Content Discovery Challenging for Consumers as OTT Services Surge, Say Panelists

Walmart’s Vudu is tryingto help consumers navigate the crowded field by identifying their “need states," and targeting personalized content to them, said Julian Franco, head of advertising-based VOD. Viewers want to watch different types of programming on a weekday night vs. a weekend night or Sunday afternoon, and it’s the Vudu curator's job to pull out thematic elements common across content that’s “on brand for your family” and present viewing suggestions without showing something the family has already purchased.

Vudu uses customer viewing history according to time, day of week or knowing “who’s likely to be watching in the household based on what they watch at those times," Franco said. It leverages Walmart purchase information and makes suggestions “based on what they bought across any one of 6,000 stores” to make it easier for consumers to engage in viewing and to deliver a suggestion quickly, he said.

CobbleCord, a content management app, wants to put curation in consumers' hands, said CEO Virginia Juliano. “There are so many services, but most people only know of the top four or five,” she said, referencing consumers’ “newfound power” in the cord-cutting age. The app helps consumers “cobble together personalized streaming bundles,” Juliano said, by answering questions about what they like to watch, how they like to watch and giving a budget for their monthly price range. An algorithm presents them with “the optimal set of streaming services,” free and paid.

The volume of content is a challenge on the provider side, said Gabe Berger, CEO of ThinkAnalytics, predicting a “staggering” amount over the next five years as 5G networks roll out. Live content will add to the mix, he said. Ramon Duivenvoorden, chief commercial officer at app development company 24i, said the line between live and video on-demand content will blur in the ATSC 3.0 world with a hybrid format encompassing live and VOD, including ads.

A limiting factor in recommendations to discover content in an interesting way is lack of metadata, said Duivenvoorden. Over the past few years, the company had compelling features and user experiences in mind that “fell apart based on the data that’s actually available.” Artificial intelligence and new technologies that allow personalization of content and associated artwork will be more effective in reaching viewers, he said. He believes voice assistants could have a big role in discovery and recommendations.

Calling it “too easy” to just plug in categories, Vudu’s Franco said movie genres organized into windows don’t tell a viewer why they should engage with those titles. Vudu programmers compare notes with the acquisition team about story elements “in a way AI can’t get but that makes it appealing to different people.”

Franco said complex business deals stand in the way of discovery across services, but “somebody is going to step up and do what’s right for the customer and make it really easy for them to find whatever they want to watch regardless of what service it’s on -- and tell them what the absolute best possible price is.” It hasn’t happened because the company that owns the platform doesn’t want to lose revenue from the transaction, or doesn’t have a business deal with the subscription VOD, “or is in a current standoff with the vMVPD,” he said: The company that eventually tells customers where they can watch a movie at the best possible price -- wherever they are -- “will win the customer’s trust.”

Future of Video Notebook

Content producers are experimenting with mixed-length episode formats, said Vudu's Franco. As an on-demand video service, Vudu has eyes into how long its subscribers watch and what they engage with, without the time constraints a broadcast network faces. Vudu is in production with MGM on a continuation of the movie Mr. Mom that’s in a “mixed-length episode format.” Writers have freedom to write an episode at the lengths they want to, while Vudu set a prescribed number of episodes it wanted from the programming side, and MGM gave a total minute tally. When creators ask Franco how long an episode needs to be, he says it should be "whatever you think it needs to be great.” If they want to experiment with a shorter format between 10 and 15 minutes, “we don’t care.” Think Analytics' Berger referred to Quibi, a venture Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman are behind to bring short-form video to mobile devices. The concept was inspired by the short chapters in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, he said.

Forty-one percent of U.S. broadband households owned a smart TV in Q3, leading all internet-connected entertainment devices, said Parks. A third of households had a streaming media player, a third had a gaming console, 29 percent owned a smart speaker, 16 percent owned a Blu-ray Disc player, 9 percent a smart digital video recorder and 7 percent a virtual reality headset. The “middle class” of U.S. OTT services is rising behind market leaders Netflix (57 million estimated subscribers for 2018), Amazon Prime Video (42 million) and Hulu (24 million), with services ranked 4-10 each growing from 1.5 million-4 million subscribers in 2017 to 2 million-6 million this year. The fourth-leading OTT service provider is HBO Now, followed by Starz. MLB.TV, Showtime, CBS All-Access, Sling TV and DirecTV Now.