How subscription businesses find their next million subscribers

Why subscriber growth slows after the first wave

If most of your early growth came through search, app stores and paid ads, you’ll eventually hit a peak – every time you go to market, you’ll attract fewer subscribers for each extra dollar spent, because you’re reaching the same people again. 

When this happens, your next million are likely to be in places your current channels don’t reach.

Where your next million subscribers are

Two groups stand out:

• People in markets where cards aren’t the norm. As payments are made by phone bill, digital wallet or bank transfer, a card-only checkout loses them before they start.
• Customers of brands they trust. For example, people who pay a telco, a bank or a retailer every month. These customers might never search for a new subscription but may say yes to one offered in that brand’s app.

The mobile audience alone is huge. The World Bank’s Global Findex 2025 found that 84% of adults in low- and middle-income economies own a mobile phone, and three billion own a smartphone.

This second group already buys in this way. In a 2024 Deloitte UK survey, close to half of smaller streaming services’ subscriptions were sold through another company, such as a telco, a pay TV provider or a tech platform.

How partners put you in front of new users

Bundling reaches both groups. A partner (a telco, a bank, a digital wallet or a retailer) offers your subscription to its own customers who then sign up inside the partner’s app and pay on their usual bill. There’s no new card to enter, and they’re buying through a brand they trust.

The type of partner best suited to you depends on who you want to reach. To learn more about how bundling can be used as a growth channel, see our explainer blog here.

How to size the bundling opportunity

Before you commit, get a rough sense of the potential prize. For each partner or market, ask:

• How many of the partner’s customers look like your subscribers
• What share of them might reasonably sign up
• How long they’re likely to stay.

As a simplified example (not a benchmark), a partner with 10 million customers where 2% sign up adds 200,000 subscribers. Five partner audiences of this size, with no overlap and the same sign-up rate, would add a million.

How to tell if an audience is worth pursuing

A big number isn’t enough on its own. Before you shortlist a partner audience, check four things:

• Fit: the partner’s customers look like people who already pay for services like yours.
• Newness: they’re mostly people you can’t already reach through your own channels.
• Visibility: the partner has a clear way to show them your offer, such as its app or its stores.
• Price: your service sits at a level those customers already pay for similar services.

Audiences that pass all four are the ones worth sizing properly. Once you’re adding several partners, reusing a single setup keeps each launch simpler, and building a lower-cost growth engine explains how.

Boku supported 49 million active bundled subscribers in 2025, up 26% on the year before. Read our explainer blog for the detail. 

Causes vary, but one common reason is that your channels run out of new people to reach. If most of your growth has come from search, app stores and paid ads, spending more there can reach much of the same audience again. When each extra dollar brings in fewer new people, growth has to come from audiences those channels don’t reach.

How long does it take to reach new subscribers through a partner?

Longer than switching on an ad campaign. Agreeing terms and getting a bundle live with a new partner usually takes a few months. Sign-ups then build as the partner promotes the offer to its customers, so plan partner launches a quarter or two ahead of when you need the growth.

How do partners help a subscription business reach new markets?

A partner that already has customers in a market (a local telco, bank or retailer) can offer your service to them once the bundle is live, billed the way they’re used to. You avoid building an audience from scratch, and you gain the partner’s local knowledge of pricing and promotions in that market.

How many partners does it take to reach a million subscribers?

It depends on the size of each partner’s customer base, how many of those customers sign up and how much the audiences overlap. In a simplified example, a partner with 10 million customers where 2% sign up adds 200,000 subscribers. Five partner audiences of that size, with no overlap and the same sign-up rate, would add a million.

Do you need a lower price to reach new audiences?

Not always. Some markets need a local price that fits what people there pay for similar services. Partners can also help with promotions, such as a free trial or a discount for their customers. The right price depends on local knowledge, so it’s worth agreeing it with each partner before launch.

• If your growth has come mainly from search, app stores and paid ads, spending more there can mean reaching the same people, so growth will diminish.
• The next million are likely to be in markets where cards aren’t common and among the customers of brands people trust.
• Partners like telcos, banks and retailers can put your service in front of them, billed on a bill they already pay.
• Size each partner audience, then check it fits your service and reaches people you can’t reach today.