OTT
industry has grown massively in the last 18 months in terms of viewership and subscription. As a result, the platforms have upped their content game and are investing heavily into the producing original content. The big challenge that lie ahead of them is to ensure that they are able to monetise their community and content to collectively grow this industry.ETBrandEquity.com recently concluded its
iStream Congress 2021
where one of the panels discussed about the Future of Content Monetisation. The session included industry stalwarts like
Jayesh Easwaramony
, Founder, Spectra Global and
Anand Gopal
, Co-founder & COO, Voiro and was moderated by Satrajit Sen, Head Products & Community, ETBrandEquity.com.
OTT platforms
are adopting technology to understand consumer consumption patterns and content. Sen opened the discussion by asking about the OTT business, monetising the consumers, and content. Easwaramony mentioned that the subscription based model is not the preferred model for OTT business across many emerging markets. “We see broadcaster driven OTT platforms like Zee5,
Hotstar
and many other in many emerging markets. They are driving the adoption of OTT. They have 100 million plus users. So, when the broadcaster's enter OTT world, the first thing they do is to set up the video platform, and work towards acquiring the users and gaining viewership of people migrating from TV. So the idea is to capture a share of people migrating from watching content on their TV to watching it on an OTT platform. They later realise on the need for an advertising funded model to generate revenues.”
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Today, marketers and advertisers want solutions to measure the effectiveness of their advertising. The OTT platforms needs to navigate the advertiser landscape, understand their requirements, create measurement, and solve all these requirements.Gopal shared that this is probably one of the most exciting times and exciting parts of the worlds to be in to watch this industry. “I think there's no doubt that India is far exceeding even the most wildest of expectations in terms of how we consume content and how much of it we consume. There's more than half a billion people online. And I think just the sheer volume of this market itself means that there is enough room for multiple players to really scale as well as find their niche.”He further added that the diversity of our country offers a very unique fabric of our audiences, which is both an opportunity but also requires streaming giants to really find a balance in their strategies, whether that's content, tech, or monetisation.Next, the moderator jumped on to the challenges that the streaming businesses face while monetising this content and consumer.Easwaramony men
tioned that one of the key challenges is driving subscription that is driven by blockbuster content which is quite expensive to produce. Users have a limited wallet and there are about 15-20 odd platforms so they choose on the basis of discount schemes or blockbuster content. The first big challenge for the streaming platforms is to build an advertising business. The platforms have to really work hard towards customer retention by creating personalised content. Another big challenge is the distribution of content for which you need strong teams who can help you disseminate that content.Coming on to the technological advancements or innovations that can help in this monetisation game, Gopal mentioned that most of these players need to have all options open to be able to respond depending on which way the market is going. “If you marry yourself to one of these strategies, and try and place all your bets in in one part of this equation, I find that the ability to respond and the ability to find things like remnant revenue, or respond to the right advertiser at the right time, is going to be harder and we'll end up losing a lot of time,” adds Gopal.OTT platforms need to find their ad-led consumers and slowly move them to a place where they are more loyal to the platform, and then kind of convert them into something that really lasts as a relationship with advertisers.Gopal further recommend every platform to create a customer data platform, which is driven by first party data, because first party data about your own users will tell about how they behave. “The beauty of a customer data platform as a technology is that it allows both the advertising team and the marketing team to use the same platform, because then you can really connect the dots between your user who is a who's who might be a TV in a loyalist or somebody who is a cord cutter and so on and kind of create those segments for the advertiser.”Jayesh also added that this is definitely the age for using data to run the right experiments. “Every OTT platform has the strengths, that is connected with their content. And for a marketer, it's, it's always been about finding the right mix.”Today OTT anddigital
can really offer all of those to marketers if they find the right mix.Easwaramony concluded by saying that India is a land of creators. “A farmer is creating content, a youngster and many others are creating content, and they want tools. So tools create content, and at the same time get something for their glory. It could be a very small badge, and such things. So it is like some of these will get both theatre, commerce and some gamification linked rewards. I feel that's going to be quite an exciting journey,” adds Easwaramony.
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