As the OTT media space becomes increasingly competitive, industry professionals at the ASBU BroadcastPro Summit discussed ways to improve viewer engagement and monetisation to stay in the race.
As in other industries, broadcast professionals see a role for artificial intelligence (AI) – including generative AI applications such as ChatGPT – in enriching and personalising content while also optimising costs. However, there’s more to engagement and monetisation in broadcast than AI. The ASBU BroadcastPro Summit in November tackled a vast number of subjects in a panel discussion on OTT. The annual summit typically reflects on trending issues and is designed to help MENA media professionals forge a future-ready blueprint for the entertainment, broadcast and satellite industries.
The day’s first panel discussion brought together Karim Morgan, Head of Digital Technology at Asharq News; Nadine Samra, Chief Business Officer, OTT at Weyyak; Pankaj Krishna, founder & CEO, Chrome Data Analytics & Media; and Zahra Zayat, Chief Commercial Officer, evision | e& life. Guy Spivack, Director of Sales at Comcast Technology Solutions, moderated.
As the industry navigates an evolving landscape hit by production costs and increasing competition, it must strike a balance between embracing digital transformation and technological advances, fostering a customer-centric culture, and nurturing talent capable of leveraging new technologies for sustainable growth in the broadcasting domain.
Large-scale transformation expands platform variety
Panellists got the conversation started with a discussion of these challenges – and how, in many cases, they represent new opportunities.
“The whole industry is going through massive transformation with different monetisation opportunities coming in the OTT space. We’ve also evolved from DTH to IPTV to subscription-based services and now ad-supported models,” said e&’s Zahra Zayat.
OTT streaming services can support other core businesses, she said, citing international models integrating OTT with e-commerce, though the region has yet to see a true success story on this front. “We’ve seen new models supporting cryptocurrencies and watch-and-earn mechanisms that are linked back to crypto.”
Earlier this month, the broadcaster launched its own free-to-watch streaming platform, STARZ ON, offering regional, Hollywood, Bollywood, English, Arabic and French content to Android and iOS users in the Middle East North and West Africa. It straddles the line between advertising-based video on demand (AVOD) and free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST). The key differentiator of the new service, Zayat said, is that it aims to serve all demographics.
Ad-supported broadcasting remains essential in the MENA region
FAST and AVOD promise to have a significant impact in the region. Audiences are familiar with and accept FTA products, said Nadine Samra. “We are used to FTA for a very long time.”
Weyyak, established in 2017, provides its content for free, backed by advertising support – although the brand does have a small subscriber base, Samra added. The brand targets the global Arabic audience in the same way as its sister brand, Zee5, caters to South Asians worldwide.
While monetising AVOD can be difficult, a key aspect of Weyyak’s approach involves collaboration with other entities, including telcos and TV channels, aiming to offer diverse content targeted at the Arabic audience. “Anything that would work well for the Arabic audience, we’re going to do … anything that will make us a one-stop place for them, we’re going to do that. And we’re happy to explore new options.”
At the same time, producers are reluctant to offer new content to AVOD players first. Advertising-supported services become a third or fourth window because producers want to maximise other revenue channels first. But for AVOD players, it can be costly to produce their own content. Hybrid formats can work, but locking down sponsors remains a tried-and-tested route to monetising original content.
“The key to monetisation is ensuring you’ve got enough sponsorship revenue booked and guaranteed before you even commit to the production … [as well as] seeing how we can make the content travel internationally” – Zahra Zayat, Chief Commercial Officer, evision | e&Life
“The key to monetisation is ensuring you’ve got enough sponsorship revenue booked and guaranteed before you even commit to the production … [as well as] seeing how we can make the content travel internationally,” Zayat said. “It can be exclusive in the region, but travelling internationally and guaranteeing revenue against it, in addition to sponsorship revenue, will get you the ROI required from year one.”
Although FAST has been seen as the best option for monetising direct-to-consumer streaming services, broadcasters often don’t have the required levels of inventory, Guy Spivack said.
Competing with big tech for advertiser dollars
At the same time, FAST and AVOD channels must compete for advertising with major platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and TikTok. On this point, Pankaj Krishna delved into the dynamics of content scheduling and commercial breaks in the context of linear broadcasting and VOD platforms.
“It all depends on audience insights,” he said, underscoring the role of data in understanding audience behaviour and preferences to optimise airtime effectively. For example, after analysing viewing patterns, he learned not to run wildlife programming at lunchtime. “You don’t want to see snakes … when you’re eating.”
Likewise, with high levels of competition in the broadcast space, FAST platforms must weigh the odds when it comes to the timing of commercial breaks – but also around determining programming times. “It’s important to decide whether your primetime show starts at 9pm or at 8:59pm. That makes a huge difference,” he said.
Over time, viewership patterns become apparent and broadcasters can take advantage of audience migration. In fact, big data can help predict optimal break times, helping broadcasters increase revenues without reducing break duration. “It’s all about managing audiences,” Krishna said.
Data analytics supports audience targeting
Success lies in understanding audience preferences and utilising data to dynamically deliver content in real time, Zayat remarked. She said big data allows content to be positioned strategically for users and enables targeted advertising based on user needs and preferences.
“If you truly understand what people want to watch and read the data, and you’re able to deliver content on your FAST channels in a dynamic way that addresses the needs of that user in real time, then that’s a true success story. Because this will allow you to position that content at the right time at the right moment in front of the user who wants to watch that content at that time, and target them with smart targeted ads. So it’s really the power of data and the tech behind it.”
