Opportunities in Broadband Video: Hype or Real Business Model?

Breakout Session
Date: April 28, 2011
Round One: 9:00-10:30 a.m.

Panelists:

How can companies across the content and delivery ecosystem capitalize on the over-the-top TV (or "Internet TV") phenomenon? According to Accenture’s 2011 Video-Over-Internet Consumer Usage Survey:

• More than 75 percent of consumers across all age groups in markets around the world are already watching video content over the Internet via televisions, PCs, smart phones and other electronic devices
• Nearly equal percentages of men (79 percent) and women (75 percent) are online video consumers
• Internet video-watching is very strong across the most profitable demographics: 85 percent of 18 to 24 year-olds, 84 percent of 25 to 34 year-olds, and 82 percent of 35 to 44 year-olds

With these remarkable figures in mind, Paolo Sidoti—Accenture’s Communications and High Tech Network lead for Europe, Africa and Latin America—presented four scenarios of possible, future OTT-TV business models:

• IP Video Everywhere: IP Video is highly popular and relatively inexpensive to distribute
• IP Video Integrated Platforms: the high cost of delivering premium video at the necessary levels of quality gives strong competitive advantage to the delivery network and last-mile infrastructure
• Content Delivery Network Play: service providers establish partnership mechanisms to enable efficient delivery of third-party IP video content
• IP Video as Premium Value-Added Services: IP video content is bundled with high-speed data services; premium content can be accessed via multiple IP video platforms

Then, industry leaders talked about trends they are seeing—and challenges they are facing—in broadband video:

• Fernando Bittencourt, Engineering Director for Globo, talked about the movement toward the integration of multiple devices—for example, customers might access different content on two different devices at the same time—that points to the need to leverage the audience for better targeting of messages and associated content, as well as greater customer engagement.
• Nate Smith, SVP Business Development for Time Warner Cable, discussed an evolution in how content is aggregated and how advertising is targeted. In the future, advertising will be relevant and personal to consumers, as companies gain the ability to aggregate and distribute content in ways above and beyond traditional demographics (for example, by theme).
• Andy Baer, CIO of Comcast Cable, raised issues from the back-office:
  • Who owns the customer?
  • How does a provider cost-effectively track video consumption at the individual level (not just by household)?
  • Who is the customer? Who can do what, see what, and pay for what?
  • How should providers be thinking about internal systems to measure what users are consuming, to provide a consistent customer interaction across product lines, and to integrate into the federated model?

Broadband video is a major opportunity for content and delivery providers. But achieving success in this market space will not be easy, as companies must figure out how to address the complexity of multiple platforms and devices, changing customer needs, and the movement from a mass audience to the single consumer who expects content anywhere and anytime.

For now—and probably for quite a while—companies will operate in both the old and new worlds.

For more information:

• Bringing TV to life: The race to dominate the future of TV
• Consumers of all ages are going over-the-top: Results of the 2011 Accenture Video-Over-Internet Consumer Usage Survey