Podcasters Need to Work Harder To Be Heard

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New podcasts are getting lost under the sheer volume of shows being produced, and podcast creators need to work a lot harder to break through.

This seems to be the reason why none of the top 25 podcasts in the US last year debuted in 2021 or in 2020, according to Edison Research. They are all older podcasts. Three of the top five (The Joe Rogan Experience, This American Life and Stuff You Should Know) were released a decade ago.

While the overall audience for podcasting expands, the audience for individual new shows is shrinking across the board.

That’s a worry for executives and producers at Spotify, Amazon, SiriusXM, iHeartMedia and others that have spent billions of dollars on production. Spotify alone has spent $500 million for three studios.

The reasons for the dearth of hits may be simply that new podcasts have to fight harder to be heard

Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw explores the issue. “Spotify hosts more than three million podcasts, up from a few hundred thousand just a few years ago,” he writes. “While the vast majority of those new shows are either defunct or have minuscule audiences, there are still way more podcasts than there were just a few years ago.”

Meanwhile, podcasts that launched years ago have a big advantage over brand new productions. “They had years to build up an audience, gather word of mouth and appear in search results,” notes Shaw. “Podcast listeners develop attachments to individual stations, shows and hosts. Listening to The Daily or Alex Cooper is comfort food for a lot of people. They’d rather listen to their take on a subject, even if it isn’t good, than the savvy take of a newcomer. Faced with an onslaught of new podcasts, people are retreating to the familiar.”

The solution is to investment more in marketing, innovate formats and use these familiar existing hits to promote new shows. Hiring a celebrity to host the show is a novelty that has faded.

Shaw says podcasting executives are looking for niches and underserved audiences and taking a page out of the SVOD book by searching overseas for fresh content.

Spotify, for example, is investing “a ton of money” into podcasts in Latin America, Europe and Asia. It is adapting its hit Chilean show Caso 63 into multiple languages. “It may have more room to grow in some of those markets, at least as a podcaster, than it does in the US,” says Shaw, who adds, “It’s not that new podcasts can’t be hits. But the bar for being a hit is higher, which means it’s going to take longer (and a lot more work) to get there.”

 

Inside Discovery’s Winter Olympics broadcast plans

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It will have been just 180 days since the closing ceremony in Tokyo when the curtain is raised for Beijing 2022 on February 4, with Discovery’s teams working round the clock to prepare for another marathon live production.

https://www.ibc.org/features/inside-discoverys-winter-olympics-broadcast-plans/8295.article

“For Beijing, the biggest day will have 15 simultaneous events and when you’re broadcasting that across 19 different languages in 50 markets across Europe with 150 control rooms, things get complex pretty quick,” says Simon Farnsworth, SVP, technology and operations. “There is an enormous amount of complexity across our network.”

This is the US-broadcaster’s third of four Olympics in its €1.3 billion package during which it will air 1,200 live hours across linear and digital platforms, including Discovery+, Eurosport and the Eurosport app. This includes four ‘pop-up’ channels dedicated to disciplines like curling and ice hockey.

Its Tokyo coverage received 175 million unique views from Europe alone with the Winter Games being used to drive subscriptions north of the 20 million signed to Discovery+ as reported in its most recent figures.

“When we made the decision to put sport on Discovery+, we saw people staying for longer,” says Andrew Georgiou, president, Discovery Sports.

“We saw people buy more annual passes than monthly passes especially among those who experience Olympic and non-Olympic content. Very much our strategy for Discovery+ is putting entertainment and sport on a single platform which means more reasons for consumers to engage. It’s proven to be very successful because churn (the rate of cancellations) between Pyeongchang 2018 and Tokyo improved four times.

“Earlier this year we launched our products in Europe onto our global tech stack. That means more tools and a better ability to target individual users and to predict a little bit more what they want. We hope to see an uplift in engagement and retention from Beijing as a result.”

The Cube goes full Spectre

The centre-piece of its presentation is the virtual studio ‘The Cube’ which plays the dual role of keeping more people safe from Covid and enabling the broadcaster to cut the costs of transporting crew and building a physical presence on site.

Designed in Unreal Engine by FRAY Studio, Discovery’s winter Olympics is hosted from a luxurious triple-story ski centre-cum-hotel with panoramic views from the peak of a snow-capped mountain. It wouldn’t look out of place in a Bond film.The set is also designed to give the viewer a sense of the leading-edge technology and expansive coverage that Discovery is bringing to bare.

