ARPU (average revenue per user) is total revenue divided by the number of users over a period. It condenses monetization into one comparable number and is watched closely alongside subscriber count, because growth can come from more users or from earning more per user.
ARPU exposes the trade-offs between models and tiers: a cheap ad tier may have lower ARPU but expand the audience; a premium tier raises ARPU but may limit reach. Hybrid services track ARPU per tier to see where value comes from, and combine it with churn to estimate lifetime value - the figures that justify content and acquisition spend.
The handbook · 7 volumes
Fora Soft Video Engineering Handbook
ARPU shows how much each subscriber brings in, and delivery cost per viewer quietly sets how much of it you keep. The seven volumes cover the whole video stack; for the cost side of ARPU start with Volume 3 on the economics of streaming, CDNs, and ABR, then Volume 1 on encoding efficiency and Volume 2 on packaging. Written by Nikolay Sapunov, CEO at Fora Soft.
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