The Art of Content Acquisition for OTT Platforms: Original Productions vs. Licensed Content
A well-known reason people unsubscribe from streaming services is a lack of engaging content, which leads to low usage as users find little motivation to return. A recent YouGov survey among UK consumers found that 40% of respondents cited infrequent use as a primary reason for considering cancellation. This underscores the critical role content plays in a platform’s success, highlighting its power to either retain subscribers or drive them away.
A strong content strategy is crucial. Operators must carefully consider whether to focus on licensed offerings, invest in original productions, or strike a balance between the two. In this blog, we explore these options, highlighting the benefits and challenges of each approach. We also delve into the importance of content diversity, regional preferences, geo-restrictions, and other critical factors that influence a platform’s ability to retain and grow its audience.
Investing in Original Productions
The trend of streaming services producing original content is rapidly growing, especially among industry giants like Disney+, Netflix, and Amazon Prime. As more platforms prioritise exclusive programming, original productions offer several compelling advantages:
- Exclusivity: Original content provides a unique selling point that helps establish a platform’s brand identity. Exclusive shows and movies attract and retain subscribers, as they can’t be found anywhere else.
- Creative Control: Platforms have complete creative control over original productions, allowing them to tailor content specifically to their audience’s demographics and preferences.
- Long-term Value: Original content serves as a long-term asset, offering continuous value without the need for re-licensing. Additionally, when a production becomes a hit, it can significantly drive audience loyalty and engagement.
However, despite these advantages, producing original content isn’t always the right approach for every platform. The significant upfront investment required for development, production, and marketing can be a substantial barrier. There’s also the inherent risk that the content may not resonate with audiences, leading to low financial returns.
For niche or localised streaming services, original productions can be particularly effective in connecting with a specific audience. Take Magine Pro customer Passionflix, for example. As a niche streaming service focused on romance, Passionflix employs a balanced content strategy—acquiring popular licensed content while also creating original adaptations of beloved romance novels. This dual approach allows Passionflix to serve a dedicated market and build a distinctive brand identity. By combining cost-efficient licensing with the unique appeal of original productions, Passionflix offers a curated experience that deeply resonates with its audience.
Specialised niche services can also benefit from adapting to regional preferences. By partnering with local creators and collaborating with regional production houses, they can deliver more authentic original content that truly connects with local audiences.
Licensing Existing Content
Licensing existing content is a widely used strategy in the streaming industry, offering several significant advantages:
- Cost Efficiency: Licensing is often more cost-effective than producing original content, as it avoids the substantial upfront expenses associated with development, production, and marketing.
- Broad Appeal: Established content, particularly blockbuster movies and popular TV shows, has the power to attract a wide audience and quickly enhance a platform’s library, making it more appealing to subscribers.
- Flexibility: Licensing deals can be tailored for different durations, allowing platforms to regularly refresh their offerings and keep their content libraries dynamic and up-to-date.
However, licensing content also comes with its own set of challenges.
One major drawback is limited exclusivity—licensed content is often available on multiple services, which can diminish its potential to attract and retain subscribers. Moreover, licensing fees can fluctuate and accumulate over time, adding to the overall cost. The renewal of licenses is another critical factor; as contracts expire, streaming services must renegotiate terms, which may result in higher costs or, in some cases, the content may no longer be available for renewal.
For global streaming platforms, additional complexities arise from geo-restrictions. Securing global rights is ideal but often difficult, requiring careful navigation.
Despite these challenges, licensing content allows streaming services to offer a diverse and expansive content library, appealing to a wide range of tastes and preferences. For global platforms, this means curating a mix of genres and ensuring that content is available in multiple languages and formats to cater to different regions and cultures. This diversity can be a key factor in attracting and retaining a broad and varied subscriber base.
A Balanced Approach: Mixing Original and Licensed Content
Most streaming services, including those of our customers here at Magine Pro, benefit from offering a mix of original and licensed content. Original productions help build brand identity and exclusivity, while well-known licensed titles quickly attract a broad audience. For newer services, balancing these two will require careful budget allocation, guided by audience insights and strategic content planning.
