Ad Managers — those Premium SVOD consumers who have selected both ad-free and ad-supported plans across the streaming services they pay for — now represent 40% of Premium SVOD individuals in the U.S., according to Antenna estimates. Ad Managers and Ad Takers (32%) together represent 72% of Premium SVOD individuals.
When Antenna introduced the Ad Choice segmentation framework, the goal was to track how Premium SVOD consumers respond to the choice between ad-supported and ad-free plans. The framework defines four segments — Ad Oblivious, Ad Avoider, Ad Taker, and Ad Manager — based on the choices each consumer has made over a rolling 24-month window.
The Ad Oblivious segment — consumers who have not been required to make an ad choice in the past 24 months — continues to dwindle, falling 21% YoY to just 9% of Premium SVOD individuals in the U.S. as of Q1’26. As more services offer ad plans, fewer consumers can avoid the choice.
The more ad choices a consumer is presented with, the more pronounced the mix-and-match behavior becomes. Among Premium SVOD consumers who have made 2 or more ad choices in the past 24 months, Ad Managers represent 64% of the group, and Ad Takers another 24%. Together, 88% of consumers with repeated exposure to ad-supported tiers have opted into ads on at least 1 of their plans. In contrast, Antenna estimates the remaining 12% are Ad Avoiders who have never selected an ad-supported plan.
The pattern has practical implications. For ad-supported tiers, the addressable audience is not a discrete subscriber population; it is a behavior most Premium SVOD consumers exhibit on at least one service. For ad-free tiers, demand increasingly comes from consumers who pair them with ad-supported plans elsewhere.
This post includes data excerpted from Antenna's Q2'26 State of Subscriptions Report. If you're interested in getting your own copy of the report, you can download it here. Antenna clients have exclusive access to a client-only expanded version of the Q2'26 State of Subscriptions report. Want to become an Antenna client? We want that for you, too. Drop us a line and let's discuss.
For more detailed information on Antenna's methodology and definitions of core metrics, please visit www.antenna.live/methodology.
