Living the stream

Technology and streaming have had a profound impact on each other. Streaming has become the preferred way for consumers to access entertainment because of technology’s role as an industry enabler. Not so long ago, viewing high-definition video over the internet was unthinkable because of bandwidth, speed and device limitations. With streaming services driving demand for data centre services, they will account for 87% of consumer internet traffic in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency.

But questions around infrastructure and energy aside, how will technology enable viewer acquisition, engagement and retention? Are CTOs choosing in-house technologies, managed services or hybrid solutions? How can solution providers help? Will the likes of the metaverse and blockchain affect the future of streaming? How do consumer behaviour and data analytics dictate content acquisition today?

Experts representing different aspects of the industry discussed the issue during a special technology panel at the BroadcastPro Summit last month. The panel was moderated by Chris Moore, EMEA Sales Director at online video platform Brightcove, who was joined in the discussion by Faraz Arshad, CTO of streaming platform StarzPlay; William Sharp, VP of Technology at Intigral, a major MENA digital entertainment provider; Ajay Kumar Meher, Global Practice Head, Media & New Media with Tata Elxsi Limited, a major design and technology services provider; and Damien Lucas, Chief Product Officer of Ateme, a video compression and delivery solutions leader.

State of play

Given the dynamic nature of the streaming business, players work with a mixed landscape of technologies, from in-house technologies to managed services and, increasingly, hybrid solutions. The CTOs of both end users on the panel, Intigral and StarzPlay, said they respond to the need for innovation and agility with a hybrid approach led by dynamics such as time to market, the lifecycle of new products and staff costs.

Sharp explained how the hybrid approach works for the company’s media delivery stack, with both off-the-shelf products and in-house development.

“It’s worthwhile splitting the media delivery stack and the product development stack, because they’re both very different in terms of approach. On the media delivery stack, we’ve got a very challenging environment and landscape. We’ve got over 210 live channels. We have 30,000 VODs on the platform, and we ask our vendors to deliver appliances to us so we can operate.

“It is an ongoing evolvement of that partnership with vendors. They come with a service. They help us deploy it and install it, but we stitch it together and help engineer that end-to-end platform. We have many different sources of content coming in. We’ve got data centres deployed in the UAE and CDNs deployed across MENA. So it has to be an off-the-shelf set-up, and engineers work with all the vendors to provide that end-to-end chain.

“When it comes to the core platform in terms of development, we have a tier-one vendor in the middle of our OTT platform. They sort out the logins, entitlements and content feeds, but where we really want to innovate and differentiate is in terms of moving into the super aggregation space. We have our own in-house development team and we set them up for a rapid development framework where we can push the boundaries and react to our product requirements.”

StarzPlay’s Arshad said the decision to engage with a partner sometimes depends on time to market.

Lucas from Ateme admitted that providers have had to react accordingly: “While we used to have vendors dedicated to different areas of the business, now it’s seen as part of a provider’s strength to be able to offer the same set of products, whether as a pure appliance, cloud-based SaaS or a managed service. The needs of the content provider have changed over time. Different pieces of content require different types of channels, so it’s very important to be able to offer all different possibilities to be able to cover all different use cases.”

He added that the role of solution providers extends to improving broadcast-quality streaming and minimising latency, particularly as cord-cutting grows.

Vendors can assist content and OTT providers in the streaming business to deliver a unified experience for subscribers, where quality is much more variable than in broadcast, stated Meher from Tata Elxsi,. “Streaming is very different across the entire ecosystem, with latency making a lot of difference to content quality,” he explained. Transcoding or last-mile delivery can have an impact on latency, and innovative technology can bridge the uniformity gap. “Technology can serve as a kind of USP for publishers and operators.”

He added that the main difference between streaming services and linear pay TV is that the former have a better understanding of their customers based on data. When you look from a consumer’s point of view, creating a good consumer experience is the most critical factor: “Building localisations, personalisation and recommendations for content into the streaming platform is key. A consumption-driven streaming platform will enjoy a strong presence in the OTT ecosystem.”

Determining whether that technology differential is delivered by an external provider or built in-house can be a complex issue for management and is often based on several factors, said Moore. Lucas pointed out here that the question is not really whether external providers can help or not.

“The question for a content provider who is putting a solution on-air is which components are critical and need to be developed in-house so they fully own them, and which ones are too complex but not particularly critical and can be outsourced to a technology partner.”

Latency is one such factor, he elaborated. “When it comes to latency, especially in livestream, this is complex; it can be outsourced. There are many existing standards and different solutions. We, for instance, have launched a five-second latency with Canal Plus in Europe, which is considered the same latency as broadcast, and that’s often the target of most of our customers today. This is the competition. The other competition comes from social media. How long does it take for a tweet from someone in the stadium to reach you, versus a streaming platform? A couple of seconds to write the tweet and another couple to reach your phone. That’s about four to five seconds. You have to be able to match that and this is best outsourced.”

