<story><title>Quibi reportedly lost 90 percent of early users after their free trials expired</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/8/21318060/quibi-subscriber-count-free-trial-paying-users-conversion-rate</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ObsoleteNerd</author><text>8% is not a terrible conversion rate at all, and they’ve only just started. I’m not a Quibi user and have no vested interest in them either way but this is the third different article I’ve seen in the last week or 2 talking about how terrible they’re doing and now they’re about to crash and burn, because of an 8% conversion?&lt;p&gt;Comparing them to Disney is ridiculous too, it’s Disney! With multiple generations obsessed with their library and people literally counting down the days until their launch, they got a 10% conversion... but 8% is horrible and the end of Quibi?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mikeryan</author><text>I work in this industry and generally agree with your assessment.&lt;p&gt;However a few things, the general industry perspective went like this:&lt;p&gt;1. David Katzenberg and Meg Whitman were creating a consumer service targeting a demographic they don&amp;#x27;t fit in a field they&amp;#x27;ve not worked in.  (Consumer apps for a younger demographic)&lt;p&gt;2. They got 1.8 Billion in funding. For fuck&amp;#x27;s sake you should get one breakout hit piece of content from that. (Note Apple is struggling a bit with this one too). With the funding, hype and content they&amp;#x27;ve spent on the expectations are going to be pretty damn astronomical, they brought high expectations on themselves.&lt;p&gt;3. Their entire premise was based on this concept of quick bites of content.  With an almost 2 billion dollar war chest the right thing to do would have been to test this theory maybe? Roll out a single show first, backfilled with some news? Get some feedback maybe?&lt;p&gt;Quibi is led by some serious heavy hitters, so its not spoken much out loud but I think a lot of folks in the industry felt this play was based mostly on hubris and now there&amp;#x27;s a certain sense of schadenfreude as they start to flail.</text></comment>
<story><title>Quibi reportedly lost 90 percent of early users after their free trials expired</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/8/21318060/quibi-subscriber-count-free-trial-paying-users-conversion-rate</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ObsoleteNerd</author><text>8% is not a terrible conversion rate at all, and they’ve only just started. I’m not a Quibi user and have no vested interest in them either way but this is the third different article I’ve seen in the last week or 2 talking about how terrible they’re doing and now they’re about to crash and burn, because of an 8% conversion?&lt;p&gt;Comparing them to Disney is ridiculous too, it’s Disney! With multiple generations obsessed with their library and people literally counting down the days until their launch, they got a 10% conversion... but 8% is horrible and the end of Quibi?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>danso</author><text>The recent major articles about Quibi being a disaster are not been about conversion rate, but about its huge costs combined with questionable proposition (which was particularly affected by quarantine life changes), and its poor performance on app store charts:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.vulture.com&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;is-anyone-watching-quibi.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.vulture.com&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;is-anyone-watching-quibi.htm...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;As of early July, over 5 million phones had downloaded the Quibi app. Of those, 1.5 million had registered to use it, and this was with Quibi offering a three-month free trial and doing saturation marketing. (When it paused the marketing during the Black Lives Matter protests, Quibi’s App Store ranking fell to No. 1,477.) In light of its disappointing user numbers, Quibi’s advertisers have reportedly asked to renegotiate their deals. The company was forced to go into capital-conservation mode. Executives took a 10 percent pay cut.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also, 8% does not sound like a good conversion rate for the entertainment industry, even ignoring the disparity between subscription revenue and the hundreds of millions already spent for content:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; *Meanwhile, the 90-day free trials will begin expiring this month. The industry conversion rate from a free trial to a paid subscription hovers below 33 percent. According to research firm Parks Associates, if that holds true for Quibi, it could mean less than 500,000 people would be watching a network that spent hundreds of millions of dollars on brand-new premium content.</text></comment>