AVIA highlights regional resilience and local strength

The event showed that Asia accounted for 47% of global streaming subscriptions, more than the markets of the US, Western and Central Europe put together, with the top 15 Asian streamers boasting over 520 million subscriptions by the end of 2020. It also recalled that ownership of IP has thus become a key battleground for streamers in Asia with commissioning trends increasingly driven by streaming platforms and having a local voice with international audiences in mind increasingly important.

Yet local was also a key. indeed, as revealed by Felix To, chief of Viu Original, being local is exactly what has set the OTT provider apart from other streamers being based out of Asia. this commitment to the region has paid off, he said, with Viu currently Southeast Asia’s second largest streaming service by paid subscribers. Looking at the bigger picture as regards the future of local storytelling in the region, AVIA chief policy officer Celeste Campbell-Pitt said: “There can be no doubt that an increased focus on original content production that brings together Asian onscreen and offscreen talent to tell Asian stories is the way forward.” AVIA added that with OTT and connected TV (CTV) consumption growing globally, subscription video viewers in APAC are expected to hit 1 billion in 2021, and marketers are tapping into this opportunity by accelerating their spend from linear TV to video streaming.

AVIA also reported that the focus on content, and the consumers, continued to drive a lot of the discussions at the summit with a general view that the digital ecosystem has democratised content production and dissemination.

“We want to be transmission agnostic, technology agnostic. Our job is to put whatever content the consumers want to watch in front of them, in the simplest way possible,” said Euan Smith, group COO and CEO, TV, Astro.

Going forward, AVIA said that as technology evolves, the media industry continues to be transformed for consumers. Yet it warned that the industry needs to find what is most relevant to the end users. Relevance in a world of choice, based on data, is key. And throughout the conference, the message was clear. It is the era of convenience for the consumers as platforms, and experiences, converge with digital acceleration. Rapid TV News