VERITY BUTLER: Any words of advice for broadcasters or content owners wishing to take advantage of these opportunities?
MARK STRACHAN: Although viewing habits are changing, demand for content has not diminished – and FAST channels appear to be the latest trend. However, like all trends, they tend to change over time. Consequently, both content distributors and ad networks need to move fast to gain market share in the quickly growing FAST channels market, or they will risk missing out on this emerging opportunity. SRINIVASAN KA: We’d advise content creators to work on getting their programming, distribution, monetisation and analytics strategy right when venturing into FAST. The first step is to build a strong content strategy by comparing your content’s genre to what’s already available in the FAST market. If the genre is over-represented, you will have a lot of competition to
ROB GAMBINO: There are a few really important things to keep in mind as you take your content online, especially if your business model is ad supported, and I’ll point out two of them. First, the quality of your UX is paramount. With so many options available today, viewers won’t settle for subpar quality – that means quality of content, high-definition video, no buffering. Viewers want a broadcast-quality experience. Second, you have to be able to deliver that experience at scale, which becomes increasingly difficult when you want to do targeted ads at a per-subscriber level – which everyone wants to do. An elastic, enterprise-grade video pipeline built on the public cloud with advanced, integrated-monetisation functions – like the one offered by Harmonic – is how you pull it off.
deal with. If it’s under-represented, you will have to build your brand and attract audiences from scratch. Both scenarios are complicated. But knowing where you stand in terms of your content’s appeal is critical to the success of your launch in FAST. In short, success depends on the three cornerstones of content, distribution and monetisation. Brands that find the sweet spot are likely to experience exponential growth on FAST. RICK YOUNG: Leverage new technologies that allow you to programme these platform-targeted channels with the same creativity and ingenuity you put into primary- platform channels. Don’t settle for re-runs. Take advantage of cloud and hosted technologies that put simple tools in the hands of a few creative types and operators, so they can build rich, fresh, live-enhanced channels. You can do so much with much less investment once you have a primary channel and content factory in place.
“SUCCESSWITH FAST DEPENDS ON CONTENT, DISTRIBUTION AND MONETISATION”
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