Make the Most of the Summer Slowdown: 5 Ways to Optimise Your Streaming Service
While summer doesn’t bring everything to a halt, it often creates just enough breathing room to focus on improvements that tend to get sidelined during busier periods. For streaming operators, it’s a valuable window to refine your platform, boost subscriber engagement, and prepare for the busier autumn and winter months when streaming activity typically climbs.
In this blog, we’re sharing a few practical, quick-win optimisations you can implement now – no heavy development required. Here are five areas to focus on this season, all easily managed through the Magine Pro Console:
1. Tackle Involuntary Churn with Payment Recovery Tools
Churn doesn’t always happen by choice. Failed payments from expired cards or missed renewals can silently erode your subscriber base, especially over the summer months, when people are travelling or distracted.
Magine Pro’s built-in dunning tools automatically trigger payment reminders and retry cycles. Operators can also send card expiry notifications to prompt users before issues arise, helping reduce revenue leakage without lifting a finger.
Want to know where your biggest retention gaps might be? Our Retention Checklist is a quick self-assessment to help you identify opportunities and benchmark against best practices used by Magine Pro customers.
2. Refresh Your Content Discovery Experience
If your homepage feels static or generic, viewers are more likely to lose interest. Seasonal curation and regularly updated rows help keep the service feeling fresh and relevant, even if your actual content library hasn’t changed.
In the Magine Pro Console, you can:
- Create custom content rows
- Curate by theme, genre, artist, or mood
- Set up time-based promotions (e.g. “Summer Picks,” “Holiday Favourites”)
It’s an easy way to make your platform more dynamic, and every update goes live instantly across all devices.
3. Experiment with Promo Codes and Offers
Need to boost signups or re-engage lapsed users? Summer is a great time to test promotional offers and measure what works before peak season returns.
The Console makes it simple to create and manage promo campaigns that:
- Apply discounts as a percentage or fixed amount
- Target specific countries or user types (e.g. new users only)
- Use viral (shared) or unique (one-time-use) codes
- Define duration, validity dates, and even bypass checkout entirely
Whether you’re running a seasonal campaign or an affiliate partnership, you can tailor your offers without touching any code.
4. Audit and Enhance Metadata for Better Searchability
Your metadata does more than just describe content, it powers discoverability and improves the viewing experience, especially on Smart TVs where users often browse by visuals and search queries.
This is an ideal time to:
- Fill in missing fields like title, synopsis, cast, and genre
- Update or add translations for multilingual audiences
- Optimise artwork (poster and 16:9 formats recommended)
- Use custom tags (if configured) to reflect seasonal themes or content types
All of this can be done in the Media & Metadata section of the Console, with changes published to your service in real time.
Better metadata = better engagement. It’s one of the simplest ways to increase time watched and reduce bounce rates.
5. Prepare for What’s Next
Even small operational changes made now can help you scale more effectively in the months ahead. Whether you’re planning a new content drop, entering a new market, or refreshing your onboarding flow.
Now’s a good time to:
- Review your user journey across devices
Especially on Smart TVs, where features like QR code sign-in can reduce friction and improve the user experience. - Enable anonymous viewing
Let viewers explore your content before signing up. It’s a proven way to increase engagement and drive conversions, especially for AVOD or hybrid services. - Build passive conversion funnels
Combine tools like anonymous viewing, time-limited promo codes, and targeted offers to nudge users toward becoming subscribers, all running quietly in the background once set up.
These small steps now mean less scrambling later, and a stronger foundation heading into the year’s busiest months.
Use Summer Strategically – Without Slowing Down
You don’t need to hit pause to make progress. By using this time to fine-tune your platform, you’ll be better positioned to retain subscribers, deliver stronger experiences, and scale smartly into autumn and beyond.
If you’re not yet on Magine Pro, or want to see the Console in action, we’d love to show you. Book a demo or contact the team to learn more.
How search aggregators benefit streaming services & the consumer
Discoverability is essential for online video streaming services today, where competition is high. And there are many ways to increase awareness and visibility of your content and service, including well-thought-through marketing strategies and campaigns that can build a strong online presence. Partnerships are also a fantastic way to extend marketing efforts and boost discovery.
Streaming services partnering with online search aggregators like JustWatch and PlayPilot is a great example. In our latest white paper, research analyst firm Omdia highlighted how this type of partnership can be particularly advantageous for video services, “With an increasing number of consumers relying on online searches to help decide what to watch, presence on online video comparison guides will be crucial in driving viewership.”
Search aggregation services effectively scan multiple video streaming services to surface movies and TV shows that are available. They don’t host the content themselves but instead provide links to services that do. A user can browse or type in the name of specific content they are looking for. The search aggregation service will then share information on which streaming services are currently hosting the content, whether a transaction is required, and a link to the service itself. They are particularly useful for consumers who subscribe to multiple streaming services as it eliminates having to search through each service individually.
Magine Pro partner, FlixOlé, a Spanish à la carte cinema service that offers subscribers unlimited access to hundreds of Spanish film titles, recently partnered with JustWatch. Sophie de Mac Mahon, General Manager, says: “Integrating our metadata into their system had a very positive effect on business and communication. On the one hand, since the beginning of this association, it brings us an important source of traffic directly from its page to our content, being the sixth source of traffic for Flixole.com. It also served as a tool for journalists who could refer to us as the place to see the movies they were writing about. When the marketing budget is limited, it’s essential to be present in the search aggregators to reach our potential subscribers.”
