The Media Odyssey

Anil Malhotra: [00:00:00] 68 percent of customers say they now look for a deal before they sign up for a subscription service. And it's fascinating how quickly consumers have realized that bundling gives them choice. And it's one thing consumers like in any category. It's choice, it's control, it's flexibility, it's value.

Marion Ranchet: Welcome everyone to the Media Odyssey. This is Evan Shapiro. And

Evan Shapiro: that is Marion Ranchet.

Marion Ranchet: And today we have a guest, Anil Malhotra from Bango. Welcome, Anil.

Anil Malhotra: Welcome. Thanks very much. You're welcome. And, uh, really looking forward to our conversation today.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. So this is a topic that Marion, you are particularly nerdy for.

Marion Ranchet: Yes, I don't know why. I don't know why. So well, let's tell them.

Evan Shapiro: So well, let's tell them. So, [00:01:00] Bango specializes in subscription bundling, um, and specifically streaming subscription bundles. Um, and this is something that you are obsessed with, creating the perfect bundle for the streaming era. In fact, this summer you staged a debate on the best bundle.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah.

Evan Shapiro: Who was on that? That was, it was me, Alan Wolk, John Giegengack. And one more, who else was the fourth contestant?

Marion Ranchet: We had Douglas, he's an anime nerd, so I had a bunch of nerds to talk about a nerdy topic.

Evan Shapiro: And who won that debate? Who won that debate?

Marion Ranchet: I don't know.

Evan Shapiro: So the debate, the debate was about creating the best bundle and I won it.

So Anil, you've been, you're one of the founders of Bango, right?

Anil Malhotra: Yes. Correct.

Evan Shapiro: And did we get that correct? You specialize in the, basically all the back office, back software, operational challenges in creating [00:02:00] bundles of streaming services, correct?

Anil Malhotra: That's correct. Yeah, I mean, we realized that the whole content proposition was shifting wholesale towards subscriptions in, probably 2017, 2018. We had, by way of a short backstory, we'd done a lot of monetization of digital contents and services through carrier billing and other payment methods. And as we analyzed the data, we suddenly started noticing a lot more regular repeat payments coming through the system. Well, that's interesting.

And of course, that signified the emergence of subscriptions. And that's what got us interested in subscription bundling, you know, the possibility of bringing together the worlds of media and the worlds of telecommunications and financial services and that kind of thing. Of course, what we noticed is when people were putting these bundles together, they were replicating 80 to 90 percent of the technical and operational functionality each time they did one of these bundles.

So, of course, as a tech company, as a software company, we put two and two together pretty quickly and we said, why don't we create a standardized technology, a bundling platform that does [00:03:00] the 80 to 90 percent of those repeated technical operational tasks. And that's how we came up with this product that we call the digital vending machine that that's used for subscription bundling by some of the world's biggest content providers and some of the world's biggest telcos.

Marion Ranchet: And so how does that work? Are people essentially coming to you guys and thinking, telcos and say, you know, build me this, you know, one stop shop, make it as easy as possible for me, but ultimately for my customers.

Anil Malhotra: Yeah, that's right. So you've really got, you've got three constituencies, if you like.

You've got the companies who are producing the subscriptions, and then there's both of you said at the beginning, you know, there's a big focus on streaming media, SVOD in particular, but streaming media in general, but again, actually I'm bound to say, I think you're both subscription bundling nerds, um, so you'll both be aware of the fact that subscriptions come to a much broader category of contents and services.

You've got those guys on the one hand, then you've [00:04:00] got their partners, their channel partners, who are the bundlers. And I think during this conversation, we'll probably talk about media companies coming together as they have been very recently to figure out their own bundles. But actually the big sort of almost unspoken bundlers in the world are companies like telecommunications company, broadband providers, and the report we're talking about today that we just launched this week.

It shows how U. S. consumers think about companies providing these bundles for them. And then, of course, the third constituency is the consumer. And so, part of what, if we start with the consumer, part of the value of what we do with the digital vending machine is we help consumers organize and manage their subscriptions as more and more aspects and facets of our lives are being rendered in the form of subscriptions, more of our monthly household spending is going on subscription based products and services. Um, this need for consumer organization and management, and even just visibility on how much money I'm spending every month on subscriptions becomes more important.

