Streaming: low-price subscriptions with advertising increasingly popular
A recent survey by Group M shows that the share of subscribers to low-cost, ad-supported streaming platforms is rising by 33 percent, and trust in AI services such as ChatGPT is also growing.
Whether Netflix, Amazon or Disney - more and more streaming providers are relying at least in part on advertising to finance their services in order to offer cheaper subscriptions. And this is going down increasingly well with German consumers: Compared to the fourth quarter of 2023, the proportion of subscribers to low-price streaming platforms with advertising has grown by 33% to a total of 32%. This is shown by GroupM's Consumer Evolution Detector study for the fourth quarter of 2024.
Despite maintaining their top position, higher-priced streaming subscriptions without advertising are experiencing a downward trend. Compared to the previous year, the use of ad-free services has fallen by almost 13% to 54%. And the willingness to subscribe to a high-priced streaming service in the future is also rather low among current non-users (15%). In comparison, ad-financed services show significantly more development potential: around a quarter of Germans (25%) who do not currently do so want to use a free streaming provider with advertising in the future, and around a fifth (20%) want to use a low-priced ad-financed streaming subscription. Looking at the individual ad-financed streaming providers, Amazon Prime Video without Ad Free (20%) remains the leader, but Netflix Basis continues to catch up with noticeable growth (+3 percentage points compared to Q3 2024 to 17%). RTL+ without Max subscription (14%), Joyn free (11%) and Disney+ with advertising (11%) follow in second place.
AI usage: ChatGPT & Co. continue to grow
The acceptance of artificial intelligence (AI) continues to grow among German consumers. The proportion of those who have already tried out an AI platform has risen by six percentage points to 48% compared to Q3. A key reason for the growing use of AI is that the initial skepticism towards the new technology is increasingly fading. In particular, the perception of AI as unsafe (-4 percentage points to 40%) and risky (-5 percentage points to 34%) is falling significantly compared to the third quarter. The voice and text-based AI chatbot ChatGPT is by far the most widely used AI service in Germany, with an increase of six percentage points compared to the third quarter to a total of 37%. It is followed by the online translator DeepL (12%), the AI assistant Google Gemini (10%) and the AI-supported image generator Dall-E 2 (4%). AI services are increasingly being used to generate texts (+6 percentage points compared to Q3 2024 to 32%), to research topics (+4 percentage points to 26%), to translate into another language (+3 percentage points to 20%) and to generate images (+4 percentage points to 15%).
Consumer sentiment: inflation, rising energy prices and the Middle East conflict
In addition to current topics such as streaming and the use of AI, the Consumer Evolution Detector study continuously examines the general basic and consumer sentiment in Germany. Compared to the previous quarters, the willingness to spend remains stable overall: 27% are very or extremely willing to spend, while 42% are neither very or extremely willing to spend. Consumer sentiment is therefore generally good, but there is concern about current developments. In particular, issues such as inflation (70%), rising electricity and heating costs (65%) and the conflict in the Middle East (38%) are once again weighing more heavily on consumers' minds. More and more Germans say that their lives are being affected by current developments and that they are having to restrict themselves more. 59% of consumers expect inflation to have a significant impact on their consumption in the next six months.
