Image: Shrinking, Apple TV+
With Parrot Analytics’ Streaming Economics system we can measure the impact of shows and movies to a platform’s revenue and understand the unique ways each title contributes to the unit economics of a streaming service, whether through subscriber acquisition, retention, or engagement in the case of ad-revenue. Combining this with our title level data on audience demographics reveals what audience segments are driving revenue for each streamer.
Netflix was the most successful platform at driving revenue evenly across age groups and between men and women. However, we shouldn’t understand this to mean that the most valuable titles on Netflix are targeting the median audience demographic. In fact, some of the most valuable titles to Netflix in terms of the revenue generated via acquiring new and retaining existing subscribers appealed to particular audience segments. “Bridgerton” may be the best recent example of this. The show was one of the top titles in terms of the total revenue it drove for Netflix in Q2 despite having a heavily female skewing audience (we estimate that around 80% of the audience for this show was female). Other titles like “3 Body Problem” and “The Gentlemen” drove significant revenue for the platform and had male skewing audiences.
Older audiences (here defined as Millennials and older) are still the main age group driving revenue across most platforms. Apple TV+ leads in this regard with the most revenue from older generations. Apple TV+ originals like “Slow Horses” and “Palm Royale” had older skewing audiences.
Disney+ is the platform that has had the most success generating revenue from younger audiences. The platform’s male skew is fueled by its tentpole originals in the Marvel and Star Wars universe which tend to have male dominated audiences. But other shows like “The Simpsons,” “Bluey,” and “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” helped drive revenue from younger audiences in Q2.
Peacock and Hulu stand apart because a majority of their revenue in the past quarter has come from female audiences. Peacock’s strong reality offering from Bravo is a big reason for this. Even though female audiences are a major driver of revenue for Peacock, titles with male skewing audiences still play an important role for the streamer. Take “WWE Monday Night Raw” for example. The audience for this wrestling show is around two-thirds male. Parrot Analytics’ Content Valuation System estimates that this was one of the top 5 titles on Peacock in Q2 in terms of the revenue generated through new subscriber acquisitions. This show’s ability to pull in new audiences that are engaged with other content not available on Peacock made it an especially valuable part of the platform’s catalog.
