© Unsplash/Charlesdeluvio/Lemon squeezer (with Firefly)
This is not a surprise, but rather a confirmation: as a BearingPoint study states (taken up by Francetvinfo and FranceInter), the budget spent by the French to access Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, Spotify, and other digital services constitutes an increasingly significant expense for households.
The latter increasingly take on the appearance of inelastic expenditure: they turn into services so anchored in consumption habits that households tend to keep these subscriptions – even if their price increases or their budget decreases.
Why does the budget “digital subscriptions” increases as much ?
Because there have been quite a few price increases, whether on the side of Netflix, Disney+, but also Spotify , among others. Enough to combine the significant costs that weigh on these platforms, and regulatory or tax developments. On the streaming side of films and series, the incursion of advertising into the most accessible third-party subscriptions has also become essential.
Always with a significantly more expensive subscription allowing these advertising spots to be removed. Furthermore, platforms are generally fighting more actively against account sharing, which encourages more users to decide to subscribe. Our colleagues from Francetvinfo also note that the French spend more on press subscriptions.
This item of expenditure has seen an increase of 16% – partly explained by increasingly busy news, and in many cases the quality of its treatment. But also a stricter approach to paywalls which in many cases become impossible to circumvent without going through the payment box.
It remains to be determined what the impact of AI on household spending will be during the next survey, while several other paid services (Gemini at Google, Grok on the 𝕏 side) are now available in France, and linked to broader subscription offers. Beyond that, AI subscriptions may be required to use the most advanced features of the latest smartphones running Android 15, including.
- The weight of online subscriptions on household budgets has increased by 22% in the space of two years according to a BearingPoint study taken up by our colleagues at Francetvinfo.
- This increase is partly explained by price increases for services taking on the characteristics of inelastic goods – namely perceived as so essential that the increases do not affect the desire to remain a subscriber.
- There is also the online press, both national and regional, which benefits from a very significant increase in subscriptions – boosted by busy news, quality treatment, but also more complex paywalls to bypass.
- AI services could well in turn push the household spending on the rise in the next study.
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