that's the point. And we talked about who would you trust to provide with your subscription services, who do you wanna get your subscription from? And the mobile operator came out on top and we have pay TV in there as well somewhere. These are the services who could be providing that agentic solution. And then you are back to just adding to bill, which is why the magic happens anyway with bundling. You have that trusted relationship. Evan Shapiro: So if there was one big takeaway, you, there's a big study. We couldn't cover it all [00:42:00] in this one pod, and we encourage people to go to the show notes and download the study right now. But if there was one big aha moment for you in this study of all of them, I asked my server last night, if you could have eat only one thing Giles Tongue: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: on this menu, what would it be? What's the one big aha moment that you found? Giles Tongue: I think I've probably got one for, each of our audiences, which would be the telco side, and then the subscription provider side. On the telco side, we use this line bundle or be bundled. there's a lot of pressure in the market about the role that you're gonna have, and this report really is talking about the relationship you'll have with your customers. And there is a risk here to telcos that they'll have that taken away from them if they don't continue to delight their customers with excellent experience and all these issues here we've talked about kind experience there. Somebody are, their service will be bundled effectively. Their [00:43:00] the OGs of bundling, the mobile operators could end up being somebody else's bundle. Their first party becomes somebody else's third party. So there's the, message there for them, bundle will be bundled. It's a real threat. And the, on the subscription provider side, the takeaway here is that 40% of subscriptions are already bought through indirect channels. If you are looking at your numbers and you are not seeing 40%, then there's a big opportunity waiting for you there. Time to jump on board and come and speak to us and we'll jump in the waters more. Marion Ranchet: Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Giles. That was fantastic. Again, we're gonna be sharing the link to the report in the show notes, on LinkedIn. It's gonna be in our Substack, Media War and Peace for Evan and Streaming Made Easy for myself. Evan Shapiro: And it's free. The report is absolutely free. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. [00:44:00] yeah. We're not selling a paid report. Evan Shapiro: It's not bundled. Marion Ranchet: Yeah, exactly. It's bundled, Giles Tongue: It's on us. Marion Ranchet: It's bundled with the pods. You get a free report with Bango. Evan Shapiro: That's excellent. Great. Wow. That was really nice, Marion. Marion Ranchet: Nice. Evan Shapiro: Very good. Marion Ranchet: Thank you again for being on the pod Giles and Evan, that was the Media Odyssey Podcast. With you, my dear, Evan Shapiro: and you, Marion Ranchet. Thank you all for listening yet again, and we'll see you next week.