Maybe an unpopular opinion but I think solving Strava’s problem is easy.
They need ads. Better ads. The argument that they promised they will never have ads is moot because they have them in practice. It’s those sponsored challenges and they are terrible. They feel like spam. I doubt brands really get their money’s worth from them. They need to find an ad format that is native and not excessively annoying. At the very least it shouldn’t be particularly hard to introduce native feed ads like every major social media. I’m sure they could experiment more.
I really don’t think people would be that enraged about having ads on a free platform they value. On the other hand you can see how people are taking price increases on the premium product.
They have enough users for running a profitable business based on a Strava specific native ads format with targeting (by sport, by activity level, by gear used?) that only Strava can provide and that you can buy on a self service platform. Then they need selected premium placements and options sold at high CPM (possibly using 3rd party data providers). They could even jump start it by partnering with a major tech company like Google or Microsoft.
Then, as part of premium, you’d get no ads and you’d be willing to pay to get rid of them. So effectively it would be a freemium model.
This business model has been proven very profitable multiple times by social media companies of this size.
Then they need to improve the social media features. Messaging, organised club rides, etc. People have been wanting those features since forever. Keep them on the app.
And they need to provide better tools for brands and “influencers” so that they spend more time building content for Strava than for Instagram/YouTube/Facebook etc so that people have more sport related content to consume.
Maybe an unpopular opinion but I think solving Strava’s problem is easy.
They need ads. Better ads. The argument that they promised they will never have ads is moot because they have them in practice. It’s those sponsored challenges and they are terrible. They feel like spam. I doubt brands really get their money’s worth from them. They need to find an ad format that is native and not excessively annoying. At the very least it shouldn’t be particularly hard to introduce native feed ads like every major social media. I’m sure they could experiment more.
I really don’t think people would be that enraged about having ads on a free platform they value. On the other hand you can see how people are taking price increases on the premium product.
They have enough users for running a profitable business based on a Strava specific native ads format with targeting (by sport, by activity level, by gear used?) that only Strava can provide and that you can buy on a self service platform. Then they need selected premium placements and options sold at high CPM (possibly using 3rd party data providers). They could even jump start it by partnering with a major tech company like Google or Microsoft.
Then, as part of premium, you’d get no ads and you’d be willing to pay to get ride of them. So effectively it would be a freemium model.
This business model has been proven very profitable by multiple times by social media companies of this size.
Then they need to improve the social media features. Messaging, organised club rides, etc. People have been wanting those features since forever.
And they need to provide better tools for brands and “influencers” so that they spend more time building content for Strava than for Instagram/YouTube/Facebook etc.
Agree,
they can also improve group pages, they could offer premium club features, as a tool for clubs/training groups for share routes, chats, etc… they could offer premium features for races that could share courses, and stats etc…
and as I say: give social “individual” features for free (as they were) and work with intervals to offer premium training analysis or with veloviewer for advanced route analysis features…
they would study how many users don’t share nothing and how many share “automatically” activities but don’t interactuate.
Take that figure with a grain of salt. I’d guess a substantial number of those activities are auto-uploads from folks who at one time set up a free account (which goes on perpetually unless you actively cancel) but who rarely, if ever, actually use the app.
I agree with this, it’s not complicated. Look at every other successful social media company. They focus on developing features that keep users engaged and they run ads.
Right now, what keeps users engaged for long periods of time on Strava? Not much. And if users aren’t engaged, advertisers aren’t going to spend big money there.
There is so much potential for the social side of Strava. The better they are at keeping users engaged, the more success they’ll have with ads. And if you don’t want ads, pay for an account.
Take that figure with a grain of salt. I’d guess a substantial number of those activities are auto-uploads from folks who at one time set up a free account (which goes on perpetually unless you actively cancel) but who rarely, if ever, actually use the app.
I agree, but these users are both an opportunity (if strava can offer any interesting product to them) and a source of data which can be valued for other users (ie, stats, tables by gender, age… heat maps for route design…) or third parties (heat maps to design /modulate traffice design, market researchs… )
I really think that strava (as zwift) is a almost good tool, which could be much better with simple changes:
you can search for segments, but not for complete routes easily.
you could integrate better 3rd parties info
which is info is available in the web and in the app…
I am a free user for a long time… but I haver never though that premium worth the money. Even more when some free functionalities became premium, I was angry and thinking not in becoming premium but to delete my account.
