Versatility Demanded
Why it's no longer enough to be great at a thing or two in Media & Entertainment
Welcome back to Streaming Made Easy (SME). I’m Marion & this is your 5-min read to get a European take on the Global Streaming Video Business.
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Enjoy today’s read.
My Best Finds 🔎
The educational work continues with the brand new Publica CTV white paper for TV OEMs, AVOD & FAST services. I particularly love the sections on how to craft your ad breaks and on frequency. Free streaming promises excellence that we have yet to see, even Prime struggles with ad repetition.
George Pyne on how sports stakeholders tackle rights fragmentation with improved access, experience and discoverability tactics.
Picture me in a train from Munich to Amsterdam writing this week’s edition.
You see it?
That’s me coming back from Medientage München’s Future of Video 2024 event where I gave the keynote speech.
You couldn’t be there but not to worry, I got you.
Today at a glance:
The New Golden Metric
The Versatility Blueprint
We live in a world with so much optionality as consumers, as businesses. What to buy? What to watch? Where to go?
It’s hard to stay the course, avoid feeling lost or overwhelmed.
Whether in life or in business, I found that going back to the basics and identifying your North Star metric helps a lot.
Each business should have one (here’s how).
For reference:
Moving away from a company-level approach, what should be our North Star metric as an industry?
It used to be subscriber numbers with the pandemic leading us to believe this incredible subscriber growth would be the new normal. One which commanded streaming players to invest in their growth without counting.
Growth slowed, churn grew and then streamers had no other choice but to look at the cost of doing business.
They shifted their focus to profitability except it is a goal, not a North Star metric.
The true metric of any media business today should be time spent because time spent drives value ($$) and matched with scale = 💥
Ok let’s increase time spent then!
Not so easy.
Why?
There will always be 24 hours in a day. Users still have to make choices as to where they spend their time.
Looking at the German market, time spent with media dropped by 8 minutes (it is still up 47 minutes vs 2019) while the share of audio and audiovisual media within the total media time budget increased slightly to 87.6% in 2023 (+0.2% year on year).
Are we hitting a glass ceiling?
No doubt and it starts to show in the numbers.
In addition, we see generations of consumers and viewers slipping away from us.
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What can be done about it?
Pivot.
But to what?
Instead of playing one position perfectly, M&E companies should be versatile and capable of playing multiple positions if and when required by market developments, changes in user behaviours, new technologies etc.
This is what the New York Times did with their gaming strategy or Youtube with their Pay TV moves.
Both saw an opportunity to be something they were not and their versatility was rewarded. The NYT is now a gaming company with over half of its time spent on games. Youtube became the 4th Pay TV operator in a gloomy Pay TV market.
Here’s how to become versatile:
→ Shake limiting beliefs: Traditional media vs Creator Economy. We’re all in the Attention economy.
→ Change perceptions: Professionally created content > User generated content. 59% of users surveyed by Accenture in 10 countries say UGC is just as entertaining.
→ Reframe competition: Major Studios vs Netflix? Wrong. Your competition is endless as long as they chase time spent like you do.
→ Partner Smart: There’s no need to build everything from scratch especially when it falls outside of your zone of genius. Not so smart = Disney getting into games alone; smart = Disney x Epic Games.
→ Hire Right: Your target audience is diverse, hire teams which match that diversity including executives who have the codes of the attention economy 👉 Gen Z’ers.
→ Be viewer centric: Listen to Jeff Besos: “We’re not competitor obsessed; we’re customer obsessed. We start with what the customer needs, and we work backward”.
→ Build flywheels: Diversification plays which stand somewhere alone in your organisation will likely be short-lived. Any new vertical must feed your flywheel.
→ Enter new territories: German news tabloid BILD, owned by Axel Springer, has launched a new e-commerce platform for third-party sellers called BILD Marktplatz. The new offering will provide a new revenue stream, create new ad opportunities for existing and new advertisers and give the newspaper a bank of first-party shopper data.
In a market dominated by Amazon, it’s pretty darn brave but I guess deemed crucial.
Let’s be clear, nothing will happen overnight but don’t just stay in your lane. Build new ones. Today.
That’s it for this week but before you go:
Enjoy your weekend and see you next Friday for another edition of Streaming Made Easy!
On top of Streaming Made Easy, I run The Local Act, a streaming video consultancy catering to Streamers, Distribution Platforms and Technology Vendors.
Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:
→ Europe Made Easy: Get a trusted partner to launch and grow in Europe.
→ Masterclasses: For executives looking to get up to speed on all things streaming. Check out past testimonials from companies like Studio Canal, MIPCOM or EGTA.
→ Content Marketing: Explore how I can put my 6.5K LinkedIn following + my 4.7K Newsletter subs to work for your company like I do for mine.
Ping me to see if we’re a fit.
Nice and engaging content. Thanks for the north star metrics. Good take on how to make people spend time in the app. I believe the UI and search algorithm plays major role with kids glued to youtube.