We were also joined by Sophie, alongside Rishi Kapoor, founder and CEO of paus, and Omdia, in our recent webinar, OTT Discovery: Expert insights on how to stand out amongst the crowd, where we discussed how today’s audiences discover new video services and content and what OTT providers can do to stand out amongst the crowd. Magine Pro’s CEO, Matthew Wilkinson, during the discussion, talked about how streaming services can benefit from partnerships with aggregators. Matthew says, “Enabling consumers to search for specific content within the likes of PlayPilot or JustWatch and have your content visible without the consumer being an existing subscriber to your service generates a huge opportunity for operators to increase conversion rates. Search aggregators like JustWatch and PlayPilot are also more open agnostic; they are not platform-specific like some universal search options. Generally speaking, they have much broader coverage in terms of service and discoverability.” Adding, “There’s also a wider benefit and opportunity for operators partnering with search aggregators. Aggregators like these offer a huge data point, as they can monitor what content people search for, where and when it was last available and at what price point, which can help inform a streaming services content strategy. Some also support paid marketing, which is great for services that want to boost their content visibility further as it is instantly discoverable.”
The Magine Pro OTT platform offers flexibility for all our partners. We make it easy for our clients to work together with their partners and integrate efficiently with services like PlayPilot and JustWatch. As Sophie de Mac Mahon from FlixOlé points out, “The integration is already created, and the daily updates are working perfectly. Magine Pro platform has streamlined this process, and it is worth being there and almost effortless.”
For more practical insights on improving discoverability, and to learn more about the benefits of partnering with search aggregators, check out our latest white paper and webinar.
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Want more advice and support on driving awareness & discoverability? Get in touch with the Magine Pro team and find out how we can help. You can also learn more about our flexible OTT solutions and services here.
How To Drive Awareness & Video Service Discoverability: Part Two
In part two of How to Drive Awareness & Video Service Discoverability, we look closely at the importance of proactive subscriber care and specifically what digital channels are essential to boosting brand awareness and increasing conversion rates.
Subscribers are much savvier today than when streaming services first launched. Omdia’s recent report highlights users are becoming increasingly accustomed to the notion of subscribing and cancelling online video services regularly to meet their content needs. Those fluctuations in subscriptions are driven by multiple factors, including promotional activity, content titles and seasonality such as holiday periods or key events such as sports tournaments and the release of new seasons of must-watch drama series. So how can video streaming services turn subscribers from seasonal sign-ups to long-term loyalists?
Omdia states, “The dominant global players in streaming video know that the key to success is to proactively encourage users to make the most of the subscription, including making personalised profiles, by watching content on more than one device, and of course, to ultimately make them watch more content and more often. To thrive in a fierce online video streaming market, proactive subscriber care is a must.”
Proactive Subscriber Care
Proactive subscriber care should be forefront throughout the lifetime of the subscription, including during sign up onboarding. Communicate clearly how to best use the service from day one, educate subscribers on features, watch content on different devices, and most importantly, what to do if they encounter issues. And keeping subscribers regularly informed about new content releases, features and promotions should be ongoing.
Subscribers that feel valued or part of the journey with new streaming services are more likely to show loyalty and stick around. Consumers having a positive association with your brand can be just as effective on retention and growth rates as regularly updating your service with new content.
At Magine Pro, we advise our partners to build a reliable digital ecosystem that features all relevant acquisition and retention channels to support their marketing efforts and proactive subscriber care plan. We also integrate with Mandrill and MailChimp to enable them to regularly communicate with their users, via email and targeted in-app messages.
Digital Channels
Social Media
Social channels are undoubtedly one of the most important in the digital ecosystem for new online video services. As Omdia’s research suggests, ‘over 23% of consumers rely on recommendations from online platforms and social media when deciding what to watch.’ It’s, therefore, crucial to leverage social platforms throughout the funnel to drive awareness and build buzz around your content and service. The real-time nature of social posts makes it a great way to connect with users around current events or popular trends. It’s also a useful way to gather user feedback on content and service features and, when managed well, can help build a loyal user community.
Reach out regularly via email to your subscribers to inform them about promotions, new service features and content. Email is an essential channel for onboarding, and it’s also a great way to engage with subscribers and re-engage dormant users regularly. Build a comms strategy to support customer service and your marketing efforts, and send personalised emails where possible. For example, you can send targeted campaigns about specific content to users based on their previous viewing habits.
In-app Messages
In-app MessagesWhen timed well and positioned carefully, in-app notifications are a great way to communicate promotions or new/upcoming content on your service with users. We recommend using pop-ups to promote content that can be watched immediately or added to a user’s watchlist to enjoy later. Be mindful with the timings pop-ups appear to avoid inconveniencing users and be aware that only those using the app will receive the notification.
Push Notifications
You can also reach out to users when they aren’t using the service via push notifications. They are a helpful way to communicate a short-term promotion, new content or remind users that the content they have added to their Watchlist is coming to an end. Push notifications also enable you to add deep links, which can open a specific page in your service.
Download our white paper now, OTT Discovery: How to stand out amongst the crowd, to find out more about the benefits of proactive subscriber care and essential channels in the digital ecosystem. This white paper also includes partner case studies that highlight their in-market experiences. You’ll also discover what new streaming services can do to boost brand awareness, drive discoverability and increase conversion rates through marketing efforts and service features.
And if you missed part one of this blog series, ‘How To Drive Awareness & Video Service Discoverability’, you can catch up here and learn more about the benefits of promotional incentives.
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Want more advice and support on driving awareness & discoverability? Get in touch with the Magine Pro team and find out how we can help. You can also learn more about our branded OTT solutions and services here.