But as you say, Marion, the other part of it, of course, is [00:05:00] bringing the media world together with the telecommunications world. So those two cars can actually operate and function through a standard technology.

Evan Shapiro: So that there's two parts of that. The first is the need isn't the company's need, and it's not the media company's need, it's the consumer's need.

So the need for subscription is born out of subscriber, I'm sorry, consumer behavior who want convenience. They want more visibility. They also want a lower prices and efficiencies as well. And then the companies realize that subscription bundling lowers churn for their platforms because it creates a better user experience.

So that's when they come knocking on your door. Can you give us a case study? What is one of the more notable bundles that you've worked on in the past couple of years that we would know about? Because you've worked on, if you've heard of a major streaming utility mixture, streaming bundle, chances are you were involved, correct?[00:06:00]

Anil Malhotra: I think that's right. And then I think, I think a few people, people who really,

Evan Shapiro: I mean, you're, if I'm not getting this wrong, I don't really know of anybody who does this at the scale that you do that's even remotely close. So, I mean, you are the only shop in town. Yeah, there you go. But, so name a couple or one in particular that you think would, uh, the audience would know about.

Anil Malhotra: Um, there are multiple examples of where we've worked with subscription providers and we've worked with their partners. We've got an interesting example, which we announced just 60 so days ago, just before the run up to the year end, which is an unusual example. So I'll give this as one example and I'll give them all perhaps a better known example as my second example.

That is a retailer and it's a retailer based in Europe, Southern Europe, called Continente. They're part of, for those of people that are into their retailing, they're part of the big European Carrefour group, Marion may be familiar to you. And, um, what they wanted to do is they wanted to get Disney Plus into the market as part of a pre Christmas promotion.

To get their [00:07:00] shoppers to sign up to their membership club, their subscription membership club, they had to get that done in eight weeks, in order to hit the Christmas period. There was no way they were going to be able to do that themselves. So of course what they did was they came to us. Good news, Disney Plus is already integrated into the Bango digital vending machine.

So that piece of work was done. So we just had to set up Continente online shopper service. And we were able to activate that within eight weeks. And that, that had a fantastic pre Christmas value for them.

If you're an American viewer of The Media Ddyssey podcast, then you may, you'll be familiar with Verizon.

Verizon has some interesting mark, propositions in the market. Um, there's a subscription bundling proposition called Plus Play. Probably American consumers will be more familiar with MyHome and MyPerks as consumer propositions. They're all powered by the Bango digital vending machine.

The good news about those services, and I think, I think it's a absolutely exemplary showcase for how to do subscription bundling from [00:08:00] Verizon, there's multiple bundles there. There's close to 50 different services as a Verizon customer you can get. And that's

Evan Shapiro: So the consumer can just go on and plug and play the various ones.

And that's where your vending machine, which you have a physical one with you there, but the virtual vending machine, is built to plug and play many different inputs and outputs, uh, seamlessly.

Anil Malhotra: Exactly.

Evan Shapiro: Basically the universal translator behind all the various currencies and exchanges going on between the platform.

Anil Malhotra: Exactly. And this is for the phenomenon we call Super Bundling. So it's the idea of multiple different services being available all in one place, which is a key requirement that our consumer research shows is wanted for. But it's also, the super bundling is more than just a large number, an aggregate of services.

It's also that ability to, as you, as you quite rightly say, Evan, to be able to put together sophisticated, targeted consumer propositions around bundles. And on the consumer side, it's the ability for the consumer to have [00:09:00] complete visibility of what they're spending their money on and what they want to buy and creating add ons and those kinds of things.

So I think, we think at Bango we'll see more and more of that as time goes on, this super bundling concept.

Marion Ranchet: So as a consumer, I'm assuming you're operating, you know, in the background, but so what's the draw, right? So is it because, are you, there's one bill? And then they can, you know, pick and choose that's

Evan Shapiro: Marion, do you want to dip into the research?

Because I think, uh

Anil Malhotra: Yeah, I was going to suggest, let's do that.

Evan Shapiro: What Bango has is access to all this consumer behavior in real time. And I think, to be honest with you, your question gets answered by this research.

Anil Malhotra: It does, yeah. Let me, should I chat a bit about that?

