OTT Video: The future is strategic partnerships
In our recent white paper, Advancing OTT audience capture: How strategic partnerships provide avenues for growth, Magine Pro’s CCO, Luke Boyle, reflects on the industry and highlights the importance of partnerships for new market entrants.
In our recent white paper, Advancing OTT audience capture: How strategic partnerships provide avenues for growth, Magine Pro’s CCO, Luke Boyle, reflects on the industry and highlights the importance of partnerships for new market entrants.They say in business that it is who you know, not what you know. This has never been more true than in the ever more competitive world of OTT. Online video streaming continues to innovate, and those starting out on that journey, as we have seen, can be anyone from traditional broadcasters, production houses, to an operator, a telco, ISP, sports federation, start-up, really anyone and everyone has or is looking at the platform. We at Magine Pro refer to a triangle of success: great content, great tech, and clever marketing. This white paper focuses primarily on the latter.
Traditional marketing remains incredibly important, digital marketing equally so, but evermore relevant is that the success key comes down to strategic partnerships. Partnerships is a very broad term; as you will have read, it can cover everything from aggregator partnerships, content partnerships, and partnerships with those in different market verticals that already have an audience – such as banks, film festivals, e-commerce, and even supermarkets and book clubs.
Many rights deals are now constructed based on partnership revenue share. Indeed our own commercial model with our partners is not dissimilar. It is important, of course, to partner with the correct organisation to achieve your individual and mutual goals. It should be a symbiotic relationship, and in theoretical terms, it is a simple one – there is a hungry audience out there for quality, exclusive, premium, or just ‘interesting’ content. It is just about where to find it, through whom, and without breaking the bank of the respective audience.
So what is the future of partnerships in OTT? The Omdia report tells us that the market is becoming ever more competitive and that viewers have multiple options to buy or view their content with ads. So our advice, in line with theirs, is to look at strategic partnerships to build viewership. And look at partners who already have a route to market, those with an audience, and those that look toward loyalty schemes or branching out. The reverse is also true; if you have a great OTT service, look to enhance that with supplementary content or other brands to enable stickiness and devotion to your services.
Here at Magine Pro, we believe that content is king and continue to work with our multiple clients on the tech that acts as the enabler to great innovative thinking and business disruption. Together we achieve great success.
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You can download our latest white paper, which features Luke Boyle’s reflection now, Advancing OTT audience capture: how strategic partnerships provide avenues for growth. The white paper also includes original research by Omdia, highlighting why strategic partnerships are key to delivering sufficient online video growth and, specifically, the impact of bundling and aggregation partnerships with the likes of telcos and Pay-TV operators. Insights from Magine Pro partners also feature, as they share their experiences on how partnerships have improved their service discoverability, acquisition and growth.
Learn more about Magine Pro’s flexible OTT solutions and how we can help you build and launch a successful OTT business here. And head to our experience page to check out our partners and case studies.
You can also subscribe to the Magine Pro e-newsletter to stay up-to-date with our latest news, partners, and products, and to find out which industry events we’ll be attending next.
WHITE PAPER | Partnerships advancing OTT audience capture
Partnerships ultimately provide mutual value to all parties involved if selected and executed effectively. Being able to reach & aggregate audiences upstream (i.e. through a Telco partnership) or downstream (i.e. through brand partnerships) increases the effectiveness of your customer acquisition spend and impact. It also offers wider benefits, including brand reach, customer loyalty and lifetime value.
Download the white paper now and discover:
- Original Omdia research explores how aggregation can drive growth for smaller players, focusing on three core types of partnerships, including Telco bundling and virtual Pay-TV operators as aggregators.
- Discover the advantages of strategic brand partnerships for OTT and how to choose the right partner.
- Magine Pro partners share their own experiences and insights into how partnerships have improved their service discoverability, acquisition and growth.
AND MUCH MORE…
Download the white paper: Advancing OTT audience capture: How strategic partnerships provide avenues for growth here.
You can also watch our recent webinar on-demand now. Join Magine Pro, Omdia, and Paus for an open discussion around Omdia’s research into aggregation as well as the benefits and experiences of brand partnerships for streaming services.
To find out more about Magine Pro’s OTT partners, including Paus, head to our experience page. You can find out more about our flexible OTT solutions and how we can help you build and launch a successful OTT business here.
Don’t forget to subscribe to the Magine Pro e-newsletter to stay up-to-date with our latest news, partners, products, and to find out which industry events we’ll be attending next.
