By Loewe Tan
Only 20% of 200 streaming service provider executives in a survey by Kaltura believe that the QoE (quality of experience) of their services is as good as global streaming giants like Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video?
If “Content is King”, as expounded by none other than Bill Gates in 1996, then ‘QoE’ should be the Queen — or, at least, the King’s consort. If not, how can OTT (over-the-top) platforms today compete for more eyeballs in the current streaming war that is gaining momentum? Can OTT operators continue to compete by staying ahead of the technology curve?
“Streaming services are dealing with a monumental challenge — keeping up with constantly evolving consumer preferences and a market that becomes more competitive each day,” said Nuno Sanches, Chief Strategy Officer at Kaltura.
Sanches advised, “For media companies to be successful in the coming years, investing in the right elements, from the quality of experience to marketing and monetisation, will prove to be key.”
According to Kaltura, the survey also found that 64% of the respondents plan to improve their QoE in the next three years; this is tantamount to OTT players understanding subscribers’ viewing preferences, as QoE will impact their return on investments; and the company maintains that quality video streaming capabilities should be built around three concepts — quality, security and flexibility.
Kaltura has a video delivery solution that enables cross-device delivery from mobile devices, laptop to set-top boxes, ensuring connectivity to viewers. With its multi-transcode and adaptive bitrate delivery, viewers will be able to enjoy sharper videos, including HD streaming.
The solution also provides scalable and secure delivery with its eCDN (content delivery network), along with the depth of AWS services including compute, storage, network and content delivery, analytics, containers, and media services.
Sooka enjoys major OTT success
In 2021, ASTRO, Malaysia’s leading entertainment company, tapped on Kaltura to power up Sooka, its standalone streaming service targeting digital and mobile-first millennials.
Why did ASTRO choose Kaltura as its technology partner?
It’s due to Kaltura’s multiple worldwide cloud TV deployments. Furthermore, a major influencing factor was the inherent flexibility of the Kaltura TV Platform. This allowed ASTRO to incorporate multiple business models and payment methods such as Google in-app billing, and Apple in-app purchase, with direct carrier billing soon to follow.
Kaltura also demonstrated the power of its productive approach in deploying cloud TV projects. It delivered the solution to Sooka in under six months, enabling the service to be live in time to stream UEFA EURO 2021 football matches. This resulted in a high-impact debut for Sooka, which ranked as the number one entertainment app on Google Play within two weeks of launch.
VSNCrea supports new-age streaming
To scale up and gain more eyeballs, it is impossible for OTT players to do it alone. It is vital to select the right third-party technology partner to power up new-age streaming. VSN, a content delivery network provider, has launched VSNCrea, a software for TV, radio and multi-device content delivery and scheduling as well.
VSNCrea can empower the user to manage his production catalogue and assets across various publishing rights, all in a single user interface.
Redesigned based on the new hybrid working model, VSNCrea is now hosted on a web-interface, which offers unified functionalities and an optimised workflow for quicker decision making on production matters. As it is HTML5-based, the software can be accessible anytime, anywhere from any web browser and device, which allows simultaneous interoperability between users.
A major South American broadcast channel which deployed VSNCrea found it to be an incredible set of tools, including the ability to engage in content segmentation with its logger tool.
The broadcaster noted that by integrating it with VSNExplorer, it is possible to use VSNCrea to directly access each asset to add content insertions or advertising slots as desired. This can be done automatically – making the process quick and easy – or through manual selection, granting flexibility and specificity where needed.
A spokesperson enthused, “VSNCrea hasn’t only made our core tasks more achievable, it’s also expanded the scope of what we do.
“Where previously our promotional activities had been entirely focused on the channel itself, with VSNCrea’s ability to take video assets and automatically transcode and schedule them for multi-platforming publishing, it suddenly made a lot more sense to promote ourselves across social media.
“We’ve achieved a notable uptick in engagement as a result — and it’s an avenue we wouldn’t have actively pursued unless the tools had been there at our fingertips.”
Indeed, VSNCrea can create precious attention in social media once you have the right tool in place!
Unlock audience insights
And in today’s increasingly data-driven world, OTT players have to learn how to unlock audience insights to drive business value from the content published.
Brightcove is one of the many companies that believe in offering their clients actionable insights in real time. To do so, it has acquired Wicket Labs, an audience insights company, to expand its offering in video analytics.
With the acquisition, Brightcove can now offer subscriber insights that meets the business needs and metrics. Its video analytics platform can aggregate the data from multiple touchpoints and harmonise the data set to produce a truly harmonised scorecard with useful insights to optimise content, marketing, product strategies, thereby resulting in gaining more revenue.
With the explosion of data everywhere, it is no longer sufficient just to collect data. Businesses need to be equipped with solutions to draw out market intelligence from the data collected and translate them into actionable insights.
That said, there is no golden formula to success, but it is vital for OTT players to work with third-party technology partners that will enable them to offer an enhanced viewing experience that is on par with the streaming giants.
Do keep your own eyeballs on the constantly evolving consumer preferences and the demand for quality content — and QoE!