Value added digital content – multi-channel platforms

The world of content consumption patterns has changed continuously and now drastically post the pandemic.

Digital platforms bring together vast communities of customers and partners, including developers. They create markets of enormous scale and efficiency. They enable new levels of collaboration between companies from different industry sectors that can result in the conception of entirely new products and services.

The linear platforms are merging with the OTT platforms, as far as the final viewership by a consumer is analyzed. The same TV with linear cable and DTH will have a Firestick or any other smart source for internet-based contents with the various branded and non-branded digital OTT platforms!

Value-added content can be anything – conveying a message, communication, the prevailing news and environment of any genre from real, fake, political, entertainment news, travel and geographic news, and infotainment. It is taking a new shape from short films to international dramas, and daily development of content in the social media. Hence, value-added content today is any video, audio, photo, infographic, meme, white paper, blog, comment, and emoji. Value-added content is also an original, exclusive content, or information that consumers may not easily get in the traditional platforms of satellite broadcasting and theatrical films.

Digitization has fundamentally disrupted how audio-visual content is produced, distributed, and consumed. This technological development has culminated in a vast array of digital content subscription platforms (DCSP), all the names are well branded and part of the content consumption masses. All OTT platforms, whether large or small, initial pioneers and same model platforms are buzzing around and absorbing a majority stake in movie consumption. TRAI in India defined the DPO fiber cable, DTH, IPTV, and HITS just few years ago. The landscape of digital consumption has massively changed since then and it goes on reinventing and re-innovating.

DCSPs must provide content that inspires new customers to join, and retains existing customers vital to the platform and prevents users from switching to competitors or churning the service. However, determining content that satisfies these requirements and, thus generating value for these OTT platforms is challenging. Many of the recent research studies have shown that most platforms currently rely on rather simplistic approaches, such as monitoring the intensity per cost of newly acquired customers to calculate acquisition content value.

In any digital platform new services being added all the time and the subsequent increase in competition, the content strategy of video-on-demand, value-added content for service providers plays a pivotal role in their success. Therefore, the constitution of the assortment in terms of size, topicality, and diversification plays a major role for the business model of subscription services for all digital platforms. This is where the genre-wise, possibly ad-free value-added contents become the need of the times now!

In India too, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way we consume digital value add contents of different genre over different digital platforms. With people confined to their homes, our social lives have moved online and entertainment consumption has risen notably within the at-home segments of television, online gaming, and OTT. On the other hand, movie theaters, theme parks, museums, and other external consumption models are suffering as physical distancing norms and lockdowns are being enforced.

Content value as the total value contribution of a content piece generates through cash flow on a certain digital platform. So the following can be important:

Revenue streams focus on optimization and multiple sources. Digital platforms generate their revenues from combining up to three revenue streams: subscription fees through acquisition and retention, cross-sales, and ad revenues. A content-valuation framework, thus needs to be able to not only account for these particularities but also measure how a content piece affects each revenue stream separately.

Heterogeneity of platforms and innovative platforms and resulting contingencies: A valuation framework also needs to be able to account for platform-specific heterogeneity and incorporate these contingencies into the valuation process.

Consumer pitch-direct and indirect value contribution: A consumer’s decision on whether to join a platform and engage with its content follows an elaborated choice process related to the customer journey; therefore, a content-valuation framework needs to account not only for the individual contribution of a content piece on each of the digital platform’s own aggregated mindset metrics on the path from awareness to satisfaction but also for the indirect effects along the customer journey.

Change is constant-dynamic and time-varying effects. A content-valuation framework needs to be able to account for time-varying effects and to incorporate the whole path from attribution to performance (metrics), as well as the dynamics within this process (example, lagged advertising effects), along the customer journey.

Content heterogeneity. From an economic perspective, content (example, a movie) is a bundle of contingencies assigned to a specific piece.

Some of the likely trends of higher viewership for the value-added contents for 2021 will come from adhering and following the trends: local and regional/vernacular content; growing video commerce: uniqueness of influencer marketing; expansion of connected device use in the traditional linear platforms; and customer segmentation with deep insights is must for all value-added content providers and the digital platforms.

Ad monetization for platforms. The surge in digitalization over the last few years has brought significant growth and a host of new opportunities in digital advertising. The growth of digital advertising has been exponential in terms of its impact, spreading to new platforms every day, and relevant as an increasing number of brands try to get the limited consumer attention. For maximization and monetization of digital ads, leveraging digital advertisement tools for effective customer segmentation is important.

Growing digital adoption has brought more and more consumers online, making it easier for brands to understand their preferences. Digital ad tools use consumer data to help brands gain visibility into their preferences, customize, and personalize content, and ensure their content reaches the relevant audience. In India too, the surge in digitalization over the last few years has brought significant growth and a host of new opportunities in digital advertising. The growth of digital advertising has been exponential in terms of its impact, spreading to new platforms every day.

Researchers suggest that the content consumption over digital platforms has doubled during the pandemic and only seems to be increasing post pandemic. Where normally people consumed content for over 3 hours have now been getting used to 6 hours’ worth content in a day. According to an international research, the surge in content consumption is partly driven by a big uplift in the use of connected TV devices (CTV), with almost half of consumers (44%) using CTV devices more. Some 48 percent of those surveyed also said they were using social media platforms more.

From content creation through distribution and validation, M&E firms and more particularly the value-added content are often expected to increase their dependence on technology to form value efficiencies and levy opportunities.

The uncertainty of this pandemic has only shown in the digital content and entertainment world that the strongest survived. As we move on to live with pandemic and gradually in the post pandemic situation, with the new innovation in technology, people talent, and value-added contents, we will witness the new normal of content monetization and loyal consumers all set to pay for more digitally available content, products. Long live the value-added contents in all digital platforms!