Over-the-Top TV Content Distribution: Differentiating in an Omni-Platform Paradigm

Changing consumer behavior, rising expectations and disruptive new video services streamed over multiple devices are changing the dynamics of the broadcasting industry. With a majority of TV viewers also subscribing to Catch-up TV, video-on-demand and other such streamed services, Over-the-Top TV (OTT-TV) service providers face new business imperatives. For many of them, the need for scalability and flexibility will require a dramatic change in the way they approach content distribution, while keeping cost factors in check.

Accenture analyzes the video consumption patterns, current and next-generation distribution models to recommend strategies that can help Over-the-Top TV service providers to differentiate and deliver high-quality video services to consumers at favorable costs.

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The main challenges for an OTT-TV operator are both technology and business related. In particular, OTT-TV operators should consider the following:

• Build the most effective technological parachutes to manage the intrinsic erratic characteristics of an unmanaged broadband network.

• Understand OTT-TV consumption patterns across multiple devices to determine the appropriate consumption and estimate peaks volumes to plan carefully bandwidth needs to provide the appropriate viewer experience.

• Have a solution that can manage multiple CDNs, thus lowering costs when compared to external CDN, and better reliability for very large scale volumes.

Leveraging our experience with various players across the OTT-TV ecosystem, Accenture has developed both a technological solution and a business solution to address the above mentioned issues.

On the technological front some innovative elements have been incorporated into our Accenture Video Solution, an E2E hybrid broadcast and broadband platform to deliver content across multiple IP enabled devices such as:

• Adaptive streaming on all devices using a dedicated module capable of adjusting the quality of video delivered to clients based on changing network conditions.

• A CDN load balancer using the “Resource Locator” module capable of distributing content through different CDNs and local streaming farms.

On the business side Accenture has experience to accurately plan, size and manage a third-party CDN. In particular, we have:

• An estimation model to define appropriate consumption and peaks estimate in order to satisfy the short-term and medium-term bandwidth needs.

• Deep experience in managing CDN agreements and alternative content distribution technologies.