Silvia Werd Elías
Marketing Director, Jump Data-Driven Video
One of the constant challenges of OTT services is how to attract and acquire new subscribers while holding on to existing subscribers. Thanks to improvements in technology, user behavior can now be better forecasted and anticipated with help of predictive analytics, using advancements in ML and AI.
The world of OTT services is increasingly competitive, as more and more companies adopt OTT to deliver their product. Platforms such as Disney + and HBO Max have recently taken this step to compete with big names like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu, platforms that have dominated the video-on-demand subscription market for years.
How does one compete in the OTT services market?
There are now greater opportunities to contend with giants like Netflix and Amazon Prime than ever before. To a large extent this phenomenon has been brought on by recent events such as the closure of movie theaters and performance venues or the suspension of sporting events and even concerts, creating a gap in both challenges and opportunities for OTT services.
One of the keys to being successful in OTT services is the ability to deliver engaging and relevant content while fully understanding your audience. For an OTT service to take root, it must be able to accurately predict user behavior, generate personalized content, reduce acquisition costs and increase CLTV or customer lifetime value by 100 %. These are all goals that can be achieved through AI applications and smart data optimization.
At Jump Data Driven Video, our expertise is in the use and management of intelligent data to improve your understanding of your user base. We can provide you with a set of specially-designed data management tools to optimize your OTT service through personalization, increased user engagement, customer retention and acquisition, along with other strategies to shape the key differentiators that will propel you to the next level.
Acquire and retain subscribers to your OTT service
The main success of OTT services is in the ability to offer content that maintains user interest, thereby improving their participation and interaction with the platform, and to increase the number of new subscribers while keeping the churn rate down.
Jump helps you understand more accurately the status of your video service by giving you a view into the journey your customers take. This will allow you to improve your marketing strategies and offer personalized and relevant content to generate an impact on the specific groups of users you want to target at a specific time with a personalized offer.
What follows are the main performance indicators to quantify and measure the effectiveness of actions and strategies to compete in the OTT services market.
Acquisition
This process is basically focused on meeting customer expectations. In the past, OTT services lived by the rule that it costs five times more to acquire a new customer than to maintain an existing one, but this rule no longer holds true because of predictive analytics that determine future behavior through the application of AI and ML.
A fundamental acquisition strategy is to connect with the customer and give it a value in both the present and the future, known as Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV). Video industry OTT services have recently seen a notable increase in the number of new subscriptions, and this trend is expected to continue over the next few years.
According to the Parks association, one of the main factors that drives new subscriptions is to offer content that the customer wants to see, be it a variety of programs or a specific program. Another factor to success is to offer a free trial month. Customers tend to keep a service because they like the content it offers.
Here are some more factors to evaluate in the acquisition phase of the OTT service.
Acquisition of services
Quantifying the number of new subscribers is important, but other factors must also be taken into account, such as the acquisition of services, knowing how and when new customers sign up, as well as the type of service or package subscribed. This will help you forecast your customer’s value, revenue, and future plans.
Service discovery
This phase is key to knowing how your subscribers reach your service, to help you determine and implement the most viable channels and methods you should invest in to get more subscribers.
UAP
When we talk about UAP, we refer to the performance of the user´s attribution, the capacity and amount of subscription that will allow us to determine if the acquisition channels are paying off, and thus implement specific campaigns, managing to personalize the acquisition.
Engagement or commitment
This evaluates new customer behavior and how they may commit to the service for as long as possible. This can only be achieved by enhancing their experience of interaction with the OTT services by offering relevant, personalized content. One way to achieve this is with content recommendations that make it easy to find titles and allow the customer to discover new programs.
Tracking this behavior will help you to predict the customer’s future actions and offer an individualized experience. The implementation of AI is really useful in this area because it allows you to segment your users based on their preferences and level of participation, facilitating the creation of groups of users based on the type of content they have in common, and creating specific and personalized campaigns aimed at any target audience.
Jump’s prediction system will help you identify which of your potential customers may make a long-term commitment and become a regular customer of the service, and at the same time predict which users are most likely to convert, offering you an effective, solid conversion strategy with immediate and concrete actions.
Retention
There are many reasons why someone may abandon an OTT service. With Jump’s strategic prediction system you can better evaluate retention performance indicators and other KPIs that will help you create the strategies to improve retention. Knowing your user makes it easier for you to accurately predict the most likely moment they may decide to leave the service, allowing you to generate a quick response that reverses the situation, which in turn will increase CLTV.
The more committed a user is, the greater the CLTV. This can produce a notable impact on ROI, which is why user retention is one of the main factors of success for OTT services.