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Want to learn more about our customers who successfully offer both original and licensed content? Explore our experience here.
If you’d like to discuss your OTT platform plans, get in touch with us. We leverage our in-market expertise to support our customers from start to stream.
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Content Engagement Strategy: Why curation is key to reducing churn
A content engagement strategy will vastly improve user retention rates, which is critical for video streaming service operators where the cost of new customer acquisition is high.
Viewers who deem your streaming service and content engaging are much more likely to stick around and continue watching regularly. They are also inclined to share positive recommendations with their friends and family, leading to increased subscriber numbers and revenue.
At its core, user engagement is about driving viewers’ active participation. For streaming service operators, this means creating a content engagement strategy that offers a wide variety of quality programming and actively encourages users to explore the full breadth of your video streaming service.
Content Engagement & Curation
It’s not enough to simply rely on algorithms that recommend content based on a user’s past behaviour. To keep audiences coming back for more, streaming services need to offer a mix of content that appeals to users’ current interests and trends. Human curation can help bridge this gap by providing context and relevance that automated recommendations may lack.
At Magine Pro, we offer our partners the flexibility to curate their own content categories. Our partners can choose catchy and unique category names, decide what content appears in a category, and even how and where it is displayed in the service.
Manually curating content categories that are original and exclusive to your service is a fantastic way to promote discovery; here are a few of our top tips to get you started:
1. Review your user data and determine what types of content your viewers like to watch. This will help you build content categories that are more likely to resonate with your audience.
2. Create content categories that are seasonal and relevant to all users. Obvious choices include romance in February, horror during October, and family Christmas films during December, but also think outside the box and incorporate other important dates.
3. Create categories that are topical in response to current events. For example, you might want to consider building categories around well-known actors when their latest films are released in theatres.
4. Resurface older popular content from your library to fill new categories. This not only lets you make the most of your existing library but also helps keep the service discovery page fresh.
5. Based on user data, you can build categories that include the most-viewed content. People trust others’ opinions, and if they perceive content to be popular, they are more likely to engage with it.
There are countless other ways to increase content discovery and engagement in your streaming service. At Magine Pro, we offer a flexible OTT platform that can be customised according to your needs. And have a team of experienced experts on hand who can help you launch and grow your OTT business successfully. If you would like to learn more about how we can help you build and launch a successful OTT business, get in touch or book a meeting with the Magine Pro team today.
For more tips on building a content engagement strategy, check out our white paper ‘OTT Discovery: How to stand out amongst the crowd‘ which explores what new streaming services can do to enhance service and content discovery. We also have some useful insights and resources available on our blog.
How to set up a streaming service for success before signing a service contract
You’ve heard the old adage about making sure you have a solid business plan before you start any big project, and that saying is truer than ever with streaming services. Create your brand from the ground up, outline your payment options, structure your content and create a marketing strategy.
GET A PROFESSIONAL TO CREATE YOUR BRANDING FOR YOU
You need a great brand, and you need it to be unique. You need a catchy name, one that people will remember. You also need a logo and colours that will make your brand stand out from the crowd. You can create your own branding or hire someone to do it for you. It’s better to have someone with experience and knowledge of how streaming services work.
This will cost money, but it’s an investment that will pay off in the long run. A professional will be able to create a logo and colour scheme that reflects the feel of your brand, and they’ll make sure everything is designed in a way that’s easy to read on different devices.
WRITE TERMS AND POLICIES FOR YOUR SERVICE
Yes, most of your customers will not read your terms and conditions or your privacy policy. You need to have them anyway for two reasons:
- Payment gateway and app store providers will request them before you can sign a contract or release apps.
- They define the relationship with your customers. They give you a framework of what you can and can’t do. And tell your customers what they can and can’t do.
Writing legal texts usually takes the longest so you best get to it as soon as possible. If you are wondering what should be included you can have a look at other streaming services.
