51
X-PLATFORM
May-June 2016
Eight key decision moments across subscriber TV lifecycle
Customer service and experience are now as critical as con-
tent and value-for-money when differentiating between
TV services. Moreover, as consumers increasingly take a
‘dip in and out’ approach to pay-TV and subscriber-video-
on-demand (SVoD) services, service is key to making sure
customers stay loyal, focus groups conducted by research
firm Decipher, on behalf of Paywizard, have found.
For Andrew Burke, chairman of Paywizard, the reason-
ing is straightforward: The better the experience, the more
likely customers will come back for more.
He told APB: “Operators need to understand how
people consume OTT content, and what they do in each
moment. The first three months is crucial, and typically
decides if the customer stays long term.”
can monetise TV Everywhere, how they can
make this worthwhile. I would advise them
to continue to move forward agressively
because, otherwise, they are losing ground
to over-the-top (OTT) providers who are
simply saying, ‘Here’s the content’.”
There are naturally more practical
concerns as well. Most broadcasters have
inherited infrastructures that were built for
older TV technologies, and must somehow
“blend seamlessly” with the necessary OTT
requirements, which are much newer and
still evolving, Telstra’s Clarke observes.
He provides the example of an encoder,
which is in essence a piece of hardware
that accepts an original newsroom camera
signal and is meant to be transmitted out
to TV audiences. “Prior to the advent of
online video, this could be reliably done;
however, now it has to transmit a stream for
online audiences using different devices,”
Clark says. “That means, today, traditional
broadcasters need to consider if the encoder
is software-based and can therefore cater
to changes and upgrades easily, or because
it has no software, whether it needs to be
replaced with a brand new one?”
He also asks: “With online video chang-
ing rapidly, how will broadcasters decide to
invest in one encoder, let alone a hundred
of them? How can broadcasters evolve their
infrastructures and be future-proof? These
are the challenges they face, which non-
traditional competitors do not.”
Mention OTT and SVoD, and some of the
names that spring readily to mind include
Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video.
While not exactly household names beyond
the boundaries of Asia-Pacific, iflix, HOOQ
and Viu are but some of the on-demand,
streaming services that have emerged in
recent times — and they are distinctly Asian,
as is a significant viewing trend.
According to the Ooyala Q4 2015 Global
Video Index report, tablet devices are used
significantly more often to view video in
APAC than anywhere else in the world.
Where tablet views make up just one out of
every seven mobile views in the rest of the
world, they make up one of every five in
APAC countries.
This, suggests Ooyala’s O’Neill, should
provide broadcasters with further impetus
to push on with their TV Everywhere initia-
tives. He says: “Asia is a massive market and
people from the outside are going to go, ‘Oh,
we have to be in this market’. You are going
to see more broadcasters struggling as more
OTT operators come in and say, ‘We can
give you more, our delivery is going to be
The eight consumer moments identified by Paywizard
and validated by the focus groups are:
n Find: Deciding on a service to sign up to that best suits
the consumer’s content and cost requirements.
n Join: The process of signing up, as easily and quickly
as possible.
n Consume: Seamless viewing of appealing content, at
any time, location and on any device.
n Upgrade: Flexibly upgrading your services package,
as and when you like.
n Downgrade: Flexibly downgrading your services pack-
age, when it suits.
n Bill: Receiving accurate, clear and timely bills, using a
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