Category: Media

Facebook and its associated apps WhatsApp, Instagram and others were inaccessible Monday, October 4, 2021 for nearly six hours affecting billions of users. Facebook attributed it to a bad configuration change made to its backbone routers. Several other researchers attributed the downtime to a Border Gateway Protocol or BGP.

As we know, internet is a network of networks. BGP plays a role in routing information from the massive networks to the rest of the internet. Basically, it is the way to exchange routing information in these systems. BGP acts as a postal service of the internet. It does data routing on the internet.

In the present breakdown, Facebook could not announce the routes, leading to their servers going offline. Facebook thus broke off the internet.

Indian spend almost an hour per day consuming videos on a smartphone. Still, there is much scope to grow further. India has about 640 million internet users, of which about 550 million are smartphone users.

There are two types of videos — short-form videos (SFVs) lasting between 15 seconds to 2 minutes in duration and long-form videos (LFVs) which are more than 2 minutes long. These videos are created by the users or professional creators. Either they are pre-recorded or live-streamed. Social media and local platforms both have entered into online video space.

TikTok triggered the SFV market, and it continues to expand even after TikTok made an exit.

As we are aware, Amazon e-commerce site operates on marketplace model. It means it sources its products from a large number of vendors, and does not own the inventory. In a similar fashion, Prime Video, an OTT channel has recently tied-up with other OTT channels such as Lionsgate Play, Eros Now, Discovery+, Hoichoi, Docubay and Shorts TV. It is the first marketplace model subscription-based OTT channel. India is the 13th country, and second in Asia after Japan where this service has been launched. It has created two revenue streams — distribution revenue and advertising revenue through mini TV which shows short films supported by advertising on its e-commerce app.

Smaller OTT channels will get new subscribers for a commission. Prime Video is attracting OTT players by leveraging its paid subscriber base.

Amazon is Seattle-based. It has tie-ups with 350 OTT channels. Prime Video is seen in 99 per cent of the pin codes in the country in 4400 cities. OTT partners of Prime Video thus stand to benefit from this.

World premieres on Prime are released in over 240 countries on the same day. International revenues for the regional movies now account for 15-20 per cent of revenues.

There is focus on original content. Amazon Prime Video has also entered into film production. Ram Setu of Akshay is their debut production. It will be shown both on big screens and OTT. OTT channels are a viable option to big screens. The release decision will depend on what the consumers want.

Prime Video also is making entry into sports content. Disney+Hotstar and SonyLiv are major players here.

InMobi is in the process of launching AI-backed software Glance Live on smartphones. It wants leadership position in live internet space. It is the NextBigThing, making it a unique category worldwide. Glance Live comes pre-loaded and activated on Android phones.

Live or short-video format is already popular. All social media players have some Live offering. Short video format is second biggest segment in terms of time spent in a year. Short video users are expected to be 650 million by 2025. It occupies the second spot after TV. Many more users will be consuming internet by 2025, and the growth will be derived from that.

Glance Live will be available on the lockscreen. A user need not visit another app to access the video. It will provide a deep immersive experience, engagement and transaction. Glance will use lockscreens as a real estate for internet consumption. It is interactive lockscreen experience.

Consumers are travelling from text and visual images to long-form video and short-form video a la TikTok. The world is now moving towards live internet. InMobi wants to make live e-commerce a part of this offering.

Glance Live will bring together an eco-system of content creators and developers from different genres. The content must be properly curated.

Digital streaming was not considered a primary platform for advertising. TV screen was the primary platform. Still, of late, digital streaming has emerged as the primary platform for many advertisers. It has no longer remained supplementary to TV. In IPL too, brands choose digital-only partnerships. Digital is being used for brand building. In sports events, it has been used for fan engagement. Moment marketing too gets a boost.

As data prices fell in India after 2016, streaming video usage picked up. This industry sourced its content from broadcast and film industry. On OTT, storytellers have freedom, and Indian originals are now appreciated.

As we know, the short video form of content has become very popular. There are two kinds of streaming — broadcast streaming on TV and video streaming on Internet. Video streaming has in fact overtaken broadcast streaming. The quality of video streaming is critical. Even if there is slight delay in the start of the video or slight buffering, the users will move away. This is called a drop off.