Evan Shapiro: So this is your new report, Subscriptions Assemble: Welcome to the Bundle Economy.

And I think, um, you know, we talked about why, are all bundles good, who should be offering bundles, you know, as a prep for the podcast, we discussed all that, but I think the answers, you know, really do come out of here. So this data I found incredibly [00:10:00] interesting. The average consumer has about five and a half total subscriptions, right?

But, almost half of those, two of those, come from indirect bundles. What's an indirect bundle in this case?

Anil Malhotra: So this is the idea, so in the case of direct subscriptions, that's where you would go to, you know, there's your .com website for your streaming provider, um, Netflix or Disney Plus or Apple TV, whichever it might be, and sign up directly, which would seem common sense.

What's fascinating about this research, and it's just come out this week, so you guys listening to, watching The Media Odyssey are first to, first to get, uh, sight of this research.

Evan Shapiro: Thank you for giving it to us first.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, thanks for that.

Anil Malhotra: Yeah, it's a pleasure. I couldn't think of a better home for launching this research.

So what we're seeing here is we're seeing is a surprising number, I think, um, of Americans. We surveyed thousands of American consumers in doing this research at the start of this year. Um, 68 percent of them, of this, of the consumer survey, really taking out a [00:11:00] subscription through an indirect channel.

Now, Evan, your question was, what's an indirect channel? It's where you don't go directly to the provider of the streaming service or the music service or the gaming service. But you get it through an intermediary, and we talked already about some of the telco propositions. So you could go there to the telco plan, and you can add it into your plan, or you can buy it as an extra.

You might find it in a so called hard bundle. So this is the idea that if you decided to go to a home fiber provider to get your high speed home broadband, They might throw into the, to the bargain for you, three, six months of this streaming service or 12 months of that streaming service. So it's that it's getting it through an intermediary through an indirect channel.

You might want to think of it like that rather than directly from the provider. Is Amazon

Evan Shapiro: Is Amazon Prime channels in that indirect bundles? Would that be considered?

Anil Malhotra: Yes. Yes. Yeah, it is. And most of the time it's an add on rather than a bundle. So if I buy Amazon Prime and I pay Amazon my, my annual or monthly subscription, I won't necessarily get a [00:12:00] third party service with that, but having become a customer of Amazon, of course, I could conveniently go and add all exactly. And as I mentioned Verizon earlier, they make that experience at Apple experience very, very slick indeed with their services.

Evan Shapiro: And if I'm not, if I'm not mistaken, so YouTube channels would be in their primetime channels would be in there as well.

So any, anytime you're indirectly bundling, whether it's with a utility like a Verizon, a telco or, you know, a department store. Walmart, actually and, Paramount bundled together. That's an indirect bundle.

Anil Malhotra: Exactly. And I think what's fascinating about this report again, uh, that's come out this week is not only, so we, 68 percent of Americans have already started 2025, bought at least one subscription through one of these indirect bundles. Um, so, you know, if the average, our research says the average American has 5. 4, say 5. 5 subscription bundled. Two of those are taken by indirect channels. So I guess the next question is [00:13:00] why, what's the appeal with it? You built that into your question.

Marion Ranchet: Can I, can I ask you, uh, cause you guys put a lot of research out there. Is it the first time that you focus on direct versus indirect? Do you have data that goes back so that we know, you know, how that proportion of direct versus indirect has evolved, or is it just brand new and then we'll have to speak again in a few months?

Anil Malhotra: Yes. Yes. So that's, uh, that particular data point is a new data point that we've uncovered. What's interesting about the past though, is what we have done is we have surveyed consumers and said, what do you want? Do you want easier, ease of use, better choice, more flexibility, better deals and things.

And the answers have been universally yes. Um, this is the first time we at Bango, though, have identified, have published this particular point. You can see other market research, there's third party research companies, I know you guys are regular visitors [00:14:00] to London. In London, there's a, an organization called Omdear.

They publish market research, which says that in some cases, in some markets, up to one in five subscriptions come through bundles. So it's been seen before, but it's the first time we've been able to reveal this through our research.

Evan Shapiro: Well, and to your, to your point from earlier, what are the top reasons, and we don't have a chart for that in this run, but the top reason was saving money, one bill, what were some of the other top reasons?

