A day after the Federal Trade Commission unveiled its “click-to-cancel” rule in its fight against businesses that make it difficult for consumers to cancel subscriptions, Netflix announced Thursday, Oct. 17, that it has added subscribers — a lot of them. In its third-quarter earnings report, the streaming giant highlighted its paid subscriber growth of 5.1 million, bringing its total number of global subscribers to over 282 million, a growth of more than 14% year-over-year.
Netflix reported revenue of $9.83 billion beating Wall Street estimates, as the company cements its status as No. 1 TV streaming service.
The last rise in subscriptions was mostly attributed to Netflix’s crackdown on password sharing, but co-CEO Ted Sarandos pointed this time to the streamer’s varied content connecting with viewers.
“This year, we’ve maintained very healthy engagement, about 2 hours of viewing per member per day, and engagement on a per owner household is up through the first 3 quarters of 2024,” Sarandos said. “So if you look at where we’re sitting now, we finished Q3 with some big hits: Perfect Couple, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, Nobody Wants This. And we’re really excited about our Q4 slate because it’s filled with great big titles from the U.S., from Brazil, from Korea, from the U.K., from Germany. And we also have got some really amazing live events coming up.”
But 2024 has not been all good news for all streamers, with several losing thousands of subscribers since the beginning of the year.
Subscription research firm Antenna reported over the summer that the streaming service owned by cable network Starz lost more than 800,000 subscribers, almost 9% of its total subscription base
Apple TV+ lost over 528,000 subscribers in the first quarter of the year, while Hulu lost over 500,000 and Disney+ said farewell to nearly 300,000 subscribers.
And these subscribers who want to say goodbye to these platforms, or any subscription-based service, are at the crux of the FTC’s new rule. The agency wants to make it as easy to cancel a subscription or membership as it was to sign up for one.
One man is already trying to make that task easier: YouTuber Jeff Gerlitz of Washington state, whose JMG Enterprises page is filled with dozens of how-to videos on how to cancel everything from Uber, to Spotify, and yes, even Netflix.
Gerlitz, who has over 84,000 subscribers himself, told Straight Arrow News he started making these how-to cancel videos because he felt there was a need for them.
“When I began uploading YouTube videos regularly, I realized there was a lack of how-to videos instructing people on how to cancel their memberships or subscriptions,” Gerlitz said via e-mail. “I realized most companies make it not so easy to find the cancel membership button.”
“I began looking at the search volume for these inquiries on Google and saw it was quite high with low competition,” Gerlitz continued. “Meaning, I could most likely get my videos ranked high on Google (and) YouTube and help a lot of people. So far, it appears to be working.”
Gerlitz said he receives comments daily thanking him for streamlining the process with many saying it was a frustrating experience for them trying to figure it out on their own.
Netflix is Gerlitz’s most popular how-to cancel video. The YouTube creator said he gets close to 500 new views per day on that one video. He attributes it to Netflix having such a large subscriber base and, in his opinion, Netflix having the most complicated cancellation process. Gerlitz said it appears the company revises its website often.
Now while Netflix is currently in a profitable place right now, in 2022 the company lost nearly 1 million subscribers. All those customers had to deal with the cancellation process.