Discovery calls it “a vast cinematic winter resort, offering limitless immersive presentation and analysis positions on multiple levels.”

There are 26 different ‘environments’ for the directors to choose from including a very inviting bar populated by animated bar staff (rendered in Viz) and ski lifts leading into the complex.

The mountainous views are not modelled on any in China (the resort 70km outside Beijing is having to pipe in its own snow) and comes with a choice of day/dusk/sunset and night time background graphics. The virtual set, devised by BK Design Projects, is installed at Stockley Park with development of the Cube overseen by Discovery’s director of graphics and innovation Alex Dinnin.

Augmented reality built by creative agency Girraphic to closely resemble athletes from winter disciplines like downhill skiing and bobsleigh will ‘float’ in the Cube, for experts to analyse the minutiae of an athletes’ movements and aerodynamics.

Green screens at studios across Europe enable the ‘teleportation’ of people into the Cube. Athletes will also be ‘beamed’ in live for three-dimensional interview from Beijing.

“This is a real-world tool and environment where you need to be malleable,” says Scott Young, SVP Content and Production. “Using a gaming platform like Unreal allows us to build much faster. It’s not real-time but it is [on par with] pre-production in TV terms. There’s no point having this technology without experts to talk authoritatively about what audiences are seeing. This is about explaining to our audience the complexities of what the athletes are facing.”

Technical production Beijing to Europe

As soon as the flame extinguished in Tokyo, Discovery packed up its facilities (built and integrated by NEP) and shipped them to storage in China before the task of reassembly. It has around 50 team members on site now with 1,000 people producing the games in Europe. 

Once again, Discovery is taking source feeds from host broadcaster OBS as well as its own ancillary feeds, derived from 36 ENG kits and 20 video journalist kits. Some LTE backpacks will be able to tap the 5G network installed by China Unicom around Games venues.

All material passes through its Broadcast Operations Centre (BOC) in Beijing which is designed to be operated by staff locally and also entirely virtually from London.

“We did that to manage risk from Covid. If people get sick we’d be up the creek without paddle but we can control it all remotely over IP,” says Farnsworth.

Due to mounting Covid cases in the city, NBC Sports has decided not to send any of its commentator teams to China.

Three and half thousand kilometres of fibre optic cable, geo diverse and redundant together with satellite, ingest the feeds from the BOC into data centres in London and Hilversum. The data centers host the entire post production technology from slo-mo replay machines, graphics engines, vision mixers and Premiere Pro with operators accessing control surfaces remotely from 150 control rooms around Europe.

This workflow caters for localised content. A control room in Oslo, for example, might not want so much ice skating for viewers in Norway but does want more biathlon so relevant signals are routed accordingly.

The content itself is created in the data centers then handed off to end distribution points whether digital feeds or traditional affiliates.

“We can configure a control room in five minutes now because that kit is all controlled by our central control systems over IP ST 2110.”

The post production equipment sits on a virtualised Grass Valley layer hosted in AWS. Discovery has built its own cloud-based remote commentary system for any of its commentator to log on to and voice against the live video stream. This is sent back to the data centre for onward distribution.

Farnsworth says, “We’ve built our own private cloud as well as using public cloud apps where appropriate. We still use private cloud for live switching because we want latency to be as low as possible. There is still a challenge with some public cloud in terms of latency for live production.”

The bulk of Discovery’s output will be HD but it is producing one pop-up 4K UHD channel available on linear and digital platforms. A native 50hz from OBS means Discovery doesn’t have to convert frame rates for European transmission.

To reduce latency further it is compressing video for production in JPEG-XS. “We can’t control the laws of physics but what we can do is give our production crew the best chance to produce content as quick as they can by using JPEG-XS encoding which is the lowest possible latency we could find with the right video quality.”

Farnsworth says, “We are arguably one of the largest networks anywhere in the world. Our WAN is bigger than Cisco’s Webex [video conferencing] network. We have 400Gig connections to all our main sites which is enough bandwidth to run JPEG-XS at 170Mbps. We’ve worked with our production folks a lot particularly around vision mixing using IP in the cloud and everybody is super comfortable with that now.”

The production is also able to access Content+, a database managed by OBS and continually stocked by new video clips. “We’ve written an API gateway to Content+ and are constantly pushing new content from it into our cloud system.”

