IBC 2024: The Future of Content Viewing
Women in Streaming Media presented a fascinating panel on “The Future of Content Viewing” at IBC 2024 that kicked off with some striking data, courtesy of Omdia Senior Research Director Maria Rua Aguete. With the M & E market poised to top $1 trillion in overall revenue in 2024 and 61% of that coming from advertising, “everyone knows you can’t make money just from subs anymore.”
Online video accounts for $392 billion of that $1 trillion total, with traditional TV at $392 billion and games at $220 billion. Cinema revenue trails far behind at $44 billion.
Meanwhile, YouTube has established itself as the most-watched content platform in the media ecosystem.
U.S. viewers watched 107 billion hours of video on YouTube in 2023, compared with 61 billion for TikTok, 38 billion for Netflix, and 35 billion for Facebook. YouTube is also #1 in the UK, Germany, Spain, Brazil, and South Korea.
Consequently, she said, “You need to be involved with these platforms if you want to make money.”
“What does it mean for SVOD services or traditional broadcasters that YouTube has so many viewers?” asked Viaplay EVP Vanda Rapti. “Depending on the genre, you need to go where your audience will be.”
Shoring Up Short-Form Content and Targeting Gen Z
Another surprising stat Aguete reported was that 21% of viewers aged 18–24 watch content on smart TVs. “It’s a myth that they watch only on mobile.”
Because the categories don’t break down as simply as we might imagine, it’s important for content providers to look more deeply into questions like, “What types of content are most popular across different devices? How do content preferences differ based on screen size and content length?”
63% of YouTube viewing happens on smartphones, compared to 30% for Netflix. The numbers essentially reverse themselves for built-in Smart TV apps, with 58% for Netflix and 27% for YouTube. The numbers for tablets are roughly comparable (20% YouTube, 17% Netflix), and the margin widens a bit for PCs and laptops (34% YouTube, 21% Netflix).
One key takeaway from the session was how much premium content companies have traditionally undervalued short-form content and how important it is to pursue a sound short-form strategy that includes putting the right content on the right platforms.
“YouTube has the highest amount of views,” said Aguete. “But if you put everything on YouTube, it won’t make money.”
“Keep your content short and relevant,” said said Ateliere SVP, Enterprise Solutions Architecture Zeenal Thakare. “With new platforms, lean on new content to drive reach.”
Content Distribution and Redistribution
It’s also important for content providers to identify and make the most of redistribution opportunities.
Reelgood VP of Customer Experience Shuchi Mathur discussed how even top-tier premium content providers like Netflix are “constantly evolving their system,” citing the company’s recognition that they needed to scale Squid Game for a non-Korean audience as one example. “When writers’ strikes happen and you’re not creating new content, you say, ‘What can we do?’ and look into content redistribution. But don’t redistribute content just for the sake of revenue generation.”
The Role of AI
AI will play a tremendous role in content viewing and its monetization in the years to come, factoring into areas that range from dubbing, subtitling, and localization to discovery and addressing the persistent problem of “content fatigue.”
“Dubbing and subtitling are a fantastic use case for AI,” said Mathur. “Without AI, it was very expensive to translate content to different languages.” As a result, AI has made it much easier to distribute content in countries with “less popular languages” that may have been left out before.
“AI plays a great role across the distribution process,” said Thakare. “Understanding your content better is a huge revenue driver for companies. On the distribution end, it helps in finding out how you can distribute content and keep costs down.”
Mathur commented on the essential role AI and metadata have come to play in easing, personalizing, and enhancing the content recommendation process for streaming entertainment viewers. “Using metadata for personalization is more important than ever,” she said. For “personalized recommendations,” she continues, “you can explain why a piece of content would appeal to different viewers for different reasons. There are so many ways to tag a piece of content, and AI has made that easier.”
“Not working with AI is not an option,” Thakare added. “Being very intentional in how you work with AI is going to be essential for monetization.”
Next-Gen Sports
The panel also addressed the question, “What will define the next generation of sports?”
One of the great pain points in sports streaming in 2024, according to Aguete, is tracking which sports events are available on which channels, and watching the subscription costs add up. “It’s very confusing for consumers to find out how many services they need to subscribe to” in order to view the matches they want to see.
Sports licensing also has an outsized impact on subscription fees. “It’s very different what a service can charge if it offers entertainment versus sports,” said Rapti. It has also become extremely difficult even to find all of a specific sports league’s games on a single service. “Some years, one service had all Premier League rights. Now it’s 2 or 3.”
Building Value for Services and Brands
Fragmentation notwithstanding, not surprisingly, the key to building value into services and monetizing them, whether through subscription, advertising, or more likely both, comes down to two things: content and data.
“When they watch more, they stay more, and they value the service more,” said Rapti.
When it comes to selling ads and justifying higher ad rates, data is the straw that stirs the drink. “The data we collect is how audiences correlate to your brand,” said Thakare. It’s critical, she argued, “to understand who is watching. Understanding brand affinity is key to knowing how you can monetize your content,” said Thakare. “Leveraging data to drive revenue is key. Understand who is going to watch so you can charge more for the spots.”
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