The future of bundling: how AI is reshaping discovery
by Marta Trias Gray | 13 Aug 2026
In our landmark report, we identified the three forces shaping the future of bundling and subscriptions: payments are becoming flexible and contextual. Discovery is moving toward AI-mediated access. And the market is splitting between those that bundle and those that are bundled by others.
To understand how these trends are translating into the real world, we teamed up with Streaming Made Easy to speak with leaders from across the telco and subscription industries about the impact these shifts are having on their businesses.
In the second blog of our Future of bundling series, we investigate what they said about how quickly consumers have turned to AI for their subscription management and how the technology is transforming discovery, both inside and outside of the app.
INSIDE THE BUNDLE: Watch the full interview with Vincent Stevens here
“At some point, we will all have an AI assistant in the living room with whom we have conversations about what we want to watch. So maybe the aggregator of the future is my AI assistant.” — Vincent Stevens, VP Entertainment, Telenet
Search, scroll, scroll some more, argue about making a decision, repeat until eventually you don’t have the time to even watch anything anymore.
An infamous and vicious cycle seen in homes all over the world that boils down to one simple truth — there’s more choice than ever, but choosing what to watch has never been harder.
Thanks to AI, however, the future of discovery will look very different. Rather than manually searching for content, an intelligent layer could tailor recommendations according to consumer preferences and, increasingly, could even handle their sign-ups, access and subscription payments as well.
But as consumers hand over more of their decision-making to these AI agents, the rules around discovery change too. If AI becomes the main way people find and manage subscriptions, then whoever provides that experience will have a much stronger relationship with the customer. And that means for telcos the next few years could determine whether they become the new heart of the subscription world or fade into the background.
Outsourcing the decision-making
No one enjoys spending their time flicking through libraries or services to find their next show. It’s why a quarter of consumers (28%) rely solely on recommendations rather than actively searching, and why a third (34%) would prefer a single AI interface to access content rather than opening multiple apps:
“The real engagement is coming from the content consumption, not from spending time in the user interface. Customers want choice but they hate choosing… The best UI is no UI.” — Chris van der Linden, Director Product Roadmap for Entertainment & AI, Liberty Global
As Chris rightly points out, consumers aren’t interested in the journey, but in the destination. When stripped down to its essentials, the discovery process is a means to an end and AI can help make it faster and more personalized. This means that, as AI takes on more of the discovery process, having the best interface becomes less important than helping people find the right content at the right time.
Additionally, AI is also helping to create a more intuitive experience. Consumers can use natural language to make requests, like “find me Brad Pitt’s first film” or “where can I watch the NFL?”, to minimize friction. In future, users could even make more nuanced demands, such as “what’s a great drama?” or “Pick something I’ll love”, that only become answerable once AI is integrated into the platform:
“I’m hoping AI will help with discoverability and help consumers find scenes just by putting in something for their moods.” — Kenechi Amobi Belusevic, VP Business Development, Warner Bros Discovery
AI in control
Even though it’s still early days for AI, our research shows one in five Americans (20%) would already let it automatically subscribe, manage and unsubscribe them from their services, with that proportion doubling for Gen Z (40%). Clearly, consumers have very quickly become comfortable with the idea of AI serving as the intermediary between themselves and their subscriptions.
With this shift in mentality, it’s not enough for aggregators to just have a large library anymore.
“We are embedding AI at the very core of our service, to have it integrated at every level. Content discovery, search, voice interaction — everything.” — Ana Lopez, Head of Product TV & CX, MasOrange
The core of Ana’s argument here is that consumers want more convenience and ultimately, a more intelligent platform that elevates their experience by handling tedious administrative tasks.
Crucially, however, telcos can’t just focus on how their own AI models are changing discovery for consumers.
“It’s about discoverability in an age where increasingly the young people use AI agents as an entry point to discover. We need to be there. We need to be discovered. If people say ‘what’s a good telco for entertainment?’, I want Telenet to show up there.” — Vincent Stevens, VP Entertainment, Telenet
Vincent’s point is that telcos will also find themselves on the other side of AI search and as such, need to ensure that third-party models are surfacing their offerings as well.
Content comes first
The downfall of traditional discovery goes hand in hand with a change in how consumers think about content. Or, more specifically, how they think about who owns their content.
The majority of Americans (58%) don’t care which streaming service a show, film, game or song comes from, instead only caring about the content itself. This extends to loyalty as well, with almost three-in-five (59%) agreeing they’re loyal to the shows they like, not the provider. Coupled with consumers increasingly relying on recommendations and using the app less in favour of hands-free access, direct access through the content provider’s app is losing relevance.
And as consumers become more focused on accessing the content they want than on remaining loyal to a particular brand, bringing multiple services together becomes even more valuable. Consumers increasingly care less about where content lives and more about accessing it easily and cheaply, which makes bundling a no-brainer for savvy subscribers.
Telcos the trusted source
When the interface for all of a consumer’s subscriptions becomes an AI assistant, the idea of ‘owning the app’ stops being the advantage it once was. Instead, owning the access layer, which in turn controls the identity, entitlement and billing, becomes the real competitive edge.
The question, then, is who provides that layer? Well, if you ask consumers, the majority hope it’s their telco.
Over half (52%) would trust telcos to provide an AI-powered service to manage their subscriptions on their behalf. By offering that service, telcos can position themselves at the very centre of the customer relationship.
However, to succeed in an AI-driven subscription market, telcos and third parties first need to build the infrastructure that allows the experiences consumers demand to work across multiple services and partners.
The Digital Vending Machine® (DVMTM) from Bango helps telcos and other third parties reach that point quickly. By enabling organisations to plug into a pre-existing subscription service ecosystem, aggregators can launch bundles without worrying about time-consuming contract negotiations and one-to-one integrations.
AI is rapidly accelerating the subscription industry’s trajectory towards indirect distribution. Aggregators just need to make sure they keep up.
In our next blog in the series, we discuss the second major force disrupting the subscription industry: the market dividing into those who bundle and those who get bundled, and why fitting into a category is mandatory for survival.
Missed the first article? Read why subscription pricing needs to evolve to see how changing consumer expectations are reshaping payment models and subscription bundling.
