Audiences aren’t cutting ties with premium streaming. They’re collecting options. Instead of clinging to one pricey subscription, they’re mixing and matching, adding ad-supported tiers to stretch both their choices and their dollars. A few well-placed ads, it turns out, feel like a fair trade for keeping entertainment within reach.
Julia Stoll, a Research Expert at Statista who studies the global TV and video streaming market, has been tracking this change closely. Her data shows that audiences are not replacing one model with another but layering them. Viewers are adding new ad-supported services to their existing subscriptions, embracing the very feature they once paid to avoid.
Two forces are drawing viewers to ad-supported streaming: a frustration with endless scrolling, and the fatigue from rising costs. Stoll notes that even smarter recommendation engines can’t solve decision overload, and her data puts a clear number to that frustration. "People spend a frustrating amount of time scrolling through streaming libraries. It amounts to four days per year. That frustration is precisely where FAST services have an advantage, because you can simply sit down and watch whatever is scheduled without having to make a choice," Stoll says.
The price is wrong: That frustration is compounded by economic pressure from rising subscription costs, which for many households have become a pressure valve on their budgets. "Disney+ raised its prices three times in just three years. With Apple TV+, we are now paying 13 dollars, and in 2022 it was only 5," explains Stoll.
A fair trade: Frustration has a way of rewriting habits. As prices climb and streaming feels more like work than leisure, viewers are striking a new kind of bargain. They’re willing to sit through ads as long as those ads play fair: quick, relevant, and worth the interruption. "There's a definite shift. In the past, people liked SVODs because they were cheap and had no ads. Now, people want targeted, contextual ads and the ability to interact with them. They're embracing ads again in exchange for services that are free or offered at a lower price," she continues.
The magic number: Her data shows exactly how much viewers will put up with before they reach for the remote. "A majority of U.S. viewers tolerate one to four ads per show. People tolerate the fewer ads that you see on Tubi and Pluto TV. On services like Netflix or Paramount+, they actually have more ads per 30-to-45-minute show."
The dynamic is creating new viewing habits adapted to the rhythms of a modern weekly schedule. Stoll points to a clear behavioral split, with viewers treating different services like tools for different moments.
The weekly divide: "In the middle of the week, after work, people are watching FAST services because they don't want to spend time scrolling through an on-demand library. But on the weekends, they watch Netflix, Disney+, and others because they have time to scroll."
The churn cycle: The behavior leads to more 'subscription cycling,' particularly with younger viewers. But Stoll adds a caveat. "People are signing up, watching a specific show, and then canceling the service. We see this 'subscription cycling' in our data, especially with Gen Z. But the data does not yet confirm if FAST services are becoming the constant alternative for them," she clarifies.
Many of the industry's biggest players are now betting big on an ad-supported future, evidenced by major moves like the recent advertising alliance between Netflix and Amazon. Looking ahead, Stoll points to one potential solution for retaining customers in this fragmented market: embracing greater flexibility. She highlights hybrid approaches, like Amazon Prime Video integrating its formerly separate ad-supported Freevee content, as the future. The idea of modular access is appearing elsewhere, with concepts like the Sling TV Day Pass. It all suggests the old one-size-fits-all subscription model is fading, kicking off a year of testing to see how streaming services can better monetize their audience by fitting more seamlessly into their lives.
