It’s been three months since we launched Brightcove OTT Flow - powered by Accedo at this year’s NAB conference and the pace of change within the OTT space shows no signs of slowing down.
The OTT market is forecasted to be worth $62.03B by 2020, according to Markets And Markets. Per Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends Report (2016), mobile ad spend is growing at 66% versus 5% for desktop. Time Warner has taken a 10% stake in Hulu and Disney just dropped $1B to take a stake in MLBAM. Parks Associates identified 50 new OTT services launching in 2015 and it’s not hard to imagine that that number will grow this year.
Crossing over to the audience side, we can find corresponding data-points: 66% of global consumers watched paid OTT via mobile, tablet or laptop in 2015. It’s no surprise that Google has sold 5m Chromecast units since May of this year.
Against this backdrop of rapid growth there are still some fundamental challenges facing content owners such as device fragmentation, an ever more complex technology ecosystem and the cost of launching and, crucially, evolving an OTT service. The vision behind OTT Flow was to provide a solution to these challenges and the response to date has been fantastic. Since launching OTT Flow, we’ve talked to organisations all over the world: broadcasters, telcos, News & Entertainment publishers, MCNs, Sports, eSports, and eGaming companies all have OTT front of mind for their near-term digital strategy.
Across all these discussions, there have been similar themes, all focused around some front-of-mind questions:
What’s the right business model for me?
How do I differentiate my service from my competitors?
What platforms should I target?
How do I reach, retain and grow my audience?
These are tough questions. The OTT space is still nascent which means success stories to emulate are few (unless you have the pockets to fund your own version of Netflix). We’ve been helping companies deliver video over the internet for over a decade. In that time we’ve learned a lot from working with successful companies like Acorn TV and UKTV, such as the importance of agility, speed to market and monetising effectively.
As we continue to engage with the next generation of content owners, we’ll be bringing some of the insights from these discussions to a new series of blog posts, starting next month with a look at monetisation options.
Finally, we’re looking forward to IBC in September where we’ll be making some exciting product and customer announcements. If you’d like to talk in more detail about the OTT space, please come and see us at Stand B69 Hall 5.
Get to market in weeks with OTT Flow.