SILVER SPRING, Md. - Oct. 12, 2023 - PRLog -- As pay-TV and over-the-top (OTT) streaming service providers fight to retain customers through a challenging economic cycle, effective content navigation strategies have emerged as the key to improving audience engagement to prevent subscriber churn, according to Dr. Mark Kokes, chief licensing officer for media at Adeia in an interview for journalists.

"Today there is an exceptionally large number of content providers across the OTT and pay-TV space competing for consumer dollars that are being managed much more carefully today compared to 2020 or 2021 when consumers were sheltering in place through the COVID-19 pandemic," says Kokes.

According to a recent Parks Associates study, over a third (36%) of OTT subscribers have become "service hoppers" — dynamically subscribing, unsubscribing and resubscribing to services multiple times over the course of the year.

"In this context, a significant amount of progress has been made over the past few years to harness technologies to capture audience insights so that service providers -- including OTT and pay-TV players -- can help their customers navigate options and find content," explains Kokes.

Most of these efforts, however, have been siloed. In other words, each service provider has developed its own personalization and recommendation solution because leaders in the industry see it as a key to maintaining relationships with their audiences and reducing the chances of churn.

"It creates a problem for consumers because it makes it difficult -- and even frustrating -- to find the content they want without logging in and out of multiple apps on their connected TVs (CTVs), mobile phones and tablets."

The market is responding to this pain point.

"We are seeing more third-party providers explore ways to aggregate and gather data across devices and services to help consumers find and enjoy the experiences they desire via mobile devices, connected televisions and other devices," he says.

A Changing Service Provider Landscape

It is important, he notes, to recognize that service providers come in different shapes and sizes and that the players are constantly evolving as they adjust to the changing market landscape.

"Pay-TV operators, for instance, have come a long way over the past decade. They play a far different role than when they were known simply as cable or telco companies offering content service packages through set-top boxes (STBs). This market was famously disrupted by OTT streaming service providers -- like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu and others -- encouraging the so-called "cord-cutter" movement," he says.

Since then, demand for streaming has soared, prompting a massive influx of major new OTT players offering compelling content. The trend is raising the level of complexity -- and cost -- for consumers.

While consumers aren't necessarily interested in returning to set-top-boxes, there is a growing desire for someone to aggregate and integrate experiences -- including movies, episodic programs, cloud gaming, as well as emerging augmented and virtual reality offerings. It is in this context that pay-TV players -- among others -- are finding new opportunities.

"Pay-TV players are shoring up their revenue streams by providing broadband and mobile services as well as serving up a content catalog that now frequently includes access to OTT offerings. These dynamics are reshaping the space and changing relationships between pay-TV and OTT service providers," says Kokes.

Emerging technologies -- including big data analytics, machine learning and AI -- are getting better at gathering and interpreting data to predict the needs and desires of target audiences for specific content. The real challenge, however, lies in finding a way for those insights to be integrated across platforms.

"Service providers across the entire ecosystem of pay-TV and OTT will need to think more broadly about what they can do to partner and get their content out to targeted audiences while retaining customers and keeping their acquisition costs under control. Cross-platform navigation is likely to play a key role in addressing this imperative," he concludes.

To read the full Q&A with Dr. Mark Kokes, please visit:
https://bit.ly/Kokes_Cross-platform_Content_Navigation

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