Consumers now have more ways to watch video than ever before. With this shift in viewing behaviour, video service providers (VSPs) are being forced to rethink their business models and technology platforms in order to retain subscribers, ensure a high-quality video experience and realise a return on investment.
The viewing experience is a new area of differentiation among VSPs. Now with consumers paying a premium for video entertainment and video-enabled devices (like smartphones, tablets, smart HDTVs, and more), VSPs have their work cut out for them in order to gain a better understanding of their customers and turn that information into new business strategies.
Delivering multiscreen services today and in the future brings complexities that have never been faced in the video world before. The different video assets, protocols, delivery infrastructures, encoding, encryption, locations and the exponentially growing intricacies of video-capable devices brings a web of complexity that is incredibly difficult to plan for. Having a strategy for rolling out multiscreen services is absolutely essential.
Operators are looking to monetise video services in order to reduce churn, increase their subscriber base, reduce capital and operational expenditure and optimise investments. In order to effectively monetise video, providers need to have end-to-end visibility into their subscribers’ video experience. Without this visibility, providers lose control of network quality and, as a result, miss out on the opportunity to monetise video.
Monetising video is a difficult process due to the variety of video networks and the vast number of end device types available. However, providers can overcome these obstacles and be better positioned to monetise video services. Strategy involves learning from the past, managing the present, and building a foundation for the future. Fortunately, there are guiding principles from the past that we can learn from to help manage multiscreen deployments today while planning for future expansion.
To achieve success, VSPs will need to combine the intelligence of operational and behavioural analytics collected on their networks, and transform this information into actionable items that allow for better business decisions.
Operational analytics give VSPs a holistic view of network operations, including which regions perform the best, channel and programme availability and more. These operational analytics can give VSPs the tools needed to improve existing operations and provide new insights to make better decisions about managing video services and improving performance management. In addition, VSPs need a firm grip on subscriber behaviour, including understanding who is watching what, where they are watching from, for how long and on what device.
By combining operational and behavioural analytics, providers have a complete view into their network and subscriber behaviour, providing a clear picture of exactly what’s happening within their networks. In making this correlation VSPs can identify opportunities for monetising their video services.
As video becomes more important and is watched on a multitude of devices and in different locations, IneoQuest looks forward to helping VSPs monetise their video services through our leading operational and behavioural analytics platforms. We invite IBC attendees to visit us to learn more about solving the challenges of monetising video with our new video analytics platform.