SIGN UP FOR A PAYMENT GATEWAY
Earning money with your content is probably your most important goal. If you want to sell subscriptions or rental content you will need a payment provider that
- can handle transactions
- support your preferred payment methods
- allow you to handle refunds and payment disputes
- helps you to prevent fraud and manage risk
- gives you the necessary financial reports
Magine Pro is already integrated with Adyen and Stripe, two reliable and professional payment gateways with a wide range of supported payment methods. Signing up with them can take some time. If you have a business plan and at least an outline of your terms and conditions you can start the conversation with your preferred provider.
When the contract is done the technical integration takes only a few hours and you can test the full purchase flow the same day.
You can also sell subscriptions through apps. Besides an app store account you need a merchant
agreement with the store provider. Don’t let the revenue share discourage you from using this opportunity. Apple, Google and Amazon have launched Small Business Programs that reduce the revenue share from 30% to 15%.
STRUCTURE YOUR CONTENT
Content is king! That saying still rings true. Potential customers will choose a streaming service mainly because they are interested in the content.
It is one thing to transcode the content. The big organisational part is actually knowing how you want to sell it. You can plan ahead by structuring your content into bundles.
Want to give access to everything? – Create one bundle.
Want to sell theme packages? – Create a bundle per theme.
Want to combine subscriptions with rentals or Pay per views? – Create a bundle for the subscription and one bundle per rental or Pay per view.
Prepare your metadata:
- Get images: 16:9 and poster
- Have a title, short synopsis, cast, directors, genre and any other essential information you think is necessary to present your content
- Add labels. In the Magine platform labels are used to categorise content e.g. for collections without presenting the label to the customers.
Last but not least, think about translations. If you offer your service in multiple countries with different languages you will need translations of your metadata.
CREATE A MARKETING STRATEGY
For your streaming service to stick out from the crowd you need to know your target users very well. If you know where they are it will be easier to find channels to address them. Partnerships can help you to increase your reach and raise brand awareness.
At Magine Pro we can support your efforts with:
- Dynamic links
- Push notifications
- Integrations with content discovery services as Just Watch and PlayPilot
- Marketing integrations through Google Tag Manager e.g. Gift cards, referral and affiliate programs
And when you think about the price point for your content, don’t give everything away for free. Sure discounts help to increase the interest in your service. Giving away your content for free first in a trial and then with 100% discount will leave your customers wondering if your content is actually worth something. Be brave, charge something even if it’s nominal.
PREPARE YOUR SERVICE FOR SUCCESS
Finding the right vendor for your streaming service can take time. There are plenty of details to discuss. Use the time to prepare yourself and your team. Planning out your streaming service before you agree to any contracts will make the process more manageable after the agreement is signed. It will help you to launch your streaming service on time and beat the competition. At Magine Pro our onboarding specialists will guide you through the setup process.
Magine Pro offer a flexible OTT platform that can be customised according to your needs. Create a video streaming service with us and monetise your live events, linear and VOD content seamlessly through subscription, advertising and/or transactional business models. What’s more, we have a team of experienced experts on hand who can help you launch and grow your OTT business successfully. And if you’re interested in learning more about how we can help you build and launch a successful OTT business, get in touch with us today.
OTT Content strategy: the secret to streaming success
It’s no secret that content can make or break the success of an OTT service. Viewers have more choices than ever before, so you can’t expect subscribers to stick around if you don’t offer the content they want to watch (or enough of it). Putting an OTT content strategy in place is important for every video service that hopes to see positive subscriber growth.
What is a content strategy?
It’s essentially focusing on the planning, creation, and delivery of your content, whether it’s video content for your service or copy for your website and marketing channels. It boils down to asking yourself what content you should be producing or buying for your video streaming service and why?
The goal is to offer sustainable, high-quality content that engages your viewers. The content you provide should ultimately inspire them to act, whether that’s to subscribe/purchase or return regularly to watch more.
Content strategy starting points
Here are a few things to consider before you begin outlining your OTT content strategy:
- Define your end goal: How can an OTT content strategy improve your streaming service? Before you begin mapping out, figure out what you want to achieve. Do you want to see an increase in subscriber numbers, for example? Reduce churn? Or, have it help inform your decisions around content acquisition or production? Knowing your end goal will help you devise a strategy that can meet it.
- Audit your content: Before you begin making plans to produce or purchase more content, review what you already have. What are your viewers watching? How long are they watching for? Are they engaging with content through other channels such as social? Understanding what content is already working and why will help you decide what you need more of or what needs to change.
- Strategy & Planning: Your OTT content strategy should always align with your communications and marketing strategies. Planning for content production/purchases is important but your timeline for release should be carefully considered. For example, some content may be topical and worth waiting to release until relevant. Regardless, you should always align new content releases with your marketing plans to boost its chances of discovery online.
- Maintain & Track: Continually review your content strategy throughout the year and be ready to adapt and make changes. Most importantly, keep reviewing your library and track what content is working. Global services should also consider location – some content may show low viewing numbers overall but could be particularly popular in some parts of the world.
For more guidance, check out our Top 5 Content Strategy Tips. You can also find out more about Magine Pro video streaming services, and in particular how we can help you build your own successful OTT service, here.
Don’t forget to subscribe to the Magine Pro newsletter to stay up-to-date with our latest news, partners, products, and to find out which industry events we’ll be attending next. You can book in a meeting now on our events page; meet the team and demo our OTT services firsthand.
Top 5 OTT Content Strategy Tips
Planning to build your own OTT service now or in the new year? Check out our top 5 content strategy tips that can help you prepare for launch:
1. Get to know your target audience
Identifying your target audience may not be an obvious content strategy tip, but it’s important nonetheless. Before you should even begin to consider creating content or securing rights to some, get to know your audience. Understanding your key demographic’s interests and viewing habits will help you create a much stronger content strategy. It can inform decisions regarding the type of content you should invest in, when and what time to release it and the best marketing channels to promote through.
2. Offer Unique content
Subscribers are signing up to more than just one OTT service these days as their appetite for high-quality and original content increases. In fact, Digital TV Europe’s 2018 annual survey revealed 62.9% of respondents agreed original content that’s not available elsewhere is the most compelling reason to sign up to an OTT service in the first place.
To attract potential subscribers, offer content they won’t find as easily elsewhere. We’ve seen this work particularly well with our own partners, Passionflix which provides exclusive and original romantic content and True Royalty, an SVOD service dedicated to premium royalty related content.
3. Be original
You don’t have to produce your own content for it to be original. Secure rights to original content with content owners instead. Try exploring markets that are often overlooked, such as local or regional content for expats and niche sports content that’s not being widely distributed. Don’t rule out purchasing the rights for older content that can be digitized either. Our partner FlixOlé is home to Spanish cinema and features new as well as classic movies that are particularly popular with their subscribers.
4. Promote your content
No matter how great your content offering, if it isn’t easy to discover, you won’t see the viewing figures you expect. To get a good return on your content investment, carefully consider how and where you promote it, both in and outside of your service.
Our partners are able to promote new and old content in their Magine Pro Pioneer and Premium services wherever and whenever they like. Our templated OTT solutions can be customized via the Console, enabling them to independently curate featured content on the start page and even content categories.
Promoting content outside of the service is equally as important. Create an engaging communication strategy that maximizes your marketing channels and don’t overlook SEO. Content metadata that is SEO optimized is a great way to boost awareness and traffic. Potential customers, for example, could find your service simply by searching online for a particular TV show or movie.
5. Keep things fresh
Even those that launch with a large library of content should refresh their service at regular intervals. Updating your service with new content not only encourages user engagement but also helps to reduce churn. Frequent changes give users a reason to return regularly. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to invest in new content. Promoting older content that has previously been overlooked is a great way to refresh the look and feel of your OTT service without incurring any additional costs. Magine Pro partners can do this independently using the Console, which gives them control over content positioning within their service.
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Want more advice and support on your OTT content strategy? Get in touch with the Magine Pro team and find out how we can help. You can also download our latest white paper – Turn your Content into Cash to learn more. And check out our branded OTT solutions and services here.