Engagement & Retention project | Disney + Hotstar

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Understand the Product

About Disney + Hotstar

Disney+ Hotstar is an Indian subscription video-on-demand over-the-top streaming service owned by Disney India, a subsidiary of Disney Company, featuring domestic Indian film, television and sports content for India itself and its worldwide diaspora.

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Core Value Proposition

Hotstar's core value proposition lies in providing exclusive content such as movies, TV shows, Daily soaps, Sports and Hotstar specials to the user. Below are the core features offered by Hotstar -

• Live Sports matches - Hotstar has exclusive rights for multiple tournaments especially for Cricket to be viewed live on the app.
• Movies - Hotstar has a catalogue of movies across multiple languages and genres also including disney and Pixar exclusive content.
• Hotstar Specials - Hotstar Specials is a content hub and label of Hotstar under which the platform releases their original programming created exclusively for the service
• Content availability in multiple languages - Hotstar has content from not only Bollywood but also movies released in regional languages such as Tamil, Telegu, Kannada and Marathi to cater to audience across the country.
• Price Point - Hotstar has positioned itself to cater to audience with economical as well as affluent class. It has 3 plans Mobile, Super and Premium to be paid quarterly at Rs. 149, Rs. 299 and Rs. 1499 respectively. This is cheaper than it's direct competitor, Netflix which has plans starting at Rs. 149/month.

How do users currently experience the core value prop repeatedly?

User who consistently visit the app, do so for the below reasons -

• Watch Sport matches within a tournament - Users watch multiple or all the matches of a tournament on the app. For example - If Hotstar is having right for a 5 match series of Ind vs. Aus cricket match, users keep coming to the app to watch all the matches. This is convenient option for those who want to see the match while commuting.
• Being hooked in a TV show or series - Users watch multiple episodes of a series or come back to the app to continue from where they left for the content they were watching
• Hotstar Specials - Content which is exclusive to the application is well marketed and generally has a good rating (eg - Criminal Justice) is often watched by users. These users are also more likely to watch the next Hotstar Special.
• Personalized content - Based on watch history of the user, Hotstar recommends more similar content which the user is more likely to watch.

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What is the natural frequency for Hotstar ?

Based on user surveys, below can be the natural frequency of users.

• Power Users - 3-5 times a week
• Core users - 1-2 times a week
• Casual users - Once a month

Sub-products with their natural frequency

• Kids section - 2-3 times a week
• Popular Dialogues - 2-3 times a month
• Behind the scenes - 1-2 times a month
• Shorts - 1-2 times a month

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What is the best engagement framework for Hotstar ?

Depth

• As per user research, most users come back to the application to watch new movies or a sports tournament
• Given the personalized content Hotstar suggests, the more time users spend time on the application, more relevant content they will keep finding which in turn will help in user engagement.
• Calculation of Depth = Frequency x Time spent on the application

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New feature engagement

• Hotstar has variety of genres ranging from movies to documentaries to sports.
• A new user can get to explore a variety of content as they keep watching multiple movies, tv shows.
• A user typically a watcher of movies can get recommended a documentary which can persuade the user to be shift from a casual user to a power user.
• New feature engagement or the breadth of usage can be our secondary framework.

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Conclusion -

Depth framework can be the primary framework as it will be more useful and relevant for engagement as more time a user spends on the application, it will leverage personalization algorithm to do its job and provide content which user is more likely to watch.

New feature engagement can be the secondary framework which can be worked upon

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What makes a user an "Active user" ?

• An active user of Hotstar will be someone who watches content on the app at least twice a week.
• User has taken a premium subscription of Hotstar and would renew it on expiration
• Natural frequency of usage -
• • Power Users - 3-5 times a week
  • Core users - 1-2 times a week
  • Casual users - Once a month

Customer Segmentation

We will go ahead with usage based segmentation - Power, Core and Casual users.

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Engagement Campaigns

Campaign 1 - Make them come back on where they left!

Campaign 2 - Suggest trending regional content to the users.

