Helping the TV Industry Accelerate the Success of OTT Video Services

Today’s viewers are fundamentally changing how they watch TV shows, movies, and sports, with many tuning in via apps and Internet-based services. Some viewers are even cutting the cord to their cable service or satellite package and seeking alternatives. An emerging option for consumers is a la carte access to multiscreen, over-the-top (OTT) services across platforms like mobile devices, game consoles, and Smart TVs.

Over 50% of U.S. households will become cord-cutting, OTT households by 2025

Cord-cutting, OTT households will become the majority of U.S. households within 10 years, according to PwC and Baird. In a PwC survey published in December 2015, 58% of cable subscribers said they would not be cable subscribers by 2025. Similarly, a Baird survey conducted in August 2015 found that 56% of respondents believe a streaming service will be their primary TV provider by 2025.

How media companies can leverage digital marketing tools to address cord cutting

Today, Adobe unveiled Adobe Primetime OTT, enabled by Adobe Marketing Cloud to help media companies respond to the cord-cutting trend by providing better-than-TV experiences for consumers via mobile, desktop and connected TV devices. The goal is to help TV networks and pay-TV providers engage directly with their viewers, grow their audiences, and personalize and monetize premium video experiences in these compelling ways:

• Building your audience: Data-driven marketing with Adobe Primetime OTT drives profitable viewers into new services while keeping acquisition costs down. It helps to define the viewer, reach them with multi-channel campaigns, optimize spend towards effective campaigns, and personalize the on-site experience.
• Engaging your audience: Data-driven engagement with Adobe Primetime OTT keeps churn rates down by driving up viewing time, customer loyalty, and customer satisfaction. It helps to surface personalized recommendations, keep viewers engaged through the quality of experience, and keep OTT services top of mind even when viewers leave the app.
• Monetizing your audience: Flexible monetization options within Adobe Primetime OTT empowers programmers and operators to support monthly subscriptions, transactional, and advertising models. It helps to drive more targeted advertising revenue across identified audiences across all platforms.
• Measuring the audience impact: Aggregated data from an engine that houses hundreds of billions of data points will improve the acquisition, engagement and monetization of audiences when fed into the rest of the Adobe Marketing Cloud activation capabilities.

A robust partner ecosystem will help media companies stand up subscription based video services

Adobe Primetime is a trusted provider for the delivery of multiscreen experiences at scale. To make it quicker and easier to stand up the most engaging subscription based OTT video services, Adobe has partnered with the top companies in system integration, video distribution, subscription billing, and customer identity management. Here’s what these partners have to say about Adobe Primetime OTT:

Barbara Venneman, Principal at Deloitte Digital says, “Media companies are seeking the opportunity to build a stronger, more direct relationship with viewers. It starts with tested solutions implemented by a creative digital consultancy, which is why Deloitte Digital is excited to be working with Adobe to help media companies plan and launch OTT video services quickly, cost-effectively, and at scale.“

Bill Wheaton, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Media at CDN services provider, Akamai says, “We expect online video traffic from our OTT customers to be orders of magnitude larger in the future than it is today. Adobe Primetime OTT and Akamai puts broadcasters, cable networks and service providers at the center of this growth where they can capture the time, attention, and loyalty of video viewers on a massive scale.”

Craig Barberich, Global Head of Media at Zuora says, “Traditional media companies will fully embrace OTT with the support of software-as-a-service solutions like Adobe Primetime OTT. As the global leader in subscription monetization, Zuora understands that once they’ve gone OTT, they’ll innovate on pricing and packaging to find more flexible and compelling ways to monetize their services.”

“Adobe Primetime OTT makes it possible, from the moment a viewer logs into a streaming video experience, for the experience to travel with them across devices and be fully customized to key aspects of a viewer’s identity, including age, gender, location, interests, viewing history and more,” said Patrick Salyer, Gigya’s CEO. “Understanding customer identity is crucial to delivering personalized over-the-top customer experiences, and we’re excited to be partnering with Adobe on Primetime OTT.”

For more information about Adobe Primetime OTT, enabled by Adobe Marketing Cloud, read the official announcement.