Digital i has crunched the data and revealed that family and animated content play an important role in reducing overall churn for streamers.

The Bristol-based research firm assessed four major platforms (Disney+, Netflix, Prime Video and HBO Max), specifically looking at what “light viewers” in the US and Europe were watching the most last year.

Light viewers are those who “use streaming services infrequently and with low intent,” making them the most likely to unsubscribe. The report defined them as the bottom one-third of measured accounts in terms of total daily viewing time—11 minutes or less per day on Disney+; 48 minutes or less on Netflix; 18 minutes or less on HBO Max; and 12 minutes or less on Prime Video.

Serving as safety nets against churn, family films had the highest reach among these infrequent viewers—even though these movies didn’t have the most reach overall with all viewers.

On HBO Max, Flow reached a smaller audience of 3.9 million in the measured markets, but it captured a higher density of churn-risk users (35%) beating out a lot of prestige titles.

A case in point is HBO Max, where family-friendly animated film Flow reached a relatively small audience in the measured markets (3.9 million viewers) but had the highest density of light viewers (35%). In comparison, the adult-skewing prestige series The Last of Us had a massive reach (19.2 million viewers), but infrequent viewers made up just 21.4% of that audience.

Meanwhile, the strongest performer for light viewers on Disney+ was Hocus Pocus 2. Roughly three million viewers tuned in for the spooky sequel last year, with 35.5% of that number coming from the infrequent crowd. Pixar’s Win Or Lose series was also among the top-five titles, with a 26.2% reach among light viewers.

This trend continued on Prime Video, where PG-rated musical flick Wicked earned the highest share of light viewers (24.2%) and fellow Universal blockbuster The Super Mario Bros. Movie also cracked the top-five list (20.1%). In addition, Digital i noted that bundling Prime Video with its Amazon Prime retail service also provided unique churn-reduction benefits.

Interestingly, Netflix was the only platform that didn’t have a movie topping the list. Instead, the NFL Christmas Gameday events pulled the biggest percentage of infrequent users, showing that the streamer’s bet on live sports is paying off. Still, teen-favorite series Wednesday and the kids movie phenomenon KPop Demon Hunters both cornered a 23% share of at-risk light viewers.

The big takeaway is that “low-friction” entertainment (recognizable IPs plus family and animated titles) gives infrequent viewers a pretty good reason not to hit that unsubscribe button.

“While critically acclaimed hits like The Last of Us draw massive audiences, it is the low-friction titles—the familiar franchises and theatrical blockbusters—that disproportionately capture light viewers,” Digital i analyst Elena Mozzato said in a release.

“These titles act as subscription stabilizers. By reducing decision friction for infrequent users, they provide a consistent reason to stay subscribed between major prestige releases.”

The charts below show the 2025 top-10 light viewer rankings for the four streamers. (For this study, Digital i focused on viewers in the US, UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Poland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Sweden.)