IBC2019: OTT has arrived!
September welcomes one of the busiest calendar events for us here at Magine Pro and the entire OTT industry, IBC. The annual event has long been considered the leading go-to exhibition and conference for media, entertainment, and technology and as such, attracts industry professionals from all over the world.
This year marked our fourth year exhibiting in Content Everywhere hall 14 and was arguably one of the busiest we’ve seen. Without doubt, there were more buyers present than years previous, with a noticeable increase in production houses, smaller ISP’s and Telco’s all looking to go OTT for the first time. Not too surprising. In our post-IBC 2018 blog, we reflected on how the OTT takeover was looming, and how telcos could move into the OTT market by either vertical integration or through partnerships. Check out our reflections on last year’s event here.
This year, the impact of OTT services dominated most discussions at IBC2019. There were panel sessions dedicated to monetization models, niche content, and how streaming is driving a golden era of content creation. It certainly raised some interesting questions around how new market entrants could compete against big brands with much bigger budgets. A popular opinion being that new entrants would need to offer services tailored to niche interests and content. On the Magine Pro stand, we demoed a few of our partners who offer just that. If you missed it, check our experience page to learn more about niche services such as PassionFlix Docsville and True Royalty.
User engagement has been a nascent trend in the OTT space this year. Likely driven by SVOD user fatigue and competition, we’ve seen more content owners looking for innovative ways to monetize and engage their users. Many now want to focus on customer loyalty, engagement, and differentiation in the user experience around content. This also explains why recommendation tools (although not new) were a popular talking point at IBC2019.
We also noticed more interest and focus on analytics and business tools, as operators look to move on from just having OTT, to now successfully monetizing. There was also an uplift in SVOD and live event offerings, alongside traditional AVOD, and subscription and advertising led linear.
But, more important things you might have missed from Magine Pro were our live product demo’s on the stand, including demos of the Magine Pro Console. If you didn’t get a chance to stop by, you can find out more about our products here or download our white paper. Get in touch if you would like to learn more or try a demo.
With OTT being a hot topic at IBC2019, it’s no surprise that hall 14 will be expanding at next year’s event as organisers increase capacity for more vendors by adding hall 5. It seems the OTT takeover is no longer looming, it has arrived!
We’re heading to the SportsPro OTT Summit next month. If you’re attending and would like to meet with a member of the Magine Pro team get in touch!
