To maximise monetisation, operators and video service providers need to be strategic with the FAST channels they add to their portfolio and leverage enhanced discoverability tools. They need to cater to the specific preferences of end users to enhance viewer engagement while boosting their ad opportunities. This article will explore some of the key elements to successfully launching a FAST channel offering.

How to implement a user-driven FAST channels offering

The proliferation of FAST (Free Ad-Supported TV) channels is undeniable. However, merely presenting hundreds of these channels to users can lead to a paradox of choice. This often results in viewers feeling overwhelmed, potentially not watching any channels, or even worse, turning off the TV or watching something on another service. Therefore, it’s crucial for service providers to curate a FAST offering that aligns with audience preferences, bolstered by effective discoverability tools. Moreover, considerations around distribution, advertising, and content alignment are paramount when launching a FAST channel.

For a distinctive experience, leveraging the niche content typically found in FAST is essential. It’s logical to assume that a viewer who watched Formula 1 content via a Pay TV channel might be interested in a motorsport-themed FAST channel. Similarly, a fan of ‘MasterChef’ would likely gravitate towards cooking channels. By tapping into viewer preferences, service providers can craft a compelling value proposition, target a specific audience segment, and subsequently boost advertising revenues. After all, tailored content often commands higher cost per mille (CPM) rates.

Advertising plays a pivotal role in the FAST ecosystem. With the surge in FAST channels, there’s an expansion in content inventory. Both service providers and advertisers need a streamlined strategy to match ads with appropriate audience segments, ensuring expansive reach. Advertisers aim to engage the majority of their target audience, making this a critical factor in their investment decisions. Furthermore, the relevance of ads to the audience is essential. To truly maximise revenue, a solution that consolidates demand from various sources and offers a broad audience reach is vital. This approach can package available ad slots to achieve optimal monetisation. However, service providers must tread carefully to ensure their audience data isn’t exploited by digital advertising behemoths. In today’s age, where addressable advertising is mainstream, there are numerous TV-centric solutions tailored to addressing this concern for service providers.

Personalising the FAST channel experience

The media domain is in a state of flux, ushering in a heightened demand for top-tier, user-centric TV experiences. Generative AI for content discovery, and increasingly, content creation, appears to be the solution the industry is leaning towards. Such AI-driven recommendations empower service providers to suggest FAST channels that resonate with viewer inclinations.

Looking ahead, the vision is for AI-powered personalised FAST channels. These channels would offer a bespoke experience, where each viewer, upon tuning in, encounters content curated to their individual tastes. This evolution promises a future where content aligns seamlessly with each viewer’s unique preferences.

Conclusion

Research shows that Europeans engaged in 50% more FAST content hours in Q3 2022 than the same quarter the previous year. The rise in FAST channel consumption has resulted in an explosion of new channels. To stand out in today’s highly competitive FAST market, content providers must deliver a compelling, user-driven experience to viewers.

By adopting AI-driven content discovery, AI-based personalised FAST channels, and targeted TV advertising solutions, service providers can drive viewers to the content they want to watch, segment audience data, and offer targeted ads.

TiVo announced its ‘Powered by TiVo’ offer and move into the Smart TV market ahead of IBC last year and is confident that television brands and OEMs are looking for ‘independent’ alternatives to the likes of Android, Roku and indeed Samsung, which has made the Tizen OS available to third-parties. The company previously announced a deal with Vestel to cover television brands such as Vestel, Daewoo, Regal, Hitachi, Telefunken and JVC.

Sharp is launching a whole line of Smart TVs featuring the TiVo OS/platform. TiVo says the deal demonstrates demand for alternative OS options, as it predicted, and the move confirms TiVo’s expansion beyond traditional Pay TV hardware.

“We chose TiVo’s OS not only because of the superior product but also because we wanted to offer a user experience of Sharp elements with more variety and freedom,” says Nick Chen, Head of Europe, Vice President of TV-System business unit, Sharp Corporation. “We are excited to give users significantly more control on how to discover and consume content across live TV, news, sports, movies and more.”

Jon Kirchner, Chief Executive Officer at Xperi (which owns TiVo), says, “Sharp’s selection of Powered by TiVo is further proof that we are meeting a crucial need for Smart TV brands. The accelerated adoption of our independent media platform by consumer electronic brands, as well as by BMW in the car, lays a strong foundation for the future growth and success of our platform ecosystem.”

TiVo will be showcasing its independent media platform at IFA 2023 in Berlin starting September 1. You can read our original analysis here about TiVo’s move into the Smart TV market and why the company believes there is an opening for an independent Smart TV OS.

Our view then, which is unchanged, is that TiVo’s excellent UX, honed over decades in the Pay TV market, can boost the quality of the UX in the value-brand television set market, and should be viewed as a significant development for that reason, given the benefit to all television stakeholders if the UX bar can be raised in every room, in every connected TV home.

This video also shows TiVo discussing Powered by TiVo at Connected TV World Summit in March this year, when the company explained how it helps CE makers monetise their television sets, post-sale.

“We believe that if a user needs more than 120 seconds to find content, they are likely to think that ‘there is nothing to watch on TV today’ and move on to a different service, or do something else. Some months we are within our 120-second KPI and other months we are not, partly depending on what’s on TV. In those months we are learning so we can improve performance.”