He adds: “It can be exciting but also nerve-wracking. For example, in PyeongChang we had fibre optic cables breaking due to earthquakes in Taiwan, we had diggers in Edmonton in Canada digging up cables. So, we have teams round the clock monitoring this 24/7 to ensure we give you guys the presenters the best chance to provide the best possible experience for our consumers.”

Put in fact file pls Human rights

Discovery was on the front foot to counter potential criticism of its role in ‘sports washing’ China’s human rights record. US and French governments have declared the country’s treatment of the Uyghurs as genocide while many questions remain about the fate of female tennis star Peng Shui.

“There is no doubt that human rights in China is a massively important issue,” said Georgiou. “Discovery is really focussed on social issues and we’ve made a big commitment to diversity and inclusion within our own organisation. It’s not a topic that we want to shy away from, we’re going to address it.”

“We are a sports broadcaster not a news service,” Georgiou added. “We are conscious of not straying into news but by the same token when an athlete starts to address these topics as they relate to the sport we will be covering them because they are a natural part of the narrative of the Olympics and within our gift to talk about them.”

Connected TV Opens Up a Million Ad Possibilities

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As viewing OTT or via Connected TV (CTV) continues to grow, it’s natural that the advertising universe will expand alongside it.

https://amplify.nabshow.com/articles/connected-tv-is-opening-up-some-bonkers-possibilities/

CTV ad-spend is predicted to grow to $19 billion by the end of 2021 as advertisers begin to use CTV as a means to reach their users, either alongside an existing linear TV strategy, or as a standalone channel.

A report from mobile analytics platform Adjust gives advice for advertisers looking to go this route.

“Ad formats for CTV provide marketers with a unique opportunity to combine the interactiveness of digital formats (tracking video completion rates and linking real-time ad exposure to conversions) with the visuals native to traditional TV advertising,” it says in its Connected TV: the ultimate how-to guide. “With direct CTV ad buying, marketers have opportunities to incorporate UI and in-video banners, and even show ads on pause screens or menus.”

Advertisers can also show relevant ads across multiple devices that are connected to the same network, which can give retargeting campaigns a boost.

As it currently stands, the majority of CTV inventory is not sold by mobile marketing networks. As it continues to grow and as verticals like gaming become more prominent, this is likely to change. Google is very well positioned to capitalize on the fact that they own CTV inventory and are one of the larger CTV networks — you can advertise on the YouTube network via Google’s Advertising network. Apple and Amazon are also well placed, owning their own streaming devices and services.

What Is CTV and Other Jargon?

Connected TV refers to content viewing devices connected to the internet and the viewing experience usually happens in the living room. The most obvious CTV device is the modern smart TV, however, many apps come from other verticals too, particularly gaming, which is the second largest category on Amazon Fire TV and Apple TV. To put this into perspective, on Roku OS alone there are more than 23,000 apps. Many of the apps offer the ability to show ads (ad inventory). Advertisers can access this programmatically via their DSP or by working directly with ad networks.

Aha – acronyms and jargon. The DSP is Demand Side Platform: the interface that enables the buying of programmatic OTT and display ads. The Supply Side Platform (SSP) is the publisher’s side of the programmatic equation. Each publisher works with at least one SSP that lists their inventory as available on exchanges.

Programmatic Ad Buying

Buying programmatically, the Adjust report helpfully explains, gives you the greatest level of flexibility in terms of timing, targeting and optimization. It’s possible to rapidly iterate tests in ways that aren’t possible through other buying methods. This is a powerful approach, which is why an increasing amount of CTV advertising is being bought this way.

The downside? Without specific agreements in place, there are limitations on the formats and placements you can buy. Buying CTV programmatically requires having an agreement in place with a DSP that allows you to run CTV campaigns. There are many options here, with some of the most popular including The Trade Desk, Google’s DV360, OneView (formerly DataXu), and MediaMath.

Working with Platforms

The second approach to CTV buying is to work directly with a platform. If you’re working directly with Roku, for example, the agreement would include inventory within the Roku UI as well as in-stream video that you could also buy programmatically. In this case, however, almost all of this particular inventory is bought to promote apps that function on the Roku OS.

Adjust says this tactic may offer you premium inventory or better access than you would have received programmatically. The downside of this method is that you’re effectively limited to the inventory available within that platform. So if buying directly from Roku, you will only reach Roku viewers. And in order to reach viewers of Samsung smart TVs, you would need a deal with Samsung Ads.