Meher seconded this, adding that “innovative technologies will help streamers compete and stand out”.

Arshad, who designed the live sports delivery architecture at StarzPlay, says that for the likes of Serie A, cricket and the World Cup, a 20-26-second latency has worked well in this region.

“As more hops add up while delivering the stream, latency starts to increase as well. So all these hops add a few seconds, and at the end the OTT service provider has to deal with customer expectations versus what’s happening in the background. With Serie A, we are the rights owner, so we could downlink the content ourselves and deliver straight. With the controlled hops in the middle, we have optimised the overall delivery workflow.”

Why product experience impacts churn

Subscriber churn has accelerated as greater competition creates abundant consumer choice. But beyond ensuring new content is available regularly, improving the product experience with better technology can reduce this attrition, Moore pointed out. “As an avid OTT user, there have been some products where the experience has tempted me to make a frisbee out of my iPad. When you have the opportunity to impress a customer, you have to do it in the first few minutes.”

Sharp agreed, citing his experience with streaming service Jawwy TV. “As a super aggregator, we need to make sure our product is spotless. If you don’t like using our product, you’re going to move off the platform.”

Retaining users requires making sure that content is well presented and searchable, and that other providers such as Netflix or Disney can be accessed from within the Jawwy ecosystem. The challenge for the company has been integrating the different variables, from the various consumer devices to the entry points and payment methods.

One way to do that is by using technology to provide new avenues for consumer engagement. Arshad offered two examples of how StarzPlay does it. Initiatives such as the use of multi-cams while delivering live sports definitely improve the engagement, or as he put it: “Adding ML drives gamelike elements into an activity or task or contests right [on the screen], i.e., gamification. The more engagement you carry, the more likely you are to retain customers.”

For his part, Lucas pointed to the high volume of studies that show that the quality of the streaming experience is of great importance to the user. When the service repeatedly doesn’t perform as it should – for example, because of quality issues, content delays or rebuffering events – subscriber churn spikes. In such cases, he says, analytics platforms can help predict the likelihood of consumers unsubscribing to the service. “Big data and analytics are absolutely crucial.”

Lucas also sees value in upgrading the entire technology stack, whether content delivery or payment. He believes established players that do not consistently update their hardware risk losing out to newer providers who reap the benefits of technology becoming better and cheaper over time. “At some point of time, the cost of running an old platform becomes new developments will impact delivery and user experience. Free ad-supported streaming television – FAST – has been called the future of streaming. Free for viewers while generating revenue by serving video ads, it has been rising in popularity. Most notable is Netflix’s new Basic with Ads service. Starzplay is also working on adding new FAST channels to its portfolio, Arshad said.

With the pivot towards monetisation comes the need to upgrade back-end technology solutions.

“Earlier, broadcasting service providers were kind of ready but [advertising] brokers would not adopt the digital ad insertion framework. Now brokers are ready, but broadcasters are catching up to the speed to be able to get this kind of digital insertion marker inputs to their customers,” Arshad said

Lucas pointed to quality issues. For users to accept advertising, commercials on streaming channels must be of the same quality as on broadcast services.

“Too often, you come up [against] video and audio quality that is definitely not the same as the premium content that you’re trying to monetise,” he said, citing discrepancies with image resolution and audio volume as common problems. “For the industry, there is still a lot of work to be done to be able to provide those high-quality ads through new platforms. It’s an area where the industry and its technology partners are not yet fully up to speed compared to the requirements of the market.”

Streaming in the metaverse

As entertainment becomes increasingly interactive, personalised, immersive – and fragmented – streaming players will need to adapt or lose market share. Lucas experiences the problem at home on a daily basis.

“My kids can’t watch a two-hour movie just sitting in front of the TV. They have to chat with their friends or do something else at the same time. One screen is not enough,” he stated. “The metaverse could offer a solution to that problem, where [streaming players] not only bring the movie but also bundle other interactions into that same experience.”

The idea of the metaverse has dominated the technology discourse over the past year, alongside nonfungible tokens, Web 3.0 and blockchain applications such as decentralised video streaming. Industry players are already working on launching Web 3.0 platforms, Meher said, while blockchain solutions are being explored with a view to reducing piracy. The metaverse brings additional opportunities for content.

An early iteration of the trend could be in sporting events, the panellists agreed. Meher explained: “For instance, OTT players can replicate the stadium experience with immersive technology where viewers can buy tickets using cryptocurrency while simultaneously improving the quality of their video feed.”

The 2022 World Cup has already seen marketers use nonfungible tokens as key virtual elements of the metaverse, such as in the replica of Qatar’s Lusail Stadium, complete with branded villages, showrooms and shops.

“We can expect the metaverse and NFTs to have a positive impact on content creators,” Meher said. “All this emerging technology is bound to happen, and it will be having a very positive impact on the streaming industry.”