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Campaign 3 - Make user explore different types of content

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Campaign 4 - Engage with users during a sports tournament

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Campaign 5 - Nudge the power user to experience the app on big screen

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Retention

Birds eye view

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Retention rate for any OTT platform depends on geography, pricing power of ICPs, quality of content and how well the application is able to engage it's users.

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We will consider retention rate (in 6 months) of leading OTT apps in the US -

• Netflix - 75%
• Hulu - 67%
• Amazon prime - 74%

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We assume that India has a lesser penetration and appetite to pay for OTT compared to US.

Thus, retention rate for Hotstar in India would be ~50% in 6 months.

The retention curve flattens after 6 months as per industry data.

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Retention at:

Day 0 - 100%

Day 1 - 90%

Day 30 - 70%

Day 90 - 60%

M6 - 50%

M12 - 45%

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Retention Curve for Hotstar

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Which ICPs drive the best retention?

• Power Users
• • Users who have the appetite to pay for the subscription
  • Fall in the age group 18-24 and 25-35
  • Who like to keep up with trending content

Which acquisition channels drive users which retain better?

• Push Notifications: Push notification help create frequent engagement with the user.
• Social Media Ads: As users of OTT platforms often tend to spend time on social media as well, social media ads are a good way to retain users.
• Display Banner: We have seen innovative banners of upcoming movie and tv shows which create brand awareness.

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What sub-features drive the best retention?

Below sub-features drive the retention in the descending order of their retention rate -

• Web-series/TV shows - The concept of multiple episodes across seasons ensure that users are hooked to the series and often binge watch them.
• Hotstar Specials - Hotstar specials was able to leverage data from Hotstar and are designed in a way to maximize retention by having more interesting episodes at the point where most users generally start to lose interest. The content of Hotstar specials are also base on the trending genres within ICPs.
• Movies - Movies have historically been the feature used most by both core and power users. Hotstar not only has newly released movies but also old "ever-green" movies which are often watched multiple times by users.
• Sports - Sports such as cricket matches and tournaments give a spike to Hotstar's overall viewership and average watch time. Sports streaming is a good opportunity to get new user sign-ups. However, sports events may have their own cyclicity. Eg - Champions league comes after every 2 years, World cup after every 4 years.

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Churn

Top reasons for user churn

Voluntary Churn:

• Better/trending content on another platform
• Lack of relevant personalized recommendations
• Too many ads
• Price not economical
• Un-intuitive UI
• Content not available in preferred language
• Video quality not as per expectations

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Involuntary churn

• Content removed from the app
• Preferred content unavailable in user's country
• Change in life-stage - Married, Had kids, Started a new job/college
• Moved to a new country

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Negative actions

Identifying negative actions of users can help us understand if there is a potential risk to my retention rate.

• Incomplete content - Movies/series left incomplete and user not coming back after their natural frequency can be a sign that user lost interest after initial momentum. This can also be due to technical issues.
• High session time but low watch time - This indicates user spent too long time searching for content but either did not find the right content or didn't like the content they found.
• Increased technical issues - Audio issues such as lack of accuracy in local language, dubbing issue, subtitles not in sync can leave a bad user experience. Video issues such as lag in live streaming, buffering of movies and shows despite stable internet connection, frequent downgrade of video quality while watching content can also force the user to check out content on other OTT platforms.
• Transactional/Subscription issues - Increase in payment failure tickets or user getting the older plan despite upgrading to a new plan can impact trust factor and user may stop/delay their upgradation plans.
• Decrease in saved credit card details - If users are removing their credit card details, it might indicate that they are not planning to renew or upgrade their subscription plan.

Resurrection Campaigns

Campaign 1 - Get back the users who went to competitor platform

Campaign 2 - Create FOMO. Notify users Exclusive + Trending content available on Hotstar

Campaign 3 - Push regional content as per user geography

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Campaign 4 - Suggest users multiple genres to users who gave a low rating

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Campaign 5 - Power users who turned core/casual due to ad interruptions

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Thank you!