Drip-feeding episodes of shows to viewers makes them more likely to stay subscribed to a platform than dropping a full season at once, according to a study published in Market Science.
The authors of ‘When Less Is More: Content Strategies for Subscription Video on Demand’ partnered with Telco (now part of BATM Networks) and gave free one-month trials to its video-on-demand service to 50,000 people.
Four shows premiering at the time — Big Little Lies, The Muppets, The Young Pope and Unforgettable — were released to the triallists in two ways. Half got every episode at once, while the rest received episodes on a drip schedule.
Those given all episodes binged more in the first week and were more likely to finish a series. But the drip-fed group returned to the platform more often and were 1.7 percentage points more likely to pay for a subscription afterwards. That doesn’t sound huge but it represents a 48% lift in retention compared to the baseline.
The researchers argue drip releases force customers to revisit the platform, as they have to log in again to access the latest batch, thus increasing the odds they’ll stumble onto other shows they enjoy.
Drip-feeding content avoids what the researchers call the ‘vicious cycle of an empty watchlist’, where subscribers stop logging in and, by logging in less, they miss content that might have kept them hooked.
The findings shed light on why streaming strategies have shifted in recent years. In the early 2010s, when Netflix and others were in growth-at-all-costs mode, the binge model made perfect sense as it pulled in new subscribers through word of mouth.
But the market has matured. With household penetration plateauing and endless services to choose from, the main battle now is retaining users. Churn in the US has more than doubled since 2019, rising from 2% to 5.5% monthly, according to Fabric Data.
Amid the fight for retention, many streaming sites are releasing weekly episodes now, with popular shows like Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building and Prime Video’s The Summer I Turned Pretty just two examples following a more traditional release format.
In many ways, the originator of the binge model Netflix remains an outlier. It still releases the majority of its content in one go.
Even so, the proportion of Netflix shows released via the ‘series dump’ method has declined from 89% in 2024 to 68% in 2025. Stranger Things is a good example of the company’s changing attitude. Its first three seasons were each released in one go, but season four was split into two drops, and the upcoming final season will be spread across three, strategically timed for Thanksgiving, Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve.
Netflix has so far been able to stretch its biggest franchises to keep subscribers around longer but can afford to content dump most of its offerings because it has such an extensive library. The platform spent $16.2bn on content last year, mostly originals, and is in 59% of UK households, according to Barb.
For smaller services, the risk of churn is much higher. Apple TV+, for example, is only in 9.1% of UK households, according to Barb. With fewer shows, it doesn’t want audiences to burn through them in a weekend. That’s why hits like Severance have been drip-released, keeping fans subscribed while they wait for new episodes and giving them more time to discover other shows in the meantime.
Main image by Gallery DS on Unsplash.
