Churn is the rate at which subscribers cancel over a period — the metric a subscription business lives and dies by. In SVOD, acquiring a subscriber costs money up front and revenue accrues over their lifetime, so if they leave too soon the economics never work. A few points of monthly churn compound dramatically: 5% monthly churn means losing nearly half your base in a year if unreplaced.
Churn comes in flavors that need different responses. Voluntary churn (the user actively cancels) points to content, value, or price problems; involuntary churn (failed payments, expired cards) is a recoverable billing problem solved with dunning and card-updater integrations. Analysts also watch gross vs net churn and cohort retention curves to see whether the product keeps people past the first risky months.
Almost every OTT investment — recommendations, QoE, original content, onboarding — is ultimately justified by its effect on churn and its inverse, retention and lifetime value (LTV).
