Software Piracy, Overuse, and Misuse are Equally Undermining Revenue Goals

Revenera, producer of leading solutions that help technology companies build better products, accelerate time-to-value, and unlock new revenue opportunities, today released the Revenera Monetization Monitor: Software Piracy and Compliance 2025 Outlook report. Based on the results of a global survey of 418 leaders at global technology companies, this report is the 2nd in a three-part annual series, which provides product executives at software, intelligent device, and IoT companies with benchmarks about the prevalence and scope of unlicensed software usage.

Piracy, overuse, and misuse are currently equally significant problems, with approximately ⅓ of respondents reporting that each is a “major problem” contributing to revenue leakage. This aligns them with more traditional business problems, such as customer churn, also cited by ⅓ of respondents as a “major problem.”

“Software and tech companies are pushing hard to deliver high customer value at a good profit margin, but yet, they often treat customer compliance, which can be a significant revenue stream in some segments of the industry, as an afterthought. Losses of more than 30 percent of revenue are on the rise for all forms of unlicensed software usage, including piracy, overuse, and misuse,” said Nicole Segerer, General Manager at Revenera. “Accurate data into software use is essential to complement revenue loss and to implement effective monetization models that capture revenue opportunities.” 

Highlights from the Revenera Monetization Monitor: Software Piracy and Compliance 2025 Outlook report include:

• Piracy, overuse, and misuse are equally concerning issues, with major financial ramifications. 
  • Approximately ⅓ of respondents citing each as a “major problem,” putting them on par with more traditional problems like customer churn (major problem for 30 percent) and inefficient monetization models (major problem for 37 percent).
  • Losses of more than 30 percent of revenue are on the rise for all forms of unlicensed software usage. 
  • Churn risk is a major problem for ⅓ of respondents, putting this long-standing problem on a par with piracy, overuse, and misuse and that each must be addressed in order to comprehensively address revenue leakage. 
• Unlicensed software usage, a global issue, must be addressed for successful revenue recovery initiatives. 
  • While reflecting an improvement over the past year, approximately 1 in 10 respondents are still unaware of how much revenue is lost to unauthorized software usage. 
  • Awareness of how revenue loss is taking place is improving. Presently only 5 percent are unaware of how they are losing revenue to software piracy, overuse, or misuse, falling from 21 percent a year ago.
  • Barriers to essential usage insights remain: Only 57 percent of respondents can see if utilization for a specific customer is increasing or declining; fewer (47 percent) can see the fundamental metric of whether a customer is using the software at all.
  • The global use of unlicensed software presents an $18.7 billion revenue opportunity for software suppliers. Aggregate data from Revenera’s Compliance Intelligence customer, identifying the top 20 piracy and license compliance hotspots, reveals opportunities for revenue recovery.

Methodology

The Revenera Monetization Monitor 2025 Outlook series of reports is based on 418 complete responses to a survey conducted by Revenera from May through July 2024. Job levels of these survey respondents were C-level/executive (23 percent), SVP/VP (17 percent), director (44 percent), manager/team leader (15 percent), and individual contributors/non-manager/consultant (1 percent). The first report in this series focuses on Software Monetization Models and Strategies. This report focuses on Software Piracy & Compliance. The final report will focus on Software Usage Analytics.