Broadcasters and a whole range of OTT video providers can accelerate revenue growth if they build flexibility into their monetisation strategies. They have to be prepared to shape their offerings to maximise the value of different audience expectations and content types. Otherwise, they will struggle to adapt to changing market conditions or lack the agility to capture new monetisation opportunities.
As each monetisation model can differ based on content type and audience, the focus must be on deploying management platforms that support hybrid monetisation. The challenge for many providers lies in aligning monetisation models with consumer expectations. Failing to understand the demographics and specifics within each market poses a great risk on the path to monetisation success.
Providers must understand their audiences and align them with their ambitions. This starts with a hybrid monetisation strategy. Done effectively, these models can accelerate growth in new markets and enable video providers to seamlessly adapt their content to local market conditions.
The Barriers to Successful Monetisation
A key fact very often overlooked is that monetisation is directly related to customer experience. Demands vary between markets and without a hybrid monetisation strategy, providers are putting themselves at risk of wrongly targeting audiences and losing customers. Monetisation models are pivotal in whether a consumer continues their journey with that provider. There are three main challenges that they come up against:
- Providing Different Models for Different Markets – Aligning users’ preferences across different markets is important when it comes to choosing the right monetisation model.
- Providing Different Models for Different Content – Creating different packages based on the type of content and how it can be monetised. Paid packages for premium content. Freemium option for limited access to your library or pay-per-view for that one-time event.
- Providing Different Payment Methods for Different Countries – Choosing the right payment gateways for a smooth payment process, including the ability to support multiple currencies, as where debit or credit cards are common in some countries, they may be rarely used in others.
These challenges call for a new level of agility in the offerings of providers. They need to be able to align users’ preferences depending on the market, create packages based on content type and allow for differing payment methods.
Ultimately, finding the right monetisation model is fundamental to generating revenue for sustainable growth. Without this, by misaligning content with models, customer engagement will be harmed causing a knock-on effect through to revenue and marketing return on investment (ROI).
Providers need to engage audiences every step of their journey and that includes the monetisation phase.
Combining Business Intelligence with Hybrid Monetisation
The answer for providers lies in deploying a hybrid monetisation strategy that works. Not only this but by using a strong management platform that can support that process. By doing so, providers gain a level of adaptability to continually shape offerings dependent on markets, audiences and content all without the need to integrate multiple complicated solutions.
Managing multiple models is costly, time-consuming and highly complex. Hybrid monetisation combines these models into one single solution, removing those challenges and making adapting to differing customer needs across markets seamless.
For platforms looking to build a large user base, Ad-Based-Video-On-Demand (AVOD) may be the perfect option, with Free Ad-Supported Linear Streaming TV (FAST) on the linear content environment. For platforms offering premium content and live events, Subscription-Video-On-Demand (SVOD) and Transactional-Video-On-Demand (TVOD) are the best solutions. Going for one type over the other automatically excludes audiences and puts a limit on content and thus revenue.
This highlights the importance of the combination within a hybrid model. To further shape customer experiences that drive retention, a platform needs to offer multiple payment options. By supporting targeting, partnering and adaptability, providers can be less rigid in their approach by allowing offerings to be developed to match consumer expectations with the freedom to change these over time.
What can’t be forgotten in the background of all of this is effective business intelligence and analytics. With visibility into audience behaviours, viewing habits, and content profitability, providers can continually evolve their offerings to keep viewers loyal and engaged. By deploying a hybrid model alongside business intelligence capabilities, providers put themselves in the best position to retain existing and capture new audiences to generate more revenue.
Prioritising Customer Experience Starts with Monetisation
Service providers need to become more flexible if they wish to capture new audiences and revenue. With a hybrid model functioning all within a single platform, providers have the ability to experiment with different models, cater content for different geographies and manage consumer expectations.
Underpinned by analytics and business intelligence capabilities, providers can maximise the value of their content and continually evolve that to generate sustainable revenue. Hybrid monetisation opens up the opportunity to target more precisely, emerge across new markets and drive scalability in terms of revenue. All it takes is the right platform.
Wissam Sabbagh
Wissam has over 19 Years of technology experience launching several technology start-ups across different verticals and markets.
He is the Founder and Group CEO at Alpha Technology, a holding that combines 9 tech companies active in different areas such as streaming, content, artificial intelligence, NLP, enterprise CRM / ERP solutions, research, and others, including Mangomolo.
Sabbagh founded Mangomolo in 2010, to disrupt the OTT video and broadcast space. Since the launch, he has been on a mission to make it simple for the largest broadcasters through to niche content creators to automate processes, monetise content and grow their audiences.
