Audience modeling increased daily paid sign-ups 89% for a leading streaming service

The challenge

For two years, we'd helped the streaming service acquire new subscribers through seven-day free trials and other introductory offers. In 2023, the client's priorities shifted sharply from growth toward profitability.

Customer lifetime value became the primary KPI, replacing metrics like app downloads and Day 8 subscriptions almost overnight. We weren't simply chasing more people willing to start a free trial. We needed consumers more likely to commit to a paid monthly subscription and stick around for the long haul.

Getting there meant we and the client had to put customer insights to work together in new ways, without compromising consumer privacy along the way.

The solution

We worked with LiveRamp to build a privacy-safe environment for data collaboration. The streaming service brought insights from its existing high-value customers and churned subscribers, and we connected those signals with our own audience data.

That gave us a clearer picture of the consumers the campaign should prioritize and, just as importantly, the ones it shouldn't. We then used Dynamic ROAS Optimization to put those insights to work in real time, focused on three areas: suppressing existing or low-value audiences to cut wasted impressions and clicks, building lookalike audiences modeled on the client's highest-value subscribers, and identifying previously churned members who could be approached with different messaging.

Rather than treating every potential subscriber the same, we focused investment on the consumers whose profiles most closely resembled the customers the streaming service valued most, instead of spreading budget evenly across audiences regardless of how likely they were to stay.

Why it worked

The campaign connected acquisition decisions to customer value. Privacy-safe data collaboration gave us stronger signals about who the client's best subscribers were, and audience modeling turned those signals into targeting decisions. Suppression cut wasted media, lookalike modeling expanded the pool of high-value prospects, and churn insights opened another path to acquisition from consumers who already knew the service. Together, those signals let us optimize toward the customers the business wanted.

The result

Compared with the previous seven-day free-trial campaign, total daily sign-ups increased 89%. Conversion rate grew 10%, and click-through rate increased 8%. More importantly, the campaign gave the streaming service a new acquisition model built around subscriber value rather than volume alone, lining up performance marketing with its broader shift toward lifetime value and long-term profitability.