by Agustín Genovese, CEO of Genomedios.
Another edition of NATPE has ended in Miami, with 2020 destined to be a year of many novelties in worldwide television.
The major mergers between Viacom and CBS, Time Warner and AT&T, and Disney and Fox; along with the launch of new OTT streaming platforms, both paid and free, promise to drastically change viewer consumption options in 2020.
Many in the television industry see 2020 as the second wave in the streaming revolution, with more competition in a very dynamic market. This war for consumer attention will continue to push for engaging content.
Expectations are set for the launch of new OTT platforms that will continue to consolidate streaming, and shape what appears to be a sure path for the future of content consumption.
One of the novelties presented at NATPE was Advertising supported Video On Demand (AVOD), which is an alternative to Suscription Video On Demand (SVOD) services – like Netflix. AVOD departs from SVOD in that consumers are offered ads, instead of paying a subscription fee. This AVOD model represents a novelty in the streaming ecosystem.
According to Nielsen, 60% of Americans suscribe to more than one paid suscripcion service and 93% plan to increase or maintain those services. Keep in mind that in 2020 there are more SVODs then ever with Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Apple TV+, and Amazon Prime Video to name a few; but on top of this, new SVODs such as HBO Max – and even the promised disruptive Quibi – are in the pipeline.
All these SVODs has lead consumers to become diagnosed with, Subscription Fatigue. Even for consumers that have cut the cord, subscribing to multiple SVODs starts to add up to the price of cable. Consumers will have to remember what SVOD offers the content they want to watch and deal with more bills at the end of the month.
Peacock of NBCUniversal, Pluto TV of ViacomCBS, or Tubi are some of the AVOD´s that promise to revolutionize the OTT market. They offer an alternative way for watching great quality content for free. We will also have to see what role Google plays with YouTube, and Facebook with Watch, in this context, which investors see as an unexplored form of streaming television.
TV has traditionally financed the production of content with advertising and these platforms represent a continuity of the traditional TV business model. Advertisers are off platforms such as Netflix, although perhaps over the months, we will see this change.
What we are sure of is that the tendency is that the big companies will be bigger and bigger. The strengthening of traditional content producers like Disney, ViacomCBS or Warner Media to compete with the digital giants FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google) will continue. We will also see more alliances and mergers, with the end of the Peak TV era far from getting there soon.
The battle of the OTT´s has already started in this 2020 and the sure winner is the consumer. Content remains the king , and viewers will end up benefiting the most.