In a world increasingly full of catch-up, VOD and recordings, let alone hundreds of linear channels and streaming apps, the 120-second benchmark is an ambitious target, but careful content curation (by a curation team) and personalisation are keys to the success so far. Technical optimisations also help, with the live TV player and VOD player optimised for their respective consumption models, for example. The EPG shows now-and-next but also goes back in time so viewers can browse backwards for catch-up TV.

Allente is the result of the merger between Viasat Consumer and Canal Digital in May 2020 and Allente 1 was the first set-top box platform built for the new entity, with a streaming dongle following in February this year, with the latter aimed primarily at streaming-only customers but also available for use in DTH and IPTV homes. Allente 1 is based on Android TV Operator Tier and the streaming hub runs on Google TV.

Allente 1 achieved a significant first by using Google Common Broadcast Stack (CBS), which is designed to simplify integration with broadcast signals in hybrid boxes of this kind (Allente 1 is designed for use across DTH and IPTV homes, with streaming in parallel). “All the technical heavy lifting on CA and middleware integrations are already done (with CBS), so we can spend our time developing an awesome UX for customers,” Nergård said.

He told the London conference that Allente also made “a little tweak” to allow this STB platform to work without an Internet connection. “Some of our DTH customers, especially, do not have Internet, so that is something we had to support. We managed that, running on Android TV.”

Nergård described Allente 1 as “the king of our hardware” and also noted how consumer marketing for Allente 1 presents the Pay TV offer as the king of entertainment. Like other major Pay TV providers (Allente has approx. one million subscribers), the operator pulls key streaming services into the experience and the content discovery journey is designed to allow fast entry to those streaming apps, with a single log-in (connected to the Allente ID) smoothing the process.

Nergård explained how Allente is also experimenting with what he called ‘content worlds’, which can be categorised by genre or other properties. ‘Action’ is one example. “We gather everything [content] that is classified as ‘Action’ into one area. We could take that further: sport is a big part of our offer and a sports content world is where users could access the next matches, and matches that have already been played. It would be where you can follow your teams. There can be related content, like football documentaries, including from third-party applications. You can gather everything inside one area.”

Allente 1 is not just a consumer product – it is also the hardware for Allente’s impressive B2B offer, which numbers more than 8,000 customers, including pubs and clubs. The company is exploiting the obvious opportunity to upgrade the hospitality entertainment experience in hotels [where most in-room systems are way behind the advanced content centric UX, super-aggregation and personalisation seen in the consumer market]. The new B2B offer was unveiled in July 2021. “We are modernising how you deliver a TV service in hotel rooms across the Nordics, making it cheaper and more efficient for hotels to onboard, while delivering the same UX you see at home,” the Allente executive confirmed.

A key principle throughout the development of Allente 1 and the new streaming hub was that Nergård’s team should focus on value-add development like the UX, with the use of Android TV and Google TV making lower-level middleware and hardware functions less of a burden.

He then made it clear that while the set-top box is the essential device for supporting these aims today, Deutsche Telekom will have to take a position directly on the glass [television set] itself, eventually, with less reliance on HDMI inputs. The company will have to enable a virtual STB scenario in collaboration with Smart TV makers – meaning an operator app replaces the STB, and this app is the default content and UI experience that someone sees when turning on their Smart TV (if that home is a customer of the Pay TV provider). If this cannot be achieved, DT will need to follow Sky’s example and launch their own Smart TVs.

Throughout his presentation, Bandeira spoke on behalf of Deutsche Telekom, outlining its plan and thinking. But this felt like his vision for an industry, too. His belief that a Pay TV provider must be present directly on the television glass chimes with the philosophy at Sky, which has already taken matters into its own hands with the revolutionary Sky Glass (a Sky OS/UX embedded into a private-labelled Smart TV designed and retailed by Sky). But where Sky moved directly to ‘building’ its own televisions, Bandeira made it clear that DT wanted to avoid this if, possible, and would first seek the Smart TV partnerships that would support the virtual STB model.

Bandeira began by outlining the challenges a Pay TV provider like Deutsche Telekom faces. “We are still in the middle of a transformation cycle that involves a shift from linear to non-linear consumption and also a very important change from service provider centric to content centric. Content brands that used to have us in the middle, as a broker, try to go direct-to-consumer to deliver their services.

“This is a fundamental change and something operators must be aware of as we prepare our TV services for the future.”

He outlined one all-embracing principle and three pillars that will underpin the future of Pay TV. First, the principle: “We must deliver an unbreakable service with the best video and audio quality. We must do a lot of background work to support this.” Then he moved onto the pillars.

“First and foremost, aggregate, aggregate, aggregate – and when you are tired of aggregation, aggregate some more! We must have the content [that consumers want] available. This is fundamental – it is what differentiates us from the other guys who do not have that content.” He added that content is king, and today some popular content may be hosted by one streaming service, and tomorrow it could move to another. It is the Pay TV provider’s responsibility to keep track and provide the access.

“Then you need to aggregate the subscriptions, enabling ‘subscribe’ and ‘unsubscribe’ [for the multiple subscription streaming apps that are onboarded as part of the super-aggregator role]. It is one thing to have the apps [the streