Peacock and Hulu Figured Out the Formula - Who's Making Moves in 2024

One of the most interesting charts in the 2024 Streaming App Industry Report is an analysis I think all developers and marketers need to do for their competitive niche - a (name).

With the big trend these days being [revenue growing while downloads dropping], it’s important to know which of your competitors are rising and which aren’t.

We used the App Growth Matrix to analyze video streaming apps comparing Q1 of 2023 and 2024 and the results were more interesting than I expected.

The App Growth Matrix (AGM) puts apps into quadrants by their demand and consumer spending. It's a really quick way to see where an entire industry stands, and when used for two periods, makes it very easy to see who's making moves.

In our case, almost every app in this analysis is making moves, so let's start with the most important ones:

Quadrant Crossers

In just a year, both Peacock and Hulu crossed into the High Adoption High Revenue quadrant for the first time. That's an important milestone for both as they learn to optimize turning downloads into revenue. We see that by the growing revenue even though demand is a bit lower. That's a trend we see across the entire industry.

Already Big

Max and Disney+ stayed in their quadrant but changed drastically. Demand for Disney+ is declining faster than all other apps but while downloads dwindle revenue has gone up thanks to price increases and a more optimized conversion process.

Max, on the other hand, flipped the trend. Downloads rose sharply year over year while revenue actually declined. Max is the only app in this analysis that saw revenue dropping, likely due to the lack of new releases and lack of optimization.

Future Stars

Crunchyroll and Prime Video, both in different quadrants but with the same trajectory, are our future stars, with growth in both downloads and revenue.

Amazon's app has been around for a long time but hasn't monetized via subscriptions until recently. Amazon changed that and has been ramping up its spending on exclusives (and is Amazon after all) which is why it's currently in the High Adoption, Low Revenue.

Crunchyroll on the other hand is much less known and is pretty niche, especially here in the US, which explains why it's currently in the Low Adoption, Low Revenue category. I don't expect to see it there for long though.

Overall, this is good news for streamers, both big and small.