Reactions Follow Jason Njoku’s Shocking Revelation About Irokotv’s Financials

Before Netflix made its way onto Nigerian ground, the biggest streaming platform Nigerians had to watch Nollywood productions for the longest time was Jason Njoku's IrokoTV.

IrokoTV was founded 10 years ago, on December 1st 2011 and just like most streaming sites, financial metrics and site data are not revealed publicly unless someone from the company brings those numbers to the public domain.

Yesterday, founder of the company, Jason Njoku brought some numbers forward and people have been surprised about the revelation that Jason made about IrokoTV's numbers.

This is what Jason Njoku shared.

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In the surprising revelation, Jason Njoku said:

Registered users is the most useless KPI ever created. IrokoTV has 6,828,356 registered users in our database, Most are basically junk. Only 4,235,674 of those have actually logged in at least once. Today was the first time I ever bothered to ask for that number.

At Irokotv, we don't even track subscriber numbers anymore. Thats another level of vanity KPIs. We track annual ARPU. Track APRU. It helps in the longer run.

People were surprised to find out that out of almost seven million IrokoTV users, most of them were junk. One user responded to Jason saying:

You don't have to totally ignore that, all you need to do is figure out why they aren't subscribing, then come up with a strategy.

To which Jason responded:

I don't even know why I am replying. I have literally done this more successfully than most people. Its not a KPI simple. It wasn't ignored as I saw the daily registrations numbers. Cumulatively it's useless. People who don't have money don't subs.

Another user said:

It has its uses, it can help you discover bugs or hurdles in your purchase funnel, or know the reach of your marketing. When you compare the demography of your registered vs active users, you can learn a lot, even if it’s only to know where not to push your marketing dollars.

To which Jason responded that it's not only IrokoTV but also Showmax and Netflix that are facing this problem. He wrote:

It's a paid service. You can either afford it or not. It's the same reason Showmax and Netflix and everyone else is struggling in Nigeria. But there's is because they have a free trial. Which almost guarantees you will never see mass adoption or revenue from Nigeria

One user then used the opportunity to criticize the content on IrokoTV saying:

What about the quality of the content and nollywood. I good review will get you 1 new customer but 1 bad review will make you loose 10 customers. For me that is it and I walk away.

To which Jason responded:

Content is in the eye of the beholder. Some things I think are junk people rave about and vice versa. I know the content is good otherwise ROK wouldn't be a top10 channel in Africa.

Wow, I guess being a content distributor is a lot harder than people can imagine. To actually turn a profit especially in a place like Nigeria where as Jason said, we like free things... it cannot be easy.

Let me ask you - how many of you actually PAY for any movie streaming platforms, and if you do, which ones do you pay for and why. Let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment on my Facebook post.

That's All.

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