Working With Publishers

Another method to buying CTV advertising, which will feel more familiar to those coming from the linear side, is working directly with publishers. This involves contacting your desired app or publisher, requesting a proposal and negotiating a deal.

“While some publishers may offer access to third-party segments to add a layer of targeting, others may also have first-party data on their users that would not be accessible programmatically,” the how-to guide outlines.

Potential downsides of the publisher-direct deal method listed by Adjust include a very limited or nonexistent ability to optimize during the course of the campaign. As the campaign is managed by the publisher, they both serve the impressions and send you the impressions report. Another difficulty with publisher-direct-deals is the legwork involved. In order to reach the same scale as a programmatic campaign, deals will need to be negotiated with multiple publishers. This can require additional resources — for both the negotiation of these deals and their eventual activation.

And as difficult as attribution already is with CTV, it becomes even more so with multiple direct deals running in parallel. Publishers often accept only specific third-party trackers so at the end of the campaign you may end up with a basic report showing the number of impressions served — without the in-depth insights you were perhaps looking for.

Feels Like a TV Ad

“The ad format you’ll encounter most commonly is the one that feels like the familiar TV ad — an in-stream, pre-roll ad of 15-30 seconds in length, appearing before or in the middle of a piece of streamed content. When buying programmatically, this will likely be your only option.”

This format allows you to make your brand very appealing visually and provides you with the opportunity to explain what you are advertising at considerable length. When buying directly the options open up more. You will probably be able to access in-UI and in-video banners, sponsor a free movie or even place an ad on a pause screen, to name but a few examples. Many of these formats are new, so they will stand out to the user.

What all ad formats on CTV have in common is that because of their digital nature, they provide you with the opportunity to create strong call-to-actions. A powerful example is provided by Burger King with their QR Whopper giveaway, consisting of three TV commercials with a QR code on the TV screen.

In short, CTV ad formats have the potential to combine the best of two worlds: the visual and messaging potential of TV and the interactive potential of digital advertising.

 

How Linear and Streaming Will Start To Look Different

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https://amplify.nabshow.com/articles/how-linear-and-streaming-will-start-to-look-different/

As the majority of viewing habits switch to connected TV and a mix of linear and streaming business models for distribution, subscription and advertising need to follow suit.

Media analyst Alan Wolk at TV Rev takes this idea and offers a series of predictions for the year.

Nielsen Loses Value

To many in the industry, Nielsen — long the gold standard of TV ratings measurement — lost its shine a long time ago, and the derelegation of the service will happen at pace in 2022. Wolk notes that the major linear networks, NBCU, ViacomCBS and Disney and WarnerMedia are all looking at the possibility of adopting alternate measurement systems based on data from Comscore, Conviva, iSpot, TVSquared and VideoAmp.

“The move away from Nielsen, which will also see ads being measured separately from programming and impressions overtaking GRPs, will be gradual. Not so much because it needs to be, but because nothing in the TV industry ever happens quickly. Something about messing with billions of dollars that just invokes caution it seems.”

Movie Theaters Contract

Given that going to the movies “had become a pretty awful” and expensive experience since the eighties, “it should surprise absolutely no one that people aren’t going back to theaters any time soon and that many theaters have permanently shut down during the pandemic,” thinks Wolk.

This is not to say that cinemas will disappear in 2022 (or ever) but they will be on the downswing, both in terms of actual number of venues and in terms of actual number of moviegoers.

Movies on streaming, however, will see a decent-sized upswing, spurred, paradoxically, by the overwhelming number of new series on TV.

“Faced with the choice of devoting 12 hours to a new series or two hours to a new movie, the movie is going to seem like a very appealing option for time-crunched viewers. And once consumers get settled into that sort of behavior it will be tough for theater chains to woo them back, save the occasional Spiderman flick.”

Smart TV OS Competition War

In the US right now, there are three main OEMs: Samsung, LG and VIZIO, as well as Roku (whose operating system is now built into tens of millions of TV sets).

Many others want in on the smart TV action. Amazon launched its own line of TVs this year, as did Walmart, Comcast and Google.

“The reason is pretty obvious: the massive improvement of smart TV operating systems means that dongles are dying off, which in turn means that getting your app on as many Smart TV OS’s as possible is every programmer’s 2022 goal.”

