OTT TV World Summit brought together many industry experts in the TV and online video business – from Facebook and Microsoft to Scandinavia’s largest broadcasting companies to telecommunication providers stretching all the way from South Korea to Trinidad and Tobago – for three intensive days of discussion and networking in London last month.
With compelling OTT content topics including monetisation, analytics, next generation delivery and services, personalised experience delivered within 24 hours, the 200+ attendees are now geared with diverse insights that they can begin to apply in ‘real’ projects when they get back to work.
If you missed the event, here are the three key takeaways from the event from the perspective of the Edgeware team.
Data is the currency in the digital world
Consumers today expect differentiated content and tailor made services. By our nature humans are lazy, we want it simple, and we want it now. Content providers who still do not understand this will risk losing viewer attention because every additional click is a barrier to the right content. The Panel on Day 1 agreed that successful companies like BBC, WWE, and Disney have uncompromising focus on use of data. Netflix reportedly does A/B testing on everything. Using data enables broadcasters and pay TV providers to be relevant to the audience, offer a personalised experience without being intrusive such as recommendations, quickly add new services, tweak services regularly, and ultimately creating competitive advantage that drives growth. For more ideas about how to leverage data for quick wins, please take a look at this recent post on our blog.
Sports – early data adopters
Creating value for customers lies in the data. However, even with the mass availability of data on video delivery, adopting a data-driven culture in this fast-evolving industry is still a challenge. The fact is many companies still struggle to identify the starting point of value creation through the use of data. Fortunately, on the last day of the event, it became clear that sports ruled this area. The sports segment is clearly the pioneer of data adopters. Sports fans love data! Here are some real-world examples shared during the event:
A broadcaster recorded higher engagement on goals and its related clips from its OTT TV service. The decision was then made to curate its own ‘goal show’ for its linear viewers, which had been successful since launch. This is a great example of how you can use data to drive viewership, not only for OTT services, but also for linear services.
A Spanish soccer club saw that a large majority of its fans are in fact outside Spain and used the insights to launch its digital presence in the countries based on where its fans were most active socially. This example shows how you can create a closer connection to the audience or fans, reinforcing customer loyalty.
Winners don’t take it all – content differentiation still rules
When discussing success factors of an OTT player, Netflix is repeatedly the poster child in many cases. However, the consensus on the topic of OTT domination at the event was that the big players like Netflix and Amazon would not take it all. Regional OTT players will always have a share of the pie, as long as there is demand for regionalised or localised content such as local sports or drama series in local language. And this, despite globalisation, will always persevere because of our innate preference for things based on familiarity. It is all about providing content that resonates with your viewers, predicting content that they will love based on their profiles (for e.g. recommendations), and doing so every time so that they keep coming back for more.
What are your key takeaways? We hope you enjoy this post and thank you to everyone who came to say hello or engaged with us on social media during the event. We’d love to hear from you. Please post your comments below or connect with us on Twitter or LinkedIn.
Author:
Ling Koay
Product Marketing Manager
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