WEBINAR | Why partnerships are key to delivering online video growth
In a fiercely competitive market, no online video service can succeed on its own; partnerships have become essential. The online video space in the past years has seen a rise in partnerships of various forms, including those that mimic the pay-TV platform as a content aggregator but with a higher degree of flexibility and openness.
In our latest webinar, Magine Pro and Omdia are joined by experienced OTT operator, CEO and founder of Paus, Rishi Kapoor, to discuss how partnerships can drive discoverability, customer acquisition and growth for online video services.
The session features:
- A first look at Omdia’s research, on behalf of Magine Pro, that reviews the online video market and the rise in partnerships, including how Virtual pay-TV services selectively aggregate to differentiate.
- How Telcos are currently leading in the aggregation of SVOD services.
- The advantages of strategic brand partnerships for improved online video service discoverability, acquisition and growth.
- Expert OTT operator shares insights and experiences of partnerships.
Duration: 1 hour
WATCH THE WEBINAR ON-DEMAND NOW
Webinar speakers include:
Matthew Wilkinson is CEO of Magine Pro, which enables partners operating globally to build thriving OTT businesses with live TV and Video-On-Demand platforms. Matthew is responsible for the sales, innovation, delivery, and development of the Magine Pro product globally.
Matthew has over 18 years of experience in Telecom & IT, working with clients in the IT & Cloud, and Media Domains, with deep experience in software development & delivery, SaaS and enterprise solutions, and previously held various leadership roles in strategy & delivery.
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Rishi is an experienced professional in film distribution both UK and Internationally. A former executive at Sony Pictures, Universal Studios, Warner Bros. and Disney. After many years working on distribution deals with Netflix, Amazon and Apple, he turned his attention to the Independent film space, supporting independent filmmakers at paus.tv.
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As part of Omdia’s media and entertainment team, Tony Gunnarsson covers the global online video sector, with a specific interest in direct-to-consumer video services, across both subscription and transactional video, as well as online video aggregation.
His main research interests are in the premium, paid-for subscription online video (SVOD). Tony provides analysis of the key developments in the global online video market, consumer insights, and business intelligence.
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Watch On-Demand: Why partnerships are key to delivering online video growth
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To learn more about Magine Pro’s partners, including Paus, head to our experience page. You can find out more about our flexible OTT solutions and how we can help you build and launch a successful OTT business here.
Subscribe to the Magine Pro e-newsletter to stay up-to-date with our latest news, partners, products, and find out which industry events we’ll be attending next.
How search aggregators benefit streaming services & the consumer
Discoverability is essential for online video streaming services today, where competition is high. And there are many ways to increase awareness and visibility of your content and service, including well-thought-through marketing strategies and campaigns that can build a strong online presence. Partnerships are also a fantastic way to extend marketing efforts and boost discovery.
Streaming services partnering with online search aggregators like JustWatch and PlayPilot is a great example. In our latest white paper, research analyst firm Omdia highlighted how this type of partnership can be particularly advantageous for video services, “With an increasing number of consumers relying on online searches to help decide what to watch, presence on online video comparison guides will be crucial in driving viewership.”
Search aggregation services effectively scan multiple video streaming services to surface movies and TV shows that are available. They don’t host the content themselves but instead provide links to services that do. A user can browse or type in the name of specific content they are looking for. The search aggregation service will then share information on which streaming services are currently hosting the content, whether a transaction is required, and a link to the service itself. They are particularly useful for consumers who subscribe to multiple streaming services as it eliminates having to search through each service individually.
Magine Pro partner, FlixOlé, a Spanish à la carte cinema service that offers subscribers unlimited access to hundreds of Spanish film titles, recently partnered with JustWatch. Sophie de Mac Mahon, General Manager, says: “Integrating our metadata into their system had a very positive effect on business and communication. On the one hand, since the beginning of this association, it brings us an important source of traffic directly from its page to our content, being the sixth source of traffic for Flixole.com. It also served as a tool for journalists who could refer to us as the place to see the movies they were writing about. When the marketing budget is limited, it’s essential to be present in the search aggregators to reach our potential subscribers.”
