How OTT is Redefining Content Consumption By Vishal Pratap Singh

How OTT is Redefining Content Consumption

Vishal Pratap Singh | Wednesday, 14 July 2021, 03:30 IST

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Over The Top or OTT services are all set to take the web platform by storm. The major factors responsible for this are better internet connectivity, inexpensive data plans and price reduction in smartphones which will take forward the popularity of this platform. Emerging trends, better subscription plans, variety of content for every audience, improved streaming services etc. are the responsible factors for the popularity of OTT. “The media and entertainment industry is expected to grow at an annual rate of over 10 per cent to reach 55 billion dollar by 2024,” says PwC India.

Current Trends in the Market

Most of the people have now started spending more time on digital platforms. 2020 became a year when more and more people came onto the digital ecosystem, as a result of being stuck at home during the lockdown. Due to the second wave of pandemic, the situation again shifted to the time where people are again forced to spend most of their time at home. Therefore, a further boom in the OTT market can be expected in the coming days.

Technological advances in the picture and sound quality coupled with a reduction in the price of Smart TVs and a rise in disposable income has made these Smart TVs an important part in every middle class family. As a result, the ability of these TVs to stream OTT content enabled the Indian urban household to get an immersive OTT viewing experience, something that the smartphone lacked.

Another advantage is that many telecom operators and ISPs are also bundling OTT services as part of their offerings to capitalize on this trend. This has led to the emergence of the CTV or “Connected TV” with Amazon Firestick, AppleTV etc.  According to an IBEF report, the OTT sector in India saw a 30 per cent rise in the number of paid subscribers, from 22.2 million to 29.0 million between March and July 2020.

Owing to the fact that multiplexes were shut for months, many platforms also started launching movies directly on digital. This has also been an important year where international content has gained massive traction across markets. With ZEE5 and other OTT platforms offering dubbed and subtitled content, enabling people in one geography to seamlessly access stories from any other content is now truly democratized.

Providing Diversified Content

An important key to ace the trend is to have an in-depth understanding of the traditions and culture of the viewers. Regional content is all set to rule in the coming year. Affordable data traffics have aided the growth of regional content by enabling internet penetration even in rural areas. To stay in the game OTT content providers are constantly trying to stay relevant, build affinities and cater to the differentiated entertainment demand of the consumers. There are 30+ OTT players in India in different languages targeting different audiences depending on what content they roll out. 40 per cent of viewership on OTT platforms is mainly regional content.

Challenges in OTT market

Today viewers have no longer patience to browse through hundreds of channels to find something they may like watching. It is found that the modern consumer wants to get the required content without much browsing. So, this makes it important for OTT platforms to enhance their content discovery functionality. These platforms should leverage some applications that can identify the pattern or preferences of content watched by viewer. Providing good content thoroughly is the biggest challenge faced by OTTs. If this platform will fail to provide the content desired by viewers, they cannot be successful in the long terms. The only way to overcome this challenge is by providing niche content.

The Indian OTT market is not easy to understand, that’s why in past Netflix has suffered failure in India. Another major issue is piracy that has been bothering the OTT ecosystem for a long time. Video piracy tends to eat a major chunk of streaming services’ revenue. It is believed that advanced security integrations can help the platforms to curb the piracy threat.

OTT platforms deal with high resolution video data. This means there is a need for greater processing power, especially for compression. This further means a need for more fibre capacity, which can range from 10 Gb to 100 Gb. And this further comes with the demand for more energy. Higher capacity fiber connections means special IP switches are required that could easily handle high line data rates.   

The Future Ahead

In order to create engaging experience of viewers, OTT players are experimenting with various forms of in-app interactive activities such as contests or games that can be played simultaneously while watching live video content. The OTT landscape is expected to get hyper competitive in next 4-5 years and the OTT service providers will strive to emerge as the preferred platform among customers. It will be interesting to observe the different business strategies that will be adopted by the OTT service providers to attract more customers.  

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