Anil Malhotra: So there's deals. So, the other 68 percent statistic that comes through this research out this week. Is 68 percent of customers say they now look for a deal before they sign up for a subscription service. So it's fascinating in the, in literally the last two years, the consumers adapt very fast as we know in markets.

And it's fascinating how quickly consumers have realized that bundling gives them choice. And it's one thing consumers like in any category, it's choice, it's control, it's flexibility, it's value. So that's clearly the case. [00:15:00] So, consumers display interesting behaviors as a result of the bundling.

One of the most interesting, fascinating things, I think, that we've discovered is consumers, and our research shows this, would be more loyal to a brand that offered them a bundling solution, a super bundling solution. So about half said they would spend more money and half would be more loyal to a brand.

So this is really good news for the bundlers, the people that are bringing this together, because that will drive more loyalty.

Evan Shapiro: Which is why, I mean, that, and we see that in the data. Bundles, when you look at, there's another really great data source, Antenna. Who came out with their status or State of Streaming this week.

And what you see is that bundles churn at a much lower rate than other services. When you look at this slide here, I guess what I found surprising, I don't know about you, Marion, but I found surprising, well, SVOD was not surprising to be the number one version of a subscription that people [00:16:00] have, but retail was number two at a pretty close second place and that's seemingly why these shopping entertainment bundles might work, yeah?

Anil Malhotra: Yes, that's right, yeah, and I think the other thing I would say is retailers should be good at this stuff, shouldn't they? So people are looking at Marketing and merchandising and putting these products together that you'd expect them to be good at this. So what we see is we see telcos definitely out in the lead.

You know, they have the prime real estate when it comes to bumbling in the market. And then secondly, we see financial services, banking, the digital wallets, payment service providers and retail, as you say, is the second most popular bundler, bundlers or source, source of super bundling of aggregated bundling in the minds of the consumer.

Evan Shapiro: It's the second most popular type of subscription period after SVODs. And then the second most popular bundler after mobile, but mobile by far and away is the, is the top provider. And you asked this question two different ways. How do you [00:17:00] receive your indirect bundle? And mobile came in first, retailer came in second, then pay TV and other types of wallets.

But, you also said, who would you expect to get a bundle from or most like to see a bundle from? And it was a similar set of data that the telco was number one, for providing that service.

Anil Malhotra: Yeah. Interesting, I think for you, for all of us, you guys in particular is pay TV providers, not particularly high on the list. Which I, stuck out to me.

Uh, as much as

Marion Ranchet: I wonder if, that's a US thing, right? If you look at the US market, these guys have been shedding subscribers for the last few years, more than in any other region in the world. And so they are actually the reason why people started to, you know, slice and dice and very much go direct and, you know, take what they need.

So that's actually something that they should figure out. [00:18:00] How can they bring a level of flexibility without, you know, going back to the ca- the Bigcable bundle. And one of the reasons why I really love your data, and I'd be keen to take a look at what would be going on in the European market is, I suspect we would have mobile ISP and pay TV at the top.

Not so much, retailers. I could be wrong, huh? I know that that's

Anil Malhotra: Well, well, Marion, I can actually back you up on that. We did, we did publish that research last year, actually. We published the same research last year across 24 different countries, actually. So, North America, Latin America, Europe, across Asia, and that pattern repeats itself globally.

So, that list of who do consumers in their minds think will be the primary source of this all-in-one integrated subscription super bundling service. It's that same list, it's [00:19:00] that same hierarchy of telecommunications providers.

Marion Ranchet: Even the retailers?

Anil Malhotra: Yeah, so retailers are actually a little bit lower.

There are little retailers, it tends to, yeah, it tends to be communications providers, financial services and even, you get all things like employers. Now, let me highlight one thing that's come out of the research that's just published now, that we're talking about. And that is social media platforms.

And we haven't seen that before, but amongst American consumer, social media platforms, and you had on your chart, Evan, that you were just showing around 20 percent of people said they thought about social media platform as being almost like a Super app, I guess, of a subscription bundle.

Marion Ranchet: And so who would that be? Did people, did you, were you able to dig a bit deeper? Because, I'd see, you know, a YouTube as a perfect, you know, bundler, aggregator. But I wouldn't put these guys in the social media bucket. So, and I don't think I've seen anything from the likes of [00:20:00] TikTok and Snap on, that front.

