All It Takes Is One Good Show to Hook Streaming Subscribers, But Which One?

pcmag.com:

There’s no lack of streaming services to fill your days with endless viewing. Most people have at least two streamer subscriptions and spend $25 to $49 a month on them, according to Finance Buzz(Opens in a new window). But what drives people to select specific services?

According to a new report from online-security advocacy website All About Cookies(Opens in a new window), it takes just one good show. Skewed perhaps by the timing, the top shows across the country and by state indicate that people are very into HBO Max—in particular, the shows Euphoria and Game of Thrones (House of the Dragon, not as much).According to the data the site gathered using Google Trends, HBO Max is the favored service in 15 US states, compared with Hulu in second place, which wins in 10 states.

The site also surveyed 1,500 US adults about their favorite shows and streaming habits. Above are the most interesting results; almost two-thirds of people have paid for a month’s subscription to a service to watch a single show or movie. Luckily for the streamers, half of them kept the service after that. Another 12% simply forget to cancel. Being a couch potato has never been easier.  

But 17% of those surveyed remembered to cancel after they saw what they wanted. People who are really smart might not have even paid anything, if they joined a service with a 30-day free trial(Opens in a new window) (that includes Hulu, Prime Video, and Mubi).

Most telling is when respondents were asked whether they've used a VPN to stream content that was not available in their location but is streaming in another country: 22% admit they have.

That's probably enough illicit streaming to justify Netflix's ongoing fight against VPN users using its service as well as its