Edutech companies offering video lessons cannot afford to compromise on quality. It is necessary to measure the quality of the streams continuously. It should be quickly known if there is any deterioration in the stream.This is central to streaming companies.

Videos were measured previously by beacons, pixels and ACR or automatic content recognition. These criteria measure video at particular points. However, continuous monitoring of video stream is necessary.

Video streaming is made on a number of devices. There are many video formats and advertising formats. An Android device and an iPhone provide different information. Such diversity must be managed while measuring so that results are comparable to initiate action.

There should be continuity and normalisation in measurement. Conviva uses software, embedded in the streaming application.

There could be video start problems in certain geographies. There could be problems with the ISPs. There should be dialogue with the CDN or content delivery provider to fix the issue.

In many markets, large format, big screen consumption is being overtaken by streaming.

OTT players such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+Hotstar are aggressively pushing for more subscription revenues in India. Subscription revenues are going to rise much faster than advertising revenues. OTT players on an average earn 36 per cent revenues from subscriptions, and the rest comes from advertising.

Google’s YouTube is a major video-on-demand or OTT player. It takes another view. It has a market share of 43 per cent. It has 325 million unique viewers above 18. It does not invest upfront in content. Unlike its competitors, Google’s YouTube is focusing on advertising rather than subscriptions. It has a lucrative advertising model. It has been a TV for teenagers and upcountry audiences. In online ad revenue, YouTube has a 67 per cent share, but it is likely to come down to 55 per cent by 2025.

YouTube premium charges a monthly subscription free of Rs.99 to make the content ad free. YouTube music channel has a monthly subscription of Rs.129 without ads.

YouTube can offer creators of content a subscription model to be managed by YouTube on a revenue-sharing basis. YouTube has many creators in gaming, learning, news and finance. They offer subscription-like feature on their channel.

YouTube is exploring other areas such as e-commerce and targeting of small business.

Google can get into buying content, especially in sports. YouTube may exercise this option even for short videos.

Google would not like to lose its leadership in this space.

TikTok of Bytedance was the lord of short videos. In India, it was banned along with 58-plus other Chinese origin apps in June 2020 at the height of India-China border tension. India was probably its biggest market. According to some reports, TikTok is trying to re-enter India under a new name — TickTok. It has filed for trademark for the new name.

In the US, TikTok was being forced to break up and there were bidders such as Microsoft and Oracle competing to acquire it.

ByteDance was not a pioneer in short videos. Douyin was launched as a clone of Musical.ly. Douyin is TikTok in China. ByteDance managed to buy Musical.ly and Twitter shut down Vine. Even Instagram’s short videos predated TikTok but never achieved the popularty of TikTok. There are TikTok clones such as Facebook’s Reels, InMobi’s Glance, Josh, Mx Taka Tak which are growing in popularity and subscribers. Before its closure. TikTok had a subscriber base of over 600 million downloads.

OTT apps began mainly as online destinations for catch-up TV. These days they desire to upgrade themselves to super apps that combine entertainment of all kinds on one platform. The core offering of these video streaming platforms were originals, TV shows and movies. They have now introduced gaming to their platforms. It’s a bouquet of HTML5 hyper-causal games. Hotstar has WatchNPlay to accompany cricket enabling viewers to predict the result of every ball and win rewards with the right answers. Voot has brought educational content to the platform. They may introduce hyper-short form of user generated content and hyper-local news too. They may introduce health and wellness-related content too.

Big Boss is popular reality show on TV. However, it has a good digital fan base too. Many consume it on OTT channel. Voot will screen it this season (2021) before it gets screened on Colors. It will be six weeks ahead of the TV broadcast. It will not be a 1-hour episode. It will be screened as curated clips, live and fully interactive. These will be screened round the clock. These will be fully interactive, and will influence the decisions in the house.

India has a good potentia for TV. Here the future of TV is TV, at least for the next five years. There are no chances of cannibalisation of the programmes. Thus India offers an opportunity to create content that is screen-agnostic.

The trend is to be digital first. The lines between digital and TV are blurring. The aim is to deliver entertainment.

A new age quiz show is planned. It will be suitable for TV, social media and OTT. Thus for some programmes, there will be integration. For some programmes, there are going to be spin-offs of the TV programmes.