With five months now elapsed since the onset of the pandemic in North America, a number of trends are coming more clearly into focus as the content sector attempts to make sense of what a post-pandemic world will look like.

Participants on Banff World Media Festival’s virtual panel – titled “Critical math: how data is revolutionizing the discovery and experience of content in the 21st century” – delved into the statistics behind the trends and discussed the growing importance of data-backed insights both for the creation and distribution of content.

One of the primary trends observed since March has been the increasing prevalence of “SVOD stacking” (where consumers sign up to multiple services).

“People’s ability or propensity to subscribe to multiple subscription services within a household has skyrocketed,” said Adam Cunningham, chief global strategist at Allied Global Marketing.

However, consumers are becoming increasingly savvy when it comes to  adding and deleting their subscriptions to various services. The onslaught of SVOD stacking has turned streaming users into experts at cancelling their 30-day free-trial subscriptions on the 29th day, meaning churn is the primary issue facing global SVODs.

“The biggest thing we’re dealing with now across the board, it doesn’t matter which country, is the question of retention,” said Cunningham.

And against the backdrop of streamers and networks building massively advanced data sets, Sean Cohan, chief growth officer and president, international at Nielsen Company said there’s “probably a bit more room to marry [data and creative] than has been employed until now.”

Of course, that is easier said than done for content creators, with Cohan acknowledging there has been an “asymmetry of information” with regard to the data shared by distribution platforms with producers and creatives. There are however a growing number of areas where he sees the opportunity to use data to create meaningful change in the industry.

Social unrest sparked by the killing of George Floyd has provided a seminal moment for the content industry to think about how inclusion, equity and diversity, said Cohan, who said “inclusion analytics” could be a new frontier for global streamers and networks.

“We’re thinking about how we, as an ecosystem, can for the first time really access data and analyze data around inclusion. If you’re committed to understanding and creating opportunities for diverse populations to see themselves reflected on screen, and to reach those populations, then you can use data, metadata and measurement to think about how we are doing as a business, as an ecosystem,” he said. “And then, how can we think about optimizing the elements in creative around those same communities?”

More generally, panelists agreed that some of the innovations around the delivery of content have been accelerated by the pandemic, with Cohan estimating that models in technology (not just film and TV) have been accelerated by two or three years.

The most obvious film-related example of this is the rise of premium video on demand (PVOD), with Universal releasing Trolls World Tour digitally earlier this year, and, more recently, Disney making the decision to release Mulan on its Disney+ OTT service.

“We’re at the beginning of another shift of what is available when and where and for how much,” said Paul Yanover, president of L.A.-based ticketing company Fandango, which also owns FandangoNOW, Rotten Tomatoes and recently acquired Vudu. He added that Fandango has seen the volume of transactional at-home streaming consumption “virtually double” since the onset of the pandemic.

While it’s difficult to accurately pinpoint anything in the content business currently, Cunningham said an acceleration of the trends seen over the past five months is the safest bet.

“What we’ve seen overall from a data standpoint is those trends we’ve found that were accelerating pre-pandemic only continue to accelerate with the pandemic. So the move towards streaming consumption, or online buying… no matter what your industry, we’ve seen that accelerate. And those things that were already dwindling or decelerating pre-pandemic have only accelerated their deceleration, which is also really interesting,” he said.