“All I feed the system is a simple script, and I get a full news bulletin covering exactly what I have in that script” – Karim Morgan, Head of Digital Technology, Asharq News
However, data and technology must be complemented by inventory, said Samra, describing herself as a data technology person and a computer engineer. Increasing inventory improves market positioning, allowing increased sales to clients, in turn generating greater revenue. FAST can enhance inventory through the creation of digital channels with space for new ad placements. With more content, users consume more.
Weyyak is therefore establishing partnerships with entities such as Dubai TV, Rotana and OTTera to bring their channels – and premium inventory – to the platform.
Transformative impact of AI visible at every level
Over the course of the discussion, AI came up again and again. As in every other business sector, AI will have a transformative impact on how broadcasters do business. Developments have come thick and fast over the past year, and the technology has been likened to the steam engine in the first industrial revolution. Generative AI, in particular, presents broadcasters with avenues for innovation and differentiation.
At the top of the value chain, AI could soon change how content is produced. The economics-focused channel Asharq News is already experimenting with AI to generate an entire news bulletin from a script in plain text. “All I feed the system is a simple script, and I get a full news bulletin covering exactly what I have in that script,” said Karim Morgan.
Such a feed could complement a human presenter, speeding up production while cutting costs.
How that might play out for longer-form content remains to be seen, Morgan admitted.
“Anything that would work well for the Arabic audience, we’re going to do … anything that will make us a one-stop place for them, we’re going to do that. And we’re happy to explore new options” – Nadine Samra, Chief Business Officer, OTT, Weyyak
Perhaps more interesting is the way AI can help personalise content, making it more relevant to specific audiences. In this context, Krishna reminded the audience of Cadbury’s award-winning post-Covid ad campaign. The confectionery brand teamed up with Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan to create personalised advertisements for thousands of small retailers, using machine learning. By directing people to the nearest store, the campaign helped more than 200,000 shops struggling in the wake of the pandemic, a feat that won it the Creative Effectiveness Grand Prix in the Market Disruption category at the Cannes Lions International Festival this year.
“With AI, any retailer who was willing to buy Cadbury’s products would get a free commercial. And imagine getting a commercial for a retailer running a business of a few hundred dollars being endorsed by India’s biggest star,” he said. At the same time, he acknowledged the potential for harm. “There’s a lot of controversy obviously now, where you’ve got some deep fakes going around on the net, which is the bad part about it. But the good part is AI can be used hugely to impact markets.”
Streamlining the value chain
In the trenches, AI offers value enhancements by way of dubbing and subtitling.
“Subtitling and dubbing is the second-most expensive budget that I have after the production,” explained Samra. “So if I manage to reduce my costs there, that would be amazing. I think going forward within the next few years, we will start seeing good implementations of subtitling using application programming interfaces (APIs). And on the dubbing front as well.”
Such developments could make a business impact within the next two years, or even sooner, added Zayat.
E& has already been experimenting with AI in subtitling and dubbing. For now, there remain limits, such as the replication of emotional intonation, but Zayat does not see this as a long-term hurdle. “This is something that we’re trying to explore and see how we can go around it.”
Similarly, generative AI can act as a curator, making content libraries and archives discoverable and searchable, and presenting tailored recommendations to the viewer. By analysing video transcripts and identifying key elements such as objects, faces and locations, algorithms can add tags and metadata to archival content. This makes it easier for viewers and broadcasters alike to find material on demand, and cuts out hours of repetitive work.
Morgan offered an example of his own experience with tagging “a massive archive of material with zero metadata … up to no title of the actual files”. With tags and enriched metadata, the material suddenly became searchable. “Now you have all these clips and snippets that have all these people in them, and all of a sudden you have thousands of hours of content that you can put on your digital platforms and make available to the public.”
“It’s important to decide whether your primetime show starts at 9pm or at 8:59pm. That makes a huge difference”- Pankaj Krishna, founder & CEO, Chrome Data Analytics & Media
Although such AI-tagged content won’t always be 100% accurate, it serves as a starting point for human moderators. “Using this as a basis, and then doing manual moderation and verification on top of that, is definitely something that I can see as being very valuable for the future,” he added.
An immediate application of such newly searchable content would be in turning live news into short-form video-on-demand content. Such an increase in the shelf life of news bulletins enables them to be repackaged for new viewers, expanding revenue streams, Krishna said, speaking from his firm’s experience in media and market research.
“There is immense potential as far as live streaming of news is concerned. And you can get from 10m to 15m views for the same three-minute piece of news without any content enhancement. So it really does have great potential.”
Nascent OTT market ready to explode
Overall, OTT is still a new and developing segment. As the representative of a data and market research platform, Krishna laid out a few numbers for the audience. Streaming, he said, is a market that is “waiting to explode”, explaining that in India, industry revenue totals $2bn, while the MENA region totals $5bn, as against $100bn worldwide. The rising number of platforms, a larger number of viewers coming to OTT, and the declining costs of data will all drive an exponential growth in content consumption.
Globally, there are about 1.3bn subscribers, an eighth of the world’s population. “That number has to grow. And the moment that number grows, you will see that translating to revenue,” Krishna said. “If you look at any industry, the way it grows, you get the first few years where the curve is flat, and then suddenly you see a spike happening. And I think we are at that cusp, where the spike and the growth will happen as we speak.”
