Surge in Audience Interest in TV Streaming Brings Complexities, Variations

Challenges include measuring engagement with advertisements, getting MVPD consumers to use TV Everywhere and/or video apps from pay-TV providers, dealing with rights holders across multiple platforms, and questions of which entity in the video distribution chain has which rights. "One thing that I think we can all agree to is that the power has shifted to the consumer," said online video platform host Brightcove's General Manager-Media Anil Jain. "You have to make sure your content is available on all the distribution points." This necessitates reducing operating costs to make content available across streaming platforms, he said.

"Disruption is the new normal" for PBS and others, said PBS Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Barzilay. "We're fighting for attention just the same way any other brand is." Efforts include VOD services for those who are dues-paying members of PBS stations, aspects of which Barzilay compared with the likes of Amazon and Netflix. New services lead to more complications, he and others said. "The complexity that is now table stakes for everybody" leads to multiple licensing windows for various platforms and territories, the COO said.

Tech changes aren't lost on viewers. "Consumers are starting to kind of gravitate to those platforms that are making content more available," said Nielsen Senior Vice President-Product Leadership Kelly Abcarian. "There [are] real dollars, and business negotiations that need to happen" for rights and revenue splits, she said: "We’ve really made tremendous progress as an industry" in measuring across platforms and devices. Jain said that "there is an amazing amount of complexity just around ad monetization," to cite one part of the online video sphere. There's much work to be done to ensure seamless delivery of advertising amid various standards, he said. "Solutions are there today, but they are not widely deployed yet."

One vexing question is who owns data, said Adobe Primetime Marketing Director Campbell Foster. "Who really owns the audience information," the programmer or the pay-TV provider, he asked. "It's complicating carriage agreements."

One positive is that use of TV Everywhere is increasing, said Foster. TVE lets MVPD subscribers access their subscription channels outside of their households and on devices other than TVs. Of "everyone’s favorite whipping boy," he said, TVE use is starting to pick up, with a recent Adobe report saying about 20 percent of U.S. households actively use the services. That rises to about 50 percent when MVPD apps are included, he said, citing the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing. "You’re really starting to see TV Everywhere pick up," said Foster. Another positive is that Comcast's Xfinity products are easy to use and inclusive of many other services, he said.

The quality of streaming video has improved greatly in recent years, with many programmers now targeting their over-the-top products based on the tastes of their viewers, OTT and programming executives said on an earlier panel at the show. Consumer expectations for production quality vary widely, with audiences like young men who watch skateboarding video, for example, much less concerned about it than those streaming professional basketball games, panelists said. "Over the last couple of years, there has been a real formation around connecting to consumers around passions" like particular sports, for OTT products, said Executive Vice President Chris Wagner of OTT facilitator NeuLion. "The technology has really sorted itself out well," he said, "all the way up to 4K," and efforts are focusing on how to make OTT services more personalized.

The NBA seeks "to reach fans wherever they are, on whatever device they are" using, and early on began putting its videos on YouTube while other rights holders were taking their content down from the Alphabet/Google platform, said Steve Hellmuth, NBA executive vice president-media operations and technology. "Quality really matters" for NBA streaming, he said, citing instances of consumers of pirated pro basketball games switching to higher-quality video from the league. "People want the convenience, they want the quality," among other benefits, Hellmuth said. Skateboarding fans have different tastes. They "like when it’s shot from a phone," with the "raw" perspective, said ETN Media/Street League Skateboarding President Brian Atlas. "The attention span has shortened," so with long-form video, "you run the risk of losing the consumer," he said.

At Facebook, the shift to video across the site has been profound. Video "is the most powerful medium" in "terms of sharing," said Head-Global Sports Partnerships Dan Reed. "We think that the shift to video … is even more profound than the shift to mobile." A year after the start of Facebook Live, about 20 percent of videos that the company hosts are live, he said.