SME#11: What you missed at OTT Question Time Live!
Streaming Made Easy #11
Welcome back to Streaming Made Easy. This week, I was on the road so I thought I would just take you with me!
I indeed had the pleasure of being part of a new event in London: OTT Question Time Live.
For those who are not familiar with OTT Question Time, it’s a format created by my dear friend, Kauser Kanji, during Covid. He felt the need to keep having insightful conversations with fellow executives about the latest trends. I took part in a couple of them online but this time it was a physical event, how great to see everyone again!
Over the course of 2 days, 150+ industry executives gathered in the beautiful setting of the British Museum to discuss the latest trends in OTT & Broadcasting.
Here are my top highlights from this 1st edition:
Linear isn’t dying, it’s evolving:
Any chat about Linear (Broadcast) TV brings the same question and the same affirmation.
What is the future of Linear TV and its stakeholders?
Linear TV will be dead in 5-10 years.
You’re often on one or the other side of the fence.
It was refreshing to hear Deep Bagchee, Chief Product Officer for ITVX, and his positive attitude towards his company’s latest endeavours. Positive in the sense that he wasn’t looking back at how TV used to be, nor predicting what it would become, he just had a very down to earth approach about the work ahead to make ITVX a central destination for video content.
Within ITVX, you have linear channels, FAST channels, broadcast VOD, boxsets, on an ad-supported basis and then a premium tier with no ads, a download feature and the Britbox library (5.99£ a month). It’s a strong value proposition looking to appeal broadly.
In 2023, they want to improve the product, supercharge personalization, play with windowing (some titles are on ITVX 1st then on linear), grow the Britbox library and capitalize on the strong retention numbers they’ve seen after the 7-day trial.
They’re not spreading themselves thin by going global, they’re a local player and work to be the best at that. They have ambitious goals for ITVX (2.5M subs, 20M active users, 2B viewing hours by 2026), let’s meet again then to see where they’re at.
FAST, FAST, FAST:
A big sign that FAST is accelerating in Europe is seeing players like ITV get into the game.
They launched 20 channels including two pop up ones for the World Cup and Xmas and both did great despite enjoying limited exposure (i.e. there is not no FAST discovery and the channels. Deep said it: “it’s an incremental play for them”.
Now who else is active in the space?
I was lucky to spend 30’ with Valerio Motti, VP FAST @Fremantle, to discuss how they built a network of 15+ FAST channels in the US and key international markets.
Their secret sauce?
- A vault of premium IPs
- 12K new hours a year
- 500M social media followers
- A 5-pillar strategy (content, curation, marketing, data, monetization)
- A test and learn mindset
No surprise there, the US is their most developed FAST market in the world, followed by the UK and Germany. Canada, Australia, Italy, France and Spain are promising.
Being on every platform isn’t their goal and this is very different from most SVOD distribution strategies. Why is that then? It comes down to monetization. Not all platforms are equals in terms of monetization, you can end up investing but seeing no return, or worse even lose money.
Aside from big production powerhouses, companies like Thema invest in FAST too with an approach closer to their DNA, that is the creation of niche FAST channels e.g. the Kanal D channel, home of Turkish shows which travel well internationally.
Now what’s happening on the platform side?
Lean organizations capable of pivoting and diversifying their revenue streams set themselves for success. Rakuten TV did just that in 2018. Marcos Milanez and I spent 30' discussing why and how an e-commerce group, with a Transactional VOD business, transitioned to AVOD and FAST.
This new vertical represents 50% of their revenues now.
Today, Rakuten TV has a multi-faceted content and distribution strategy across 43 European markets:
- Distribute 3rd-party AVOD titles and FAST channels
- Build own and operated FAST channels
- Produce RTV originals
- Monetize inventory
Sports will be an area of focus 2023 and it’s true that after News it’s what keeps traditional TV relevant so FAST needs to grab a piece of that action.
Lisa Rousseau, Head of Freevee UK, detailed her content strategy and the immense focus they put on producing originals. AVOD/FAST brings a fantastic new opportunity for content producers to sell their ideas, I think creatives should get in early as $$ will shift from SVOD to advertising services.
Oliver Davies, Product Lead at Samsung TV Plus, gave us food for thoughts on how challenging it is to attract a younger audience (“It’s the same people watching TV who watch FAST”) but also whether FAST can go beyond TV sets. Samsung will try to find out by revamping its mobile app on an installed base of 50M+ mobiles in Europe.
How’s monetization doing?
OKAST, Springserve, RTL Ad Connect, Group M and Channel 4 shared many insights on advertising in FAST:
➡️ There is no incremental budget, it’s just a shift of budgets.
➡️ For FAST, the $$ come from digital display budgets, not TV budgets.
➡️ Business return is key, agencies don’t care about eyeballs and viewership numbers.
➡️ Ad break tech still need improvement.
➡️ Programmatic = double the work, lots of tech issues, too many stakeholders taking a piece of the pie. It represents 1/3rd of Channel 4’s revenues (vs 70% as initially estimated).
➡️ Small and medium size businesses often don’t have representation, offer them something and you’ll win big (just like Google and Facebook did).
➡️ FAST thrives in the US because the space is totally unregulated.
➡️ Omdia’s estimates (on AVOD/FAST) are on the high side.
Content recommendation & personalization:
The SVOD paradox of choice combined with UX/UI shortcomings were heavily discussed too and several vendors in the Content Recommendation space had the opportunity to present their approach and findings.
The one thing I gathered was this KPI from Spideo:
➡️ A “human” content recommendation yields 15% of conversion to a full viewing session (i.e. watching until the end)
➡️ A content recommandation powered by a “human+machine” interaction brings conversion rates to 30%.
Take this Chat GPT 😉
Now content recommendation in SVOD has been around for years so we looked at how it could impact FAST, together with Thibault d’Orso, Co-Founder at Spideo.
The same technology can automate the channel creation process. A 1st high-level schedule is generated then human curation comes into play. The benefits? Time saved, costs reduction, ability to create more channels quickly giving space to test and learn, launch event-based pop up channels.
It can also build a channel based on viewers' taste. The benefits? We bring personalization to the viewer which saves time in channel discovery. If the content is spot on, then we should see an increase in streaming hours and ad opportunities. Bring in relevant ads and you’re golden.
All in all, I left thinking that technology was here to augment our capabilities as mere mortals to improve the overall viewing experience. It’s a win win.
Small is beautiful:
The event was a small-sized one (150 person capacity) and I truly believe it enabled speakers to be relaxed, open and transparent which in turn gave attendees great nuggets to take back home. It also facilitated coming up to strangers and start engaging.
I could go on and on about other panels (Viaplay, NBC Universal, NOW etc.) but I have to stop somewhere.
As you can see, it was well worth attending so see you in 2024!
That’s it folks. I hope you found this interesting and if you did, please don’t hesitate to tell your colleagues, bosses, friends & families about it.
Enjoy your weekend and see you next Friday for another edition of Streaming Made Easy!
At night, I write Streaming Made Easy and post each working day on Linkedin.
By day, I run The Local Act, a streaming video consultancy.
Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 ways I can help you:
If you’re looking to start a FAST Channel business, I designed a Program called "How to get into FAST" where I fast-track the launch of your FAST Channel Business in 90 days (Book a call to discuss).
Last but not least, work with me 1:1 to grow your streaming video business in Europe (market intelligence, go to market strategy, distribution expansion etc.).