These guys are very much free to use ecosystem. So I find it hard to believe that they could have a bit of skin in the game because at the end of the day, why do mobile providers, retailers, why are they good at that? Because they actually have a lot of data included payment details on file.

That's also why Amazon is such a powerful aggregator today.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, I think that's why you see retailer pop so high up in the data is because of Amazon in particular. They are one of the biggest bundlers of choice on the planet.

Anil Malhotra: Yeah, I think I would agree with you.

I think people probably answer those questions thinking, where do I spend my time when I'm online? And for a certain audience, particularly a younger audience, that will be, I spend a lot of my time in a social media environment, whether that's YouTube or Snapchat or wherever it might be. [00:21:00] Therefore, if I was going to go somewhere, you'd just check in and just see what's happening in my world, including my subscription spending, that might be a good place to go.

Now, you make a very valid point, and one of the reasons why Amazon in particular and potentially Apple in future would be good subscription aggregators is because they've got that on file payment method. So everything's in all integrated all into one place and that's, again, Bango research repeatedly shows, that that's a big ask for consumers.

However, again, this research says that amongst the 25 to, sorry, remember it's now 25 to 34 year old age group, over 20 percent of those people are paying for a paid subscription to a social media application.

Evan Shapiro: Close, I think it was 27%. Yeah,

Anil Malhotra: Yeah, 20-. You got it. Yeah, so that's starting to appear now again, in a way that we may not have seen 18 months ago, or certainly not 24 months ago.

So it could be that those apps are starting to find a place now in engaging consumers as being, [00:22:00] spending habit, of billing relationship critically so they could be positioned. Of course, you know, as you've mentioned, both of you have mentioned about thinking about outside of the United States.

If we go to China in particular, but other parts of Asia, you'll see that Korea, Japan, you'll see that app, social, social app, which has got the payment method on file and multiple services coming off it. So it's interesting space to watch.

Marion Ranchet: Those are super apps, right? That you see in Africa, in Asia. It's not so common actually in Europe nor in the US, what's interesting is

Evan Shapiro: Well, Amazon. I think Amazon is the closest you get to a super app and maybe Apple to a certain extent.

Marion Ranchet: But, Anil, I wanted to ask you, in terms of this vending machine that we actually see in the background, we're assuming it's not, you know, an M&M's vending machine that you have there.

Anil Malhotra: Not yet.

Marion Ranchet: Historically, you focused on getting content related subscriptions, correct? Have you had to [00:23:00] expand that world, to other verticals? And so, of course, gaming, lifestyles. Anything, essentially, that, you know, would make sense as a subscription. Did you do that? You know, any examples that you can share?

And have you seen the demand from both your partners and their consumers?

Anil Malhotra: So this is the great question, Marion, and it is about the generality of subscriptions, is it, rather than, yes, I mean, we're seeing quite a lot of interesting new categories coming up. We talked about social media. The other one that's, that's appeared in the charts in this report for the first time is paid AI subscriptions to AI tools. And again, amongst the younger demographic, you know, we've got close to 20 percent of people in that 25 to 34 group who are paying for a, whether it's ChatGPT or Claude or Perplexity, one of those premium rate subscriptions, which again, I think has come out of [00:24:00] literally nowhere in the past 12-14, months.

So that's interesting. Evan, you talked about retail subscriptions by value being second after SVOD subscriptions. Obviously, you know, we know that a retail subscription will cost maybe some hundreds of dollars a year versus tens of dollars for a media subscription.

If you look at the analyst data, analysts are talking about the digital subscriptions economy being worth 300, 400 billion currently. What they're saying is they're saying over the next few years, if we start developing as consumers that habit of retail subscriptions as well, this will be a trillion dollar market in a very, very few years.

Marion Ranchet: Speaking about the AI one, I just want to say that this came from your research and I think we've seen the first bundle between a French telco and a French AI LM Model. So I actually wrote about that last week. It's called Le Chat, which is from Mistral AI. [00:25:00] So mobile customers are free, are getting a year of the pro version to this LLM model.

Makes total sense. And I think it's, yeah, it's amazing. I would do that. I have a mobile subscription.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, it makes total sense.

