👉 Background: Stan is the Aussie streaming service that launched back in 2015, and is the fourth largest streaming service in Australia behind the international big dogs; Disney+ Amazon Prime Video, and Netflix. It streams shows like Normal People, Breaking Bad and the classic OC in Australia.

👉 What happened: Although Stan has grown to over 2.2 million binge-watching-subscribers, this ain't enough to keep its revenue firing. Now, Stan is reportedly looking to introduce a new revenue stream by introducing ads onto its platform.

👉 What else: Stan’s subscriber numbers have plateaued over the last two years, so it’ll need to either increase prices to customers…or find a new source of revenue to continue its growth.

What's the key learning?

💡As any industry evolves, companies need to continue to find new, and creative ways to increase revenue. The typical way for streaming services to increase revenue is to increase the price of their subscription.

💡Given how competitive the streaming market is, it can be very easy to lose market share by hiking up prices too high. So many companies like Netflix have rolled out an ad-supported option. In fact, nearly half of new Netflix sign ups are for its ad-tier.

💡Stan also faces its own unique challenges because it operates alongside Nine’s free-to-air channels - meaning it needs to make sure it doesn’t pull revenue away, and cannibalise Nine’s free 9Now platform too.