OTT MEDIA: PAVING A NEW WAY OF MARKETING

The rising clout of digitalization has shaken the conventional pattern of conducting the business and with no differences; media business has embraced the changes. Starting from the methodology of producing the content to delivering to the audience, everything has been metamorphosed with the rapidly evolving technology as well as the changing taste & preferences of customers. Concurrently the number of customers & market players are exponentially increasing and the task of brand positioning is becoming more difficult for marketers. Marketing mix aims at bundling the factors that can be controlled by a firm to influence consumers for experiencing its products. As the Nextgen marketer, the approach of informing, persuading and reminding about particular goods or services has been changed drastically with the change in lifestyle & product attributes. The traditional pattern of marketing requires a perfect mix of the modern approach to reach plausible customers. Within the busy lifestyle, the customer touch points are slowly diverting towards the tech-savvy platforms. The affordability to access such platforms and improved connectivity support this transformation. Through OTT media the promotional efforts can be strategically designed and targeted to the right customer at the right time. Measuring audience engagement with advertising is more prominent in the case of OTT than conventional advertising through TV advertisement & OOH advertising. Moreover promoting through OTT can put an intense impact because of the content and positioning the message. Also, it can help the marketer in understanding the entire journey of the customer and derive strategic implications to improve product performance.

OTT Platforms Scenario

The OTT content is gaining momentum across the globe because of the improved connectivity and accessibility to smart gadgets. The busy lifestyle and a quest for change in the engagement with video content are driving the audience towards the OTT media. As the meaning suggests OTT is independent of the typical transmission mechanism. Leading names like Amazon Prime & Netflix stikes into our mind whenever we take up about OTT media services. From the introductory business line of online bookselling and DVD by mail rental service, both the players forrayed into digital video distribution in the early 21st century. By 2012 they had created a decent share in the markets of US, UK, Canada. Sweden, Germany and other Nordic countries. Gradually Amazon Prime & Netflix expanded to other developing with their region-specific marketing strategies. To captivate the increasing demand new OTT content players emerged and some existing television media players diversified their offerings into OTT media services. According to a report by eMarketer, 10.2% of the global population has access to OTT media content and the subscription rate is growing by 24.0%. In line with global trends, the consumption of the content on digital platforms is increasing in India with more than 560mn internet users. Though Amazon and Netflix hold a major portion of the market, other players like ALT Balaji, Viu, BigFlix etc are coming up. Popular television media operators like Viacom, Sony entertainment, Star, ZEE entertainment etc have entered into OTT media services through VOOT, ZEE5, Hotstar, Eros Now and other subscription-based platforms. The main source of revenue is generated through subscription fees. For the developing-market, the OTT players have designed their pricing strategies with an eye to lifetime profitability from the subscribers and aim at increasing the subscriber base. The main focus of these OTT content players is producing original content with the touch of regional preference. Each OTT content has its specific objective of attracting as well as retaining audiences. These days leading movie production houses are releasing their movies exclusively on OTT platforms and the response as well as engagement quite satisfactory. On the other hand, it is becoming a marvellous platform to integrate brands which attempts at reaching the audience with a similar buyer persona. OTT media is getting wider acceptance across the regions and demographics because of creative and region-specific content. Using the analytics, the content creators are able to gauge the audience reaction and deliver the content with a great watching experience. Considering the booming demand in the Urban area, the OTT players are taking the assistance of Out of Home(OOH) advertising in prime locations of metro cities.

With the evolution of technology and ease of accessing the internet, Indian OTT market has flourished. The major players follow the various business model in order to cope up with their competitors. A key element that plays a major role in the success of OTT is that these major players would also likely concur with is that when a market is changing as rapidly as today’s OTT landscape, hence the business plan is getting strong in technical agility and operational flexibility. The media business has flourished with a combination of transactional business models and free, ad-based, subscriptions. In addition to it, many of the most successful OTT services have amalgamated the available existing model, layering new models on top of the available existing services in order to increase revenue growth. These business models have been broadly classified into 4 types: Platform, Processor, Performer and Player. These fall along with the scales of business integration scale, using content directly to generate revenue and simple support to other marketing and communication systems as a contributor.

The continued advancement of technology and certain new acronyms like IoT (the Internet of Things) being a master of our lives, it becomes really hard for consumers to really understand what a product does, especially if that product is software. On top of that, consumers often prefer the tangibility of a product and they want to see and how something works versus just read about it. This gives huge scope for the market players to make a huge business of out of this. Hence if the content is marketed right like a video on- demand content, it can be boon for a company. Undoubtedly the future of OTT Media marketing is effulgent and it is the chore of the marketer to leverage the best out of it.

NOTE: The views expressed here are those of the author's and not necessarily represent or reflect the views of DOT Club as a whole