“The ACR data that they collect, which can be used to better target ads, better promote series and to guard against ad over frequency will further endear them to ad-supported services, who will be able to offer better viewing experiences as a result.”

Outside the US, where dongles haven’t really taken hold and where streaming is a bit more nascent, the smart TV OS may prove to be an even bigger battleground.

Pay TV Fights Back

Late last year, Sky TV in the UK launched a smart TV set with a deal that would allow subscribers to lease it as part of their monthly bundle, which also included their pay-TV service. The only catch was that it was a four-year commitment.

US pay-TV providers (Multichannel Video Programming Distributors, or MVPDs) “went all wide-eyed at this,” Wolk says, “as it could allow them to get rid of set top boxes, lock customers in for four years, provide a better viewing experience and give them a way to better capture measurement data across linear and streaming using ACR.”

It’s likely that Comcast, which owns Sky, will to offer something similar this year, Wolk thinks, and also that a handful of other MVPDs will follow suit.

Cord-Cutting Slows Down (Somewhat)

The industry will be mixed viewing environment of linear and streaming for many years to come. That’s because, while cord-cutting of linear pay-TV is set to continue (pay-TV providers will continue to shed somewhere around 5% to 7% of their subscriber bases next year, Wolk suggests), the rate of loss is slowing.

“That’s partly because Omicron means we’re going to be at home again more than we thought we would and partly because the array of streaming services out there still seems way too confusing for a significant part of the population who… like the comfort of knowing they can still pick up the remote and click through all 852 channels any time they like.”

Wolk also thinks there’s a floor on cord cutting too: where between 30% to 40% of viewers are only going to give up their set top box-based pay-TV “when someone physically pries the remote from their cold dead hands.”

VMPDs Continue to Grow

Many people consider switching to a vMVPD to be a form of cord-cutting though in reality all they are doing is swapping one form of delivery (cable) for another (broadband).

“For many viewers, vMVPDs are a nicotine patch of sorts, a way to get rid of the physical trappings of traditional pay-TV without giving up the ability to actually watch all their favorite cable channels, plus local news and sports.”

TVRev expects another big growth year for the main vMVPDs — YouTube, Sling, DirecTV, Fubo and Hulu — which will benefit from being bundled with Disney+ and ESPN+.

Addressable TV Advertising Spurred by Mid-Terms

Addressable advertising on connected TV is a given, but it’s taken a while to take root in linear. That’s not for a lack of trying, it’s just that advertisers remain convinced that TV is for mass reach while digital (mobile and display) is for targeting.

“That’s slowly changing however, as more advertisers spend more money on CTV and realize that they are not really sacrificing anything by targeting,” Wolk asserts. “Similarly, the use of data on TV is maturing and privacy is (slowly but surely) being figured out. So is measurement.”

Spurring it all on in 2022 will be the “massive influx of money” that is going to be spent on the midterm elections.

“Since that spending is mostly going to need to be local and targeted, we should see a significant uptick in the amount of money being spent on linear addressable,” he predicts.

Though given how slowly the industry changes, we’re unlikely to see the real impact of these changes until 2023/2024.

Paramount+ and Peacock are Services Most Likely to be Churned

The regular cancelling of streaming services (churn) is a major factor for all SVODs in 2022 but for Wolk this is a matter of identity. He figures that most major streamers are pretty indistinguishable in terms of their HBO-like prestige drama and dark comedic programming.

Netflix though is first on everyone’s remote or smart TV and the one most people are reluctant to churn. Ditto Amazon Prime which has the added bonus of ‘free’ shopping delivery.

“Apple TV+ seems to be more of a marketing tool than an actual service. Disney/Hulu and Discovery/HBO Max have the power of bundles, which gives them some degree of immunity too.”

Which leaves Paramount+ and NBCU’s Peacock whistling in the air.

Does Anyone Actually Care Who Controls the Metaverse?

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Critics of the internet’s current economic model and the risks we face in polluting a next-gen metaverse always make the same assumption and come to the same conclusion.

https://amplify.nabshow.com/articles/does-anyone-actually-care-about-who-controls-the-metaverse/

The assumption is that the internet as it was initially conceived could have been a democratic utopia of limitless potential for good. The conclusion is that nothing can be done about the warping of this ideal unless all of us act.

If you follow Gartner analyst Darin Stewart‘s argument, we may all be doomed anyway. There’s something about human nature that is leading us to the extinction of democracy.