They need to reduce the cost of the premium account. I reckon if they charge a nominal amount** $1 a month, the cost of 2 coffees a year**, most would sign up.
*Hey!!! *That’s dipping into my Patreon bucket!!! I want my exclusive podcast content!!!
I am a free user of Strava, I won’t pay for it because I have a paid subscription to Trainingpeaks and Xert, free Garmin Connect and am coached.
There are no ads on my Strava page when I go to strava.com/dashboard.
There are no ads on the activities I’ve uploaded.
There are no ads on the activities of friends.
While I’m not complaining about this, I think it’s a missed opportunity for someone that is a “free” user.
My two cents: they need to charge what they are worth. They aren’t a $11.99 a month / $80 per year app, at least not for many people. Something in the range of $2 or $3 per month, something so throwaway that nearly everyone who uses the app would subscribe, is about where they need to be. I currently pay for zwift, training peaks, and stryd premium. All of these apps I believe are pretty much worth what I pay for them, particularly since I self coach. I keep trying to justify what I would get out of strava for an additional $11.99 per month and I got nothing. All of my other apps do what it can do, and the only thing they offer of value are the leaderboards and heat map. If they had a stripped down subscription I’d be all over it, but not going to pay what it is now.
Is there a repository of this sort of information on all (or many) companies that folks tend to look towards for these kinds of answers? (ie. how many people work at Strava)
There is so much potential for the social side of Strava. The better they are at keeping users engaged, the more success they’ll have with ads. And if you don’t want ads, pay for an account.
Strava has a form of ads. The sponsored Challenges. I see Red Bull and others on my feed, which I call an ad. And it’s a clever form of engagement for those sponsors. I like it more than just pure ads.
Though I have no idea how profitable those are. Presumably not as much as they’d like.
I am a free user of Strava, I won’t pay for it because I have a paid subscription to Trainingpeaks and Xert, free Garmin Connect and am coached.
There are no ads on my Strava page when I go to strava.com/dashboard.
There are no ads on the activities I’ve uploaded.
There are no ads on the activities of friends.
While I’m not complaining about this, I think it’s a missed opportunity for someone that is a “free” user.
We’re talking about ads and creating an ad-supported platform, but I have real questions about that. Let’s say their 40 million uploads/week is accurate, that should mean about 10 million active users. Not a huge user base but okay. What info does Strava actually have to target ads? They run/bike and ASL, maybe they upload what bike they ride or what shoes they wear. No info on the websites they visit, how long they spend looking at pages, purchase history, all of the big stuff that FANG uses to target ads.
So they’re left with targeting ads for running shoes to people who run? Shoe companies make their real money on lifestyle shoes anyway.
What I’m getting at is I don’t think Strava is staying away from ads because they’re on a moral high ground, I think they’ve run the numbers and don’t see enough potential money coming in from ads.
What I’m getting at is I don’t think Strava is staying away from ads because they’re on a moral high ground, I think they’ve run the numbers and don’t see enough potential money coming in from ads.
Exactly. While you can make money from ads at a certain level, the overall direction of the internet has been very clear the last few years: Away from static-image type ads. Instead, compaines are spending their money on other marketing opportunities. Obviously, there are still ads out there - don’t get me wrong (and I run ads on the site too), but fundamentally ad spend is down across most companies. And part of that is most shown in the comments around this very topic. People often say some variant of “just show me ads I can ignore them”. The problem is, companies know this. If you ignore the ads, then the companies stop spending because they see the CTR (click through rate) is too low, and they know it’s not converting. In other words, it’s a waste of money.
And then in Strava’s case, it’s far worse, as ad spending is even further down in the sports realm (especially cycling) - with a number of key companies in the cycling space all but cutting marketing expenses entirely.
Now, maybe the answer is simply that Strava isn’t going to get much money as they could have 5-8 years ago from ads, but ultimately, it’s all about marginal gains. I question whether or not they can make enough marginal gains to make it worthwhile.
And then in Strava’s case, it’s far worse, as ad spending is even further down in the sports realm (especially cycling) - with a number of key companies in the cycling space all but cutting marketing expenses entirely.