Marion Ranchet: I have a subscription to ChatGPT, you know, give me a year of you know,

Evan Shapiro: 100%. Yeah.

Marion Ranchet: So, and I think you know, rumors on the French market is that everyone is chatting. I don't know whether that's Misral or GPT, but essentially all of the discussion happening with the telcos are both at, you know, the network level, the B2B side of their businesses, but ultimately it's the cherry on top to bring that to customers.

And they can actually do that to both, B2C customers, but enterprise customer. Right. What a great way to bring more value.

Evan Shapiro: Exactly. Value. So you're wholesaling, you're wholesaling the wholesale. Right. What's interesting is I think most of the emails and texts about those deals are written [00:26:00] by AI.

So your digital vending machine, this plug and play thing that you have that enables any subscriptions to bundle with any subscriptions. It, as you said, and, and as Marion asked, it's gaming, it's AI, it's all these various, it's retail. It's dog walking, whatever it is, right?

I'm not going to ask you what Marion asked on her debate, which I won, what would be the best bundle, but what does your data show you that is kind of the best strategy for bundling? What, how do you construct a good bundle? My theory, I'll give you a second to think, is that utility plus entertainment, so the mobile plus the streaming.

The original bundle that I became aware of was broadband, telephone, and TV. That's utility meets entertainment. That's the sense I get. What is your, what does your data tell you in this report or outside of this [00:27:00] report about the best strategy for how to bundle for the modern era?

Anil Malhotra: Okay. Yeah. By the way, we can do best bundle at the end if you really want to.

You know, we can, we'll do that. I'll see if,

Marion Ranchet: I want to.

Anil Malhotra: I've got to see if I can beat Evan, you see. That's the only reason I want to do this.

Evan Shapiro: All right. I'm going to go back to the one I pitched last time. So go ahead.

Anil Malhotra: So, I think first of all, what's in it for the consumer has got to be, sounds like a bit of a bland statement to make, but actually thought does need to be given to what's the consumer value proposition.

To your point, Evan, this idea of utility plus the thing you might consume with that utility is a logical bundle. And it's one of the reasons why telcos are have got to try real estate because they give you the connectivity. But what you're really interested in is what is the stuff you can now use as a result of that connectivity.

So, you know, that I think is a good one. In the banking side, they've taken a slightly different angle, our banking customer, because they've said, we can help you understand how much you're spending on your subscription habit. So again, there's a kind of a interesting, [00:28:00] alignment of different needs there, but all packaged up into one.

The, I had an interesting debate with somebody from Liberty Global, one of the big European and Latin American communications groups. His proposition was that it really only makes sense to have things that are complementary. Why would you buy two of the same thing in a bundle?

But actually, I don't know about that. I think if I'm thinking about people that love movies or people that love sport, why not? You mentioned Marion, Evan, you mentioned earlier on the stats that came out from Antenna yesterday, pardon me, I saw it in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, so, uh, no, yesterday, a couple of weeks ago, sorry, so it's pretty, pretty, pretty fresh stuff.

Which was that they measured that Disney Plus, Hulu, and Max bundle, didn't they? So that's for an obvious particular consumption type. And the retention on that was fabulous. It was, well, 80 percent retention after three months.

Evan Shapiro: Out-beaten only by Netflix, really.

Anil Malhotra: Well, in fact, didn't they show it slightly exceeded Netflix, [00:29:00] I thought.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, you're right.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, Disney was on top with the ESPN.

Anil Malhotra: Yeah, the bundle. The bundle was slightly ahead of them. Because Netflix has been the gold standard on retention so far. You're right, you're right. And it was really interesting how the bundle actually even outperformed, according to Antenna's data, outperformed, Netflix as a standalone.

So I think I know sports, sports fans are constantly complaining about the fact that you have to buy three different segmented subscription services to watch one sport. And so there's a good idea for, and, you know, let's not mention, things that happened in the US in the last 12 months that thwarted some of the bundling, seem to have thwarted some of the bundling propositions.

But I think sports distribution rights are a whole can of worms I don't fully understand, but you can have same content bundles. I think there's just as valuable as complimentary bundles.

