Premium VOD isn’t exactly new (remember Tower Heist in 2011?) but this year’s lockdown may have accelerated a growing trend amongst film studios and content owners to test simultaneous cinema / OTT release or even go VOD-first. NBCUniversal’s Trolls World Tour, for example, has reportedly generated D2C sales of over …

VOD services all over the world are usually built using a toolkit of common features including content discovery and recommendation, personalisation tools (like recently watched, single sign-on and device synchronisation) and player controls (like live restart, forward ten seconds and subtitling / closed captions). In this episode of OTT Question …

At this week’s OTT Question Time we assessed the impact of OTT streaming on the environment. This is a complex, multi-faceted issue and we covered a lot of information including:

• The current lay of the land: how much OTT streaming is actually going? How has this increased over the past few …
  

In this episode of OTT Question Time we looked at the TV and on-demand industry through a wide-angle lens as lockdowns in many parts of the world started to ease. Together with Gulliver Smithers, former SVP of Product & Technology at Sony Pictures Entertainment and now CTO at RampRate IT, …

During this OTT Question Time we talked about content aggregators and asked if, with so many movies and TV shows now available to view online, they’re the de facto future of finding and watching titles. 

We explored:

• Aggregator business models (free, freemium, charging SVODs and broadcasters)
• Building scale and whether aggregators need big …
  

In this episode of OTT Question Time we went down under! Together with Kym Niblock, Chief Product & Information Officer at TVNZ, Holly Knill, Group Director, IP & Content Products at Foxtel, and Sam Hall, Chief Content & Commercial Officer at Fetch TV, we explored FTA / Pay-TV / SVOD …

Together with Kasia Jablonska of Endemol Shine Group, Francesco Denti, formerly of Fox Networks and now advising the Web Stars Channel Group in Italy, and Simon Murray from Digital TV Research, we explored the AVOD market opportunity, AVOD platforms, how commercial deals are structured, how data is used to assess and optimise how content is performing and the role in MCNs in creating sustainable AVOD businesses.

Our guest moderator, Ben Keen, was joined by Louis Kenna of Liontree Advisors, Mike LaSalle from Shamrock Capital Advisors and Timo Argillander of IPR.VC and together they discussed M&A deal flows, funding start-ups and new content, the prospects for global tech players making increasing investments in the TMT sector and whether the industry will inevitably emerge loaded with more debt than ever before.

Together with Simon Murray of Digital TV Research, Maria Rua Aguete of Omdia and Jonathan Broughton of Media Business Insight we talked about SVOD take-up, the average number of SVODs per household, changing consumer behaviours and the elasticity of viewer’s TV / SVOD spending compared to the rest of their entertainment budgets.

Together with Wim Ponnet of Endemol Shine, Emma Tibbetts, the former GM of UKTV Play and now founder of Chuck Data and Mike Sid of Whip Media Group, we talked about the making, selling and scheduling of content in this time of lockdowns and social distancing.