I was just perusing how Strava was doing with Challenge sponsorships, and it doesn’t look good. There are lots of unbranded Challenges, just a handful of sponsored ones. Though the Potato Power-Up by Potatoes USA looks intriguing.
I’m curious as to how the leader - hours of activity in February - has gotten to 1213 hours. More than the total number of hours in all of February.
Last time I checked they were about $20k to run. That’s a healthy “ad†figure but imagine the issue is how to serve enough of them at a scale to be a viable top line revenue contributor.
Take that figure with a grain of salt. I’d guess a substantial number of those activities are auto-uploads from folks who at one time set up a free account (which goes on perpetually unless you actively cancel) but who rarely, if ever, actually use the app.
Although I still have an account (just logged in to verify it was still active), I haven’t uploaded an activity since 2020 when they removed the ability to see my historical performance on segments. Switched to Garmin Connect, recreated the segments I cared about on my local rides and haven’t looked back. Locking down my historical data was the final straw for me.
It seems to me that Strava is going down the long road of driving their users off the platform in the effort to make money. They seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what the users actually want. Sure they have a responsibility to their investors to make money, but making money means giving their users a valuable product.
they removed the ability to see my historical performance on segments<
Yep, this got me too. I was using them to keep a record of my races, in my training log… only to get locked out of that portion. So I migrated to Athlinks for race records, and GC for data collection. I still auto upload to Strava since my friends are there, but don’t use it for anything… it could go away and I wouldn’t miss it.
they removed the ability to see my historical performance on segments<
Yep, this got me too. I was using them to keep a record of my races, in my training log… only to get locked out of that portion. So I migrated to Athlinks for race records, and GC for data collection. I still auto upload to Strava since my friends are there, but don’t use it for anything… it could go away and I wouldn’t miss it.
They provided too good of a free product, then tried to charge for it without making it better.
The biggest issue with Garmin Connect is they would have to allow uploads from direct competitors. Wahoo, Coros, Apple, etc. Strava was like the VLC Media Player that finally ended the codec battles, but for fitness tracking apps.
Strava needs to figure out how to monetize as a social network, not a data analytics platform. If they can’t, someone like Facebook will buy them out and do it for them.
Social media? I can’t imagine how it could resemble facebook… details?
Make Strava Great Again!
Ads for free users… no brainer there.
Make the running data as good as the biking.
Hire someone who understands physics to improve modeling (huge room for improvement there), and auto-catch most ebike and vehicle records… without so many false positives.
Bring back flyby opt-out, and get rid of the requirement that you need 10 users for a segment before it shows up.
Direct messaging - Many of us use strava more than FB or Instagram by far. And some of the people we know we ONLY know through strava. Direct messaging!
Make it more social. Get people sharing photos more and engaging on content more. You should have an activity feed that’s just your activities, and a profile feed that has activities you’ve commented on or shared as well as your own activities. This allows the ecosystem of strava users to look at other activities and atheltes that everyone is following/commenting on. More sharing of activity photos etc. I don’t care about people’s funny/political FB posts. Instagram seems to be coopted by the algorithm that for some uncanny reason shows me a bunch of ladies in yoga pants lifting weights all the time or epic food and dessert posts (ya, I know…apparently I’m an easy one to figure out). Strava has the potential to be more focused on athletic endeavors or athletic tourism based.
Group Ride/Run Finders - open to join a group? Looking for a group that hits a certain area frequently? Allow us to search a heatmap for a geographic area of athletes that invite others to join in. Many times I’m travelling and have my bike and I’d love to jump in on a group ride. Seems like strava could help with this.
Race map integration. Some races do point to strava files, but I don’t understand for the life of me, if strava is interested in growing their userbase they don’t link up with many of the race companies (running, cycling, triathlon, etc) and more tightly integrate strava with the race package. Click here for the course map could go right to strava. Download the file to your watch. Make a pro pacing strategy directly with the course that you adjust your pacing based on the terrain, etc.
Training programs - everyone already does this. And many of them are charging a premium. So what, strava should do it to they’d have a strong ability to siphon customers off everyone else.
The fact that Strava isn’t (or doesn’t seem to be?) building out what are fairly obvious, but highly functional features that would leverage their userbase suggests to me they are hoping to be purchased by someone who wants to connect all these features into their existing platform? Otherwise, it’s just bizarre.