Evan Shapiro: I think if the prices don't get out of control, yes, but that's, and that's one of the big complaints there.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, no, but so my question is that we're making it easy to [00:30:00] bundle all of those things. But so to the point you're making Evan, there's the question of price. Do people actually want to, you know, bundle that many things? Uh, isn't there a bit of a subscription fatigue.

So could that translate into the bundling world? And also what, what's being made easy is managing the subscription, but you still have to up on and off from one app to the other. So the one thing that we haven't fixed with this is the content discovery, the decision making process is not any easier.

And I think that's where, and that's why I'm so passionate about bundles because. I do agree on having that layer, but where I think it makes the most sense is when the UI and the UX somehow makes it easy for you to play and navigate.

Evan Shapiro: The difficulty there will be, and we do have to wrap things up here in a second, but the difficulty there is you then have to exchange kind of [00:31:00] content, metadata. You have to go a whole deeper layer than the vending machine currently goes. Everybody meets on the back end of your vending machine, right, Anil?

Anil Malhotra: Yeah. Although, the major new update we announced two weeks ago, just before Mobile Congress, remember one of the key features of it was a front end for the first time.

A fully realized digital vending machine consumer experience that does integrate all of these things together. So, all of the assets that you have for your subscription bundles can all be managed in one place.

Marion Ranchet: So, it's even more turnkey than before, I guess, and probably not just the back end, but the front end.

Anil Malhotra: Correct. All the bundler has to do is brand it, and you know, it's all in one, this is all in one super bundling now, but as you say, back end and front end, all the bundler has to do now is brand it according to their branding needs and everything's there for them. It is literally is an all in one.

Evan Shapiro: Consumer can move within all the various services behind one experience. [00:32:00] Wow.

Marion Ranchet: That's really cool.

Evan Shapiro: There you go, Marion.

Marion Ranchet: See, I've asked, they've delivered.

Anil Malhotra: You ask Marion, we shall deliver,

Marion Ranchet: I love it. I love it.

Evan Shapiro: So I guess the answer is what is the best bundle?

I would argue that Bango probably is it because it literally allows you to put together whatever services into a bundle that you want from food to video to telephone back again.

Anil Malhotra: Yep. And if Marion wants to really nerd out, she can talk to my colleagues will tell her all about orchestration of APIs and offer management and entitlements.

Evan Shapiro: That's a private pod.

Anil Malhotra: With an audience of two, I suspect.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, you two, because I'm not going to watch that one.

Well, thank you so much. It was great. Thank you for giving us exclusive look at this data before everyone else. Check out Subscriptions Assemble wherever you can Google Bango [00:33:00] and Subscriptions Assemble, can they get it on your website Anil?

Anil Malhotra: Absolutely. So come to the Bango website, bango.com, and you should be able to navigate your way through and you'll find this latest research plus all of the research from previous years, last 12 months.

Evan Shapiro: We'll link to it in the show notes as well. Uh, thanks a lot. It was great to have you. Marion?

Marion Ranchet: Thank you, Anil Malhotra from Bango. Man, so as you know, I'm a big bundle nerd. Uh, you know, I think the backstory on that is I spent many years, at a telco. I worked at Orange. And I really believe in the power of telcos in bringing, you know, so many cool stuff under one roof. So I'm a bit biased, but also, I have so many subscriptions myself that, you know, I want to live in an easy world.

So I'm always keen to talk to people. Like, these guys who, one, are putting great content out there, right? A lot of thought leadership were really lacking data on [00:34:00] topics like that, so.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, that survey. Him giving us that survey early was great.

Marion Ranchet: O mean, yeah, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. You know, every quarter, every semester, there's always something new, so we'll put links in the show notes.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, they're innovating in the space, and so they get a different set of data than the rest of us, and it, and it really was great to have them on here. Yeah, really cool. And now we know your origin stories, you got bit by a radioactive subscription at a telco, and that's how you became who you are.

That's fascinating. I did not see that coming. That's a quite a test. It's like a Marvel cinematic universe.

Thank you everybody for listening to the podcast. I'm Evan Shapiro. My Substack newsletter is Media War and Peace. And that is Marion Ranchet.

Marion Ranchet: From Streaming Made Easy on Substack. Come check it out.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah.

Thanks everybody. Talk to you soon.