As an example, he points to the fate of Rapa Nui, the tiny island off the coast off Chile better known as Easter Island, which is famous for its monolithic moai statues. It’s not known exactly how the inhabitants died out, but it is generally assumed to be the outcome of their own choices. One choice was to cut down all the island’s trees, perhaps in order to transport the large stone moai.

Another was not to ask the first European visitors for help for their starving population but instead to try to sell them handmade hats. Another choice was to live off the rats brought in from foreign ships, an invasive species that, according to some historians, destroyed the island’s ecosystem.

Like the original bountiful paradise that the original Polynesian settlers found on Rapa Nui, so Stewart draws parallels with our information age.

“When the Internet was first taking shape, it promised to be a paradise of unlimited information, unmediated interaction, and boundless social connection,” he writes.

I’m not so sure that was ever the case, but we can agree with Stewart that this is not the internet we now inhabit.

“As we populated the online environment, we brought with us several invasive species, (search engines, social platforms, content marketers) that are consuming the internet’s natural resources for their own benefit and propagation regardless of the cost to the rest of us. These platforms are destroying the verdant information landscape and turning it into a wasteland of monetized manipulation.”

Like other critics of the way the internet developed, Gartner’s analyst is scathing about Google, TikTok, Twitter and, in particular, Facebook.

“Without exception, the giants of the online world depend on engagement to make money and use surveillance and manipulation to garner and grow user attention. What data these platforms collect and how it is used is hidden behind impenetrable layers of user license agreements, trade secret claims and flat-out deception.”

For Stewart, these practices are “the burrowing rats gnawing at the roots of the web until it is too late.”

Factual information collapses into conspiracy and disinformation, marketing becomes manipulation, conversation ends in cancellation.

“Sadly, we are getting used to it. Those who have grown up with the web have never known anything else.”

What Stewart also shares with other critics of the internet’s economic and social order is hope — that before the metaverse hardens into reality there is a chance to reset the dialectic of labor at ground level.

“We are at a point in time where we have the opportunity to course correct the destructive trajectory of the digital economy,” he writes.

It is hoped that checks and balances on the likes of Meta will be enshrined in law. The Platform Accountability and Transparency Act (PATA), for instance, would require major platforms to provide operational data to researchers under strict supervision.

“This would begin to shine light on potentially destructive practices, essentially driving out the rats while preserving the trees.”

Such legislation is necessary because the major platforms have “repeatedly demonstrated” that they are “uninterested in understanding and addressing the problems inherent in and caused by their products and practices,” he argues. “They are even less interested in making the necessary data available to researchers who want to understand the dynamics of the digital economy.”

While PATA provides legislative support for transparency and research, the Deep Trust Alliance is building coalitions and networks across industry to fight deepfakes and disinformation. Private firms like Graphika are providing the means to trace, track and refute disinformation. Academic centers such as Oxford’s Internet Institute and Stanford’s Internet Observatory are providing deep insights into the social science of the Internet.

These efforts may not be enough. Or to put it another way, all of us internet users shouldn’t sit back passively and rely on the attempts of a few activists to do the work for us. The “toxic landscape” of a barren Rapa Nui lies in the future of our online world if we don’t “change our behaviors, pay more attention to privacy, demand transparency more vocally and scrutinize our information sources more objectively.”

As the internet is poised to take greater hold over our lives, there are alarm bells sounding that say we should be stopping Google, Meta and the rest from owning our future. There is, however, very little of this reaching through outside of academia and analytical debate like this. Where exactly are the protestors against Big Tech? They are not on the streets, there is very little debate in bars and clubs, Google buildings are not being blockaded. Does anyone care more about their privacy or their data than they do about parting with their phone?

Truth is, “instead of sounding the alarm and demanding change, we are more interested in getting the fancy hats these platforms offer in exchange for our attention and personal data.”

 

For Consumers, Streaming Has Replaced Pay TV for Premium Content

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OTT video has surpassed traditional pay TV, becoming the dominant way US broadband households watch video.

https://amplify.nabshow.com/articles/streaming-has-replaced-pay-tv/

According to new research from Parks Associates, the overall adoption of subscription OTT services continues to increase, with more than 80% of US broadband households having at least one OTT service subscription.

Two main factors are driving growth. The launch of multiple new services from flagship companies such as Disney, NBCUniversal, Apple, and WarnerMedia has increased the number of offerings available and divested and diversified the amount of content available through online services.

