Some sports are undoubtedly global leaders, with an audience to match. Then there are others, which enjoy immense popularity in certain markets but are less well known elsewhere. Ice Hockey, for instance, is a national obsession in Canada but is still relatively niche in the UK. Rugby has an estimated global following of 475 million people, but its popularity tends to be concentrated in specific regions. When it comes to building up a dedicated audience in new markets, there are several challenges that need to be overcome.
The OTT market is changing to put local content providers in the driving seat
Previously, specialist, regional and niche content providers had very few options when it came to monetizing their content. Try and deliver it themselves, and the results would often mean spiraling costs and limited functionality for their audience. Buddy up with a big player who’ll do the heavy lifting, but realize there is a limit to the rewards they would reap.
Visualon – Introducing a new IABM member
Tell us about the company – when it was founded, by whom and with what objective?
VisualOn was founded in 2003 by Dr. Yang Cai and Dr. Bill Lin in Silicon Valley to bring low-cost, high-quality, multimedia experience to more consumer devices through supporting the new video compression standard H.264 in software. It has since become the leading streaming media player solution provider most trusted by the top service providers in the world.
Convergence Forcing a Focus on Data
FAST. AVOD. SVOD. MVPD. vMVPD. OTA. These services represent the options available to content owners or aggregators to deliver entertainment, sports and news content from centralized hubs to individual consumers. Their goal is simple – expose and monetize their content libraries to as many consumers as possible. However, that doesn’t mean the consumer is top of mind when it comes to facilitating their journey to their content of choice.
Optimising Edits with Metadata
Few industries are as fast paced and highly pressurised as the media industry. What was already a competitive field has become even more so, as the demand for content has increased in-line with the explosion of OTT services. To manage this high volume of throughput, content supply chains have become more complex, with multiple teams all contributing towards content preparation.
Staking your fortune on FAST? Don’t neglect the data!
Linear TV isn’t dead, but the internet has changed it forever. At a time of global downturn, an increasing number of content owners are pinning their growth hopes on ad-funded live or VOD-to-live FAST channels. But drawing eyeballs and maximising ad revenues in this increasingly crowded marketplace will rely on more than just an EPG and good promos.
Insights From Next-Gen Tech Leaders: Richard Clarke
As head of content operations at global distributor Banijay Rights, Richard Clarke knows the importance of effective media operations management and the challenges arising from the industry’s ongoing migration to the cloud.
Greater than the sum of our parts
Almost six months after Take 1’s acquisition by Unicorn company, Verbit, Take 1 CEO, Louise Tapia, provides an insight into how the team is collaborating with their fellow media and entertainment sector specialists at sister company, VITAC, to provide end-to-end accessibility services.
Content Choice and Sustainability
In recent years, the choice of video services has multiplied, as large media organisations add a plus symbol to their established brands and roll out new platforms. In addition, many incumbents in the VOD space are now supplementing their main subscription models with AVOD options. In some cases, these ad-funded tiers will be differentiated with new content, but at the very least they will require new versions of the original media files with markers for ad insertion. Linear TV has not been left behind, evolving its offering with more content choice, and diversifying with themed FAST channels.
The Changing Face of Business Resilience
It’s almost a cliché to talk about how the last few years have changed live broadcasting.
Broadcasters kept going even though events were canceled, and companies like Dejero kept them on air producing great content. The need to shift working practices to distributed models where people could work from home came almost overnight.
We heard from many of our customers that they already had the capacity to handle remote workflows and connectivity with their existing Dejero solutions, but hadn’t had a reason to harness its full power until the pandemic.
From an overall business resilience perspective, we found these new ways of working provided new challenges and created a level of vigilance that we have never seen before. Resilience has always been a primary focus for broadcasters who demanded increasingly robust forms of business continuity to ensure they stay on air—or risk the loss of advertisers, audiences and, ultimately, revenue.