We were also joined by Sophie, alongside Rishi Kapoor, founder and CEO of paus, and Omdia, in our recent webinar, OTT Discovery: Expert insights on how to stand out amongst the crowd, where we discussed how today’s audiences discover new video services and content and what OTT providers can do to stand out amongst the crowd. Magine Pro’s CEO, Matthew Wilkinson, during the discussion, talked about how streaming services can benefit from partnerships with aggregators. Matthew says, “Enabling consumers to search for specific content within the likes of PlayPilot or JustWatch and have your content visible without the consumer being an existing subscriber to your service generates a huge opportunity for operators to increase conversion rates. Search aggregators like JustWatch and PlayPilot are also more open agnostic; they are not platform-specific like some universal search options. Generally speaking, they have much broader coverage in terms of service and discoverability.” Adding, “There’s also a wider benefit and opportunity for operators partnering with search aggregators. Aggregators like these offer a huge data point, as they can monitor what content people search for, where and when it was last available and at what price point, which can help inform a streaming services content strategy. Some also support paid marketing, which is great for services that want to boost their content visibility further as it is instantly discoverable.”
The Magine Pro OTT platform offers flexibility for all our partners. We make it easy for our clients to work together with their partners and integrate efficiently with services like PlayPilot and JustWatch. As Sophie de Mac Mahon from FlixOlé points out, “The integration is already created, and the daily updates are working perfectly. Magine Pro platform has streamlined this process, and it is worth being there and almost effortless.”
For more practical insights on improving discoverability, and to learn more about the benefits of partnering with search aggregators, check out our latest white paper and webinar.
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Want more advice and support on driving awareness & discoverability? Get in touch with the Magine Pro team and find out how we can help. You can also learn more about our flexible OTT solutions and services here.
OTT Industry predictions for 2019
2018 was an exciting year for the OTT industry. We saw a lot of positive developments, most of which we encountered firsthand at IBC2018 in September. Check out our post where we summarised our findings and reflected on the event, here. Now that we’re heading into the second full working week of January, we’re all starting to wonder what could be on the horizon.
In this post, we’re laying it out there and sharing our top OTT industry predictions 2019 (with a few expected additions of course). Reach out and let us know your thoughts and whether you think we’ve missed something vital.
Service shut downs and consolidations
In 2018 we started to see more OTT services consolidate or shut down entirely. This was largely due to market saturation, as the OTT industry grew so rapidly in the early days. Over the next year though, it’s likely we will see more of this affecting both smaller niche players and big incumbents, as the pressure to maintain sustainable and competitive OTT businesses increases.
In fact in 2018, WarnerMedia, for example, shut down its two-year-old indie and classic cinema streaming service FilmStruck not long after closing its Korean streaming service, DramaFever. WarnerMedia’s CEO John Stankey had announced only a few months prior to the closures though that the WarnerMedia division of AT&T has plans to launch a new ad-supported video streaming service by the end of 2019. We’re expecting the new service to launch in the fourth quarter and combine HBO (which AT&T picked up in its takeover of Time Warner in 2018) with other WarnerMedia brands including, Warner Bros, Turner, Cartoon Network and more.
New players from the big brands
We are also expecting to see Disney launch their much-hyped direct-to-consumer service later this year (the result of their acquisition of BamTech). It will certainly be interesting to see how well it’s received and the market uptake. We’re already wondering whether there’s going to be a Disney OR Netflix scenario. Or if subscribers will be willing to opt-in and subscribe to both.
It’s also not too far fetched to expect Apple to launch their secretive yet expected streaming service later this year. We’re curious to see if they’ve managed to secure content partnerships that to date others haven’t been able to. It’s also going to be interesting to see Apple’s interpretation of the best UI/UX and find out whether they are able to truly revolutionize the TV experience. Stay tuned!
Partnerships with Telcos & Operators
This year, we think we’re also likely to see more Telcos and Operators move out of the own-operated OTT space and begin partnering with existing and better established OTT players. In the last year, the increased customer value propositions enabled through partnerships have become more apparent, so it’s likely Telcos and Operators will be less inclined to view OTT Players as a threat going forward. Our former Head of Commercial Operations, Fredrik Engdahl spoke on the subject at IBC 2018. Check out the video of his talk here.
AVOD to mature
Advertising (AVOD) models for OTT are also likely to mature this year and become much more feasible for new and existing OTT Players. John Stankey, CEO of WarnerMedia, said himself at their November investor event, “Consumers clearly like the breadth of content that is available today. They like the choice. And a lot of that choice comes on the back of ad-supported models,” But added, “Things have to change [with ad models]” and suggested that less intrusive and more targeted ads are the way forward if AVOD is to really become a serious standalone model for OTT players in future. We couldn’t agree more.
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It’s certainly going to be an exciting year full of developments. To keep up-to-date on the latest, sign up to our monthly e-newsletter and check back in to the Magine Pro blog.