“Additionally, consumers’ default expectations today are that high-quality video content from flagship companies is automatically going to be available on an OTT basis — streaming has replaced traditional pay TV as the medium for premium content in the consumer psyche.”

Fifty-six percent of US broadband households now own a smart TV, per the report. More than half of those households are now using the smart TV as the device they access most frequently to watch streaming video. The increase in connected TV devices and viewership in turn has driven growth in the average number of hours per week of video consumed.

Weekly video consumption is now at 37.5 average hours per week, up an extra three hours per week since early 2020.

“Consumers who own and use smart TVs watch more hours of video per week than owners of any other devices, but streaming media player owners watch more content from SVOD and AVOD video services,” comments Parks Associates director of research Paul Erickson. “The role of streaming video across multiple platforms is more important than ever before in the entertainment mix for consumers.”

According to data from Bitmovin, which co-wrote the report, the global market for video streaming surpassed $100 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow past $250 billion by 2025 as viewer consumption habits increasingly change to favor streaming.

As a result of this significant shift, Bitmovin saw a 174% growth in the number of broadcasters opting for OTT in 2020.

Seventy-two percent of broadband households are engaging in multiplatform streaming video viewing, and 40% are viewing on all platforms available to them. “Consumer adoption of multiple streaming video services may slow, but their comfort with streaming content will persist — the connected home is now permanently a multiplatform environment,” said Erickson.

The report suggests that the increasing diversity of devices on which streaming video is consumed presents a rising challenge. The number and type of devices requiring support is one challenge; ensuring that the service is delivered in the highest quality with must-have features 4K and HDR are table stakes.

That’s where Bitmovin comes in. A section of the report is devoted to the ways the company’s compression technology can help alleviate both issues.

“In today’s market, return on investment is a constant challenge, churn is ever present, and maximizing subscriber acquisition and retention are crucial. Platform support limitations can collectively contribute to making the path to ROI longer, more difficult, and harder to predict.”

While nearly half of US broadband households subscribe to four or more OTT services, as of Q1 2021, there were still 18% of US broadband households not subscribed to any at all.

 

How To Score the Next Billion+ Subscribers

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Major SVODs are looking outside the US in order to grow as the domestic market slows, but accessing emerging markets is not straightforward. A minefield of technical and business traps lie en route but the potential reward is billions of new viewers.

https://amplify.nabshow.com/articles/how-to-score-the-next-billion-subscribers/

If VOD penetration rates in just the two largest emerging markets — China and India — rose even to Hong Kong levels, it would mean an additional 1.2 billion viewers, calculates Zenlayer. That’s nearly double the combined populations of the United States and European Union.

The cloud service provider suggests that media and entertainment companies will need new strategies in order to succeed.

One reason is that consumers in emerging markets have different habits and preferences. For example, the use of mobile devices to view content is much more prevalent in emerging markets. That has implications on both the business side (e.g., subscription types and price points) and the technical side (e.g., IP transport and networking for direct connectivity with mobile ISPs).

Different regions pose unique challenges. Some are business-related, such as local entity requirements (e.g., Internet Content Provider licenses required in China) and complex compliance schemes (for instance, content regulations). Others are technical challenges, such as under-developed interconnectivity (limited peering, for example) and under-developed utility infrastructure (e.g., relatively low power reliability).

Connectivity itself is a whole other issue, especially if streamers are going to provide users with real-time personalized digital experiences.

Zenlayer argues for its edge computing infrastructure. Strategically locating Points of Presence (PoPs) solves for interconnectivity issues within emerging markets and enables regional availability. Making decisions as close to the user as possible — at least in-country — is essential given the fact that no matter what you do to accelerate your application, you will always be bound by the speed of light and physical distance.

A globally interconnected private backbone — another Zenlayer specialty — solves for interconnectivity issues getting into and out of emerging markets, it says.

“Direct interconnects between global and regional internet service providers make the average number of hops between source and destination just 1.5. And it enables a hybrid cloud deployment approach irrespective of emerging market public cloud infrastructure gaps.”

Other common issues include poor application performance, slow synchronization across regional cloud servers, and interruptions during cross-border downloads.

Carlos Morell, VP of M&E Services at Zenlayer, says, “While the challenges for media and entertainment companies looking to tap into the tremendous opportunity in emerging markets are significant, they’re not insurmountable.”