Online Video

Hotstar is Star India’s mobile TV app. Hooq followed in tie up with Sony. Netflix will appear in India in 2016. Eros has launched ErosNow, an online video service. Viacom18 proposes a service by the year end — 2015. These online video services are called over-the-top ( OTT ) services. India has 100 million viewers, and is a big market for such services. Its revenue currently stands at Rs. 1200 crore, but is likely to rise to Rs. 4000-5000 crore. It is a market in the take off stage, with 300 million Internet users, and 970 million mobile connections. The launch of 4G will further boost up the market. Zee runs Ditto TV. OTT will contribute 50 per cent revenues to the media companies. It is a challenge to YouTube. All big TV broadcasters have featured on YouTube. They are now venturing on their own. Still, they can continue to be on platforms such as YouTube. There could be two parallel ecosystems in the video industry — they either co-exist or collide. Whether subscription-based model will work in India with cable prices so low is a moot point. That makes advertising the major source of revenue. Online video’s advertising rates have already gone up. There should be a mechanism to tap small recurring payments. It is to be seen whether aggregators are favoured more than the content providers.

print

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *