IBC
article here
Watching TV is not supposed to be hard. It should be pleasurable, but the industry has tied itself in knots as content and platforms fragment then coalesce in the shift to streaming.
Roku's founding vision remains ‘All TV will be streamed’. It has gravitated from a purveyor of streaming video devices to a smart TV operating systems provider, building out from its home market of the US to be used by 90 million households worldwide every month.
“Everyone piled into streaming in a slight panic but now we're at a stage where everyone is taking a step back and asking how do I make this work? How do I make money? How do I get the most value out of it? That’s why you’re seeing interesting combinations of services working together to create new packages and bundles.
“It's a really interesting time of change where there's still a huge amount of viewing to linear TV channels and massive viewing to streaming-only options, plus hybrids like FAST channels which combine some of the old behaviour with some of the new delivery. The opportunity is to help consumers navigate that and find ways to make it a better experience.”
Personalisation and discovery
As viewers increasingly start their journeys in a digital rather than linear environment, Roku is central to the connected TV battle to control the viewing experience.
“Sometimes a little feature can go a long way,” Price says. “A feature like ‘Continue Watching’ (now rolled out in markets including the UK and Germany) collects all the shows you’re in the middle of watching across all different apps and brings them together in one place. It takes out that cognitive load of trying to remember where you saw what show and makes the experience really simple.”
Another feature, What to Watch, offers personalised recommendations from across different apps. “This is the way the world is going,” says Price. “Netflix has a view of what you should watch in the Netflix catalogue. Prime Video has a view, and BBC iPlayer has a view, but bringing those together for the consumer has real value.”
Both features encourage out-of-app discovery, although Price emphasises that Roku is happy for viewers to move in and out of apps as well.
Spinning to the other side of the coin, Price says that content owners also find it easier than ever to reach consumers. “Anyone can build an app and publish it on an app store. You don’t have to go out and negotiate carriage with different regional cable companies. The real challenge is, once the app is created, how do you launch new hits?”
At one time you could schedule your new show in primetime on broadcast TV and know that everyone would at least be aware of it. That’s not the case with digital where shows can get lost.
“At Roku we offer marketing tools like themed takeovers of the whole home screen to promote your show,” Price explains. “Some viewers still go straight ahead and watch whatever they're going to watch anyway, but just giving a new show oxygen ahead of launch is something that Roku works for.
“Also, if you want to fund development of new shows you've got to make the absolute most you can out of your deep catalogue. Our algorithmic curation is one way of surfacing older, relevant content to consumers. You could also use FAST to take a successful brand and successful catalogue and create a whole linear channel around a particular piece of IP.”
While Roku (along with other Smart TV OS providers like Samsung and LG) target becoming the default home screen for households (at least those without a pay-TV subscription), Price doesn’t necessarily view the endgame as super-aggregation. He’s not sure consumers want that.
“The big bundle has been broken apart and consumers don’t want to go back to it, but they do still want it to be easy to get to the shows they love. People will sometimes seek out a particular brand or niche service but if you're not the biggest gorilla in town (like a Netflix or a YouTube) then your content is going to do better in an environment where it can be discovered by people who are not specifically seeking your brand.”
The value of live sport
One aggregation function that Roku has yet to transfer from the US to Europe is ‘Sport Zone’. This unites content held by multiple providers (in the US, this includes NBC Sports, Fox Sports, ESPN, Peacock and Paramount+) in one portal, either free to view or with a subscription. There are subzones too for particular sports.
“Live sport is the most valuable content on TV. Most people will find the sport or team they really want to watch whichever platform it ends up on but you still want to make it as easy as you can when you just want to sit down and watch the game.”
Price isn’t confirming whether Sport Zone will launch in Europe, but it’s likely on the cards. “In the US, sports rights are super fragmented compared to Europe but even in markets like the UK, if fans wanted to watch every match of a Premier League season they’d have to go to at least three services (TNT Sports, Sky Sports, Prime Video) with other broadcasters taking additional major soccer rights. What Sport Zone does is bring it all together so you can find the game easily and you don't have to do the work of finding which channel it’s on.”
The company recently announced a deal with Everyone TV to integrate UK broadcaster streaming service Freely into smart TVs powered by the Roku OS.
“It was a very natural fit that Roku would support Freely,” Price reports. “There were some complexities to the deal, but we're really pleased to find a path that enables us to continue to innovate our platform and give enough prominence to [Freely] channels and content that also meets the regulation for PSB prominence in the UK.
“We want all TV to be streamed. You should just plug it in and watch. It should be that simple.”
No comments:
Post a Comment