Politics & Streaming: How Beliefs Impact Choices for Seniors

Trends and Patterns in Streaming Behavior

A batched analysis of responses found the following trends and patterns:

• Bundling: 27% of people are not planning on cancelling services that were included as part of a bundle with another subscription they were using (like Amazon Prime Video coming with Amazon Prime)

  
  

• Watch and cancel : 29% of people consider cancelling a subscription when the content is no longer appealing, becomes repetitive, the cost of the service increases, or if it gets replaced with another service offering similar or better content. However, this trend is more prevalent in older groups, with only 20% of 18-29 year olds reporting this behavior.

  
  

• Political stances: 6% of respondents showed dislike towards explicit content or any content that pushed certain political or societal agendas. This increases to 11% for over 65s.

  
  

• Free with ads: 12% of people mention being  willing to tolerate ads if that helps to lower the cost

  
  

• Premium for ad-free: 7% of consumers express willingness to pay a premium for an ad-free experience

  
  

• Sharing: 20% of people mention that they appreciate the opportunity to share with others (family, friends), indicating that ease of sharing or multi-user profiles are a determining factor.

  
  

• Integration: 18% of people  like the ability to have their streaming services integrated (possibly bundled) so they have a single point of entry for their different subscriptions.

  
  

• Subscription fatigue: 11% of people mention having subscription fatigue and raising concerns about the abundance of services, each having only one or two shows they are interested in.

  
  

• Loyalty: 28% of respondents are inclined to stick with Netflix due to its established reputation and long-standing subscriptions. This might be due to loyalty or the impact of the sunk cost fallacy, where investments already made heavily influence their future choices.

We can break these trends down per respondent:

*n = 2860

And digging deeper into demographic breakdown, we can see that there are some striking differences, e.g. women are far more likely to enjoy sharing platforms, while men are more likely to be loyal to a platform:

The Influence of Political Stances on Older Viewers

…and over 65s are far more likely to be influenced by political and ideological stances expressed by streaming platforms, and over 45s are more likely to tolerate ads:

Demographic Differences in Content Preferences

Digging into content preferences, we can uncover more trends across different demographics:

Based on a batched analysis of the survey responses, the following types of content appear to excite respondents:

• Drama is the most popular genre across demographics, and this preference increases with age, with 10% of 18-29 year olds, 19% of 30-44 year olds, 26% of 45-64 year olds, and 38% of 65+ year olds mentioning this genre.

  
  

• Sports Content: Respondents show interest in sports content, particularly NFL games. Over 65s are twice as likely to talk about sports compared to younger respondents.

  
  

• Family-Friendly Content: 14% of respondents mentioned watching shows with their families or discussing shows with family members. Women are 10 times more likely to mention this as a preference.

  
  

• Exclusive Shows: Respondents have shown interest in exclusive shows available only on specific platforms. This indicates that exclusive content could be a key factor in attracting and retaining users.

  
  

• Classic Movies: 8% of people express an interest in watching classic movies on streaming platforms.

A quantitative breakdown of respondents’ reported content preferences reveals that drama has a strong lead, and that family-oriented content is an important consideration:

However, breaking this down by demographics we see that women are significantly more likely to consider family-oriented content:

And drama and superhero content is more and more popular in older groups: