How Leading Streaming and Subscription Services Are Adding Millions of Subscribers Without Higher Ad Spend

Digital subscriptions have reached a turning point. The average American household now spends nearly $1,000 annually on digital services, according to analysis by NYU professor Scott Galloway and Deloitte. With this level of maturity, traditional acquisition channels are becoming less predictable — not because advertising stopped working, but because consumers are fully subscribed and more selective about what they add next.

Major streaming and subscription platforms continue to grow their user bases without substantially increasing their media budgets. Their strategy is different: instead of fighting for attention in crowded app stores and social feeds, they’re partnering with the companies that already have a billing relationship with nearly every household — telecom operators.

Why Bundling Is Becoming a Distribution Strategy

Consumers today manage various subscriptions across entertainment, fitness, productivity, cloud storage and more. This saturation introduces new friction: more churn, more reassessment, and greater effort required to convince users to adopt yet another service.

As a result, digital services are increasingly complementing direct-to-consumer strategies with a distribution channel that removes friction entirely: operator-led bundling, where telcos manage acquisition, onboarding and billing.

From Experiment to Core Growth Engine

According to Omdia, operator-led bundles now account for approximately 365 million SVOD subscriptions worldwide, about 20% of the global streaming market. By 2029, this figure is projected to reach roughly 540 million, or nearly a quarter of all subscriptions. In several markets, such bundles already represent a meaningful share of net additions.

The appeal is straightforward. For consumers, bundling can simplify billing and help manage multiple subscriptions. For telcos, it may add value to existing connectivity offerings. For digital services, these arrangements often reduce or replace traditional customer-acquisition spending.

The Infrastructure Unlocking the Bundling Economy

Enter MarketONE, Amdocs’ distribution-native platform that has quietly become the infrastructure layer powering thousands of bundle configurations across global operators. What makes MarketONE uniquely credible in this space is its foundation: it is built on Amdocs’ 40-year heritage of operating mission-critical systems for the telecom industry. 

This telco-native foundation supports interoperability with operator systems, incorporates a compliance-oriented architecture, and is built to accommodate launches across multiple markets. The platform brings together offer configuration, entitlements, billing and invoicing, regional compliance, analytics and insights, and GenAI-driven lifecycle automation in a single environment.

Bundles that once required extended operator coordination can now be set up on notably shorter timelines, in some cases within a few weeks.

The effects can be substantial for organizations using the model: according to data shared by participating services, some have reported up to 15× subscriber growth compared to their traditional channels, along with retention rates they describe as up to three times higher, which they attribute in part to the convenience of telco billing. MarketONE is described as supporting more than 30 million monthly bundled subscriptions based on figures provided by the company. These outcomes are attributed to telco-led acquisition and onboarding rather than direct media spending.

A Broader Subscription Ecosystem

While streaming services pioneered telco bundling, the model is expanding rapidly. Gaming platforms, fitness and wellness apps, productivity tools, cloud storage providers, and emerging GenAI applications are adopting the same strategy because it can introduce users who are more likely to remain engaged.

MarketONE’s unified data layer helps operators and digital brands understand which bundle combinations perform best and evolve offerings beyond one-off deals into long-term, audience-driven programs.

For growth teams evaluating distribution strategies, operator bundling through MarketONE offers meaningful scale and efficiency. Participating brands have reported up to 15× subscriber growth, as well as retention rates up to three times higher. The ecosystem now supports over 30 million monthly bundled subscriptions, with customer acquisition driven by telco partners rather than traditional CAC. Companies can launch in under two weeks, gain access to more than 250 global operators and a potential reach of more than 3 billion consumers, and use the platform without added fees.

The Next Chapter of Subscription Growth

As digital services plan for 2025 and beyond, one insight is becoming unmistakable: the next era of growth will be defined not only by content or product innovation, but by distribution innovation.

MarketONE is helping lead this shift by helping bring more structure and consistency to what has traditionally been a fragmented part of the digital-services ecosystem.