The Role of Ad Films in Converting Viewers to Subscribers on OTT

Authored By Mr. Anjan Purandare, Founder & CEO, WeInvert.

Virtually every modern-day business witnessed a monumental pivot with the pandemic, not least of all the OTT space in India. However, this landscape saw three distinct phase-shifts, before, during and post the pandemic. While the first phase was marked by a general OTT subscriber base boom, the pandemic phase witnessed a sharp rise in subscribers across the board, and a content hungry India, willing to pay a premium. Players like Netflix lapped up this opportunity with high subscription fees, while avoiding the ad-based video on demand (AVOD) route completely. Finally, with the devastating epidemic behind, the Indian consumer became super-picky on quality, while the consumer-hours that battled for OTT viewership diminished significantly. As a direct result of this, players relying on pure subscription-based models were faced with the Devil’s Alternative - pushing higher subscription rates to fuel better quality content versus risking losing the same subscribers as more choices emerged in the fragmented Indian OTT space and both, attention spans and “available content watching hours” diminished.

The current complex streaming scenario in India, is certainly a trial by fire for the shrewdest of minds. With this as backdrop, the most likely solution for the industry today, is the smart usage and deployment of advertisements. It will be absolutely no surprise to most industry observers if almost all streaming majors in India follow the AVOD monetization model, if not entirely at least in part.

The Indian OTT market trends are largely controlled by Gen Z and Millennials. It is also imperative for brands and advertisers to create super focused campaigns that are a direct result of extremely well thought out media buying functions. This will, in turn, make the ad-spots more valuable to the advertisers as well as helping streaming players gain maximum leverage and use it to churn out content that continues to push boundaries.

Another fall out of the curious phase the industry finds itself in, is a potential rush for streaming players to consolidate. Little surprise then, that the country’s richest businessman wasted little time in spotting an opportunity to merge with Disney + Hotstar in India, to create the country’s largest media behemoth. While the jury is still out on how things will unravel post this monumental merger, the sheer size of binge worthy content at the disposal of the joint entity, will make it a mouthwatering prospect for advertisers and brands alike.

One can safely hazard a guess, that purely subscription based models of monetization may well be on their last legs and an era of advertising supported monetization beckons. The near term could well be one marked by a combination of the two. Either way, the relevance of the advertising campaign is what will decide how much value can be extracted for the advertisers, and indirectly add funds to effectively green-light original content ideas for the OTT players.

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are solely of the author and Adgully.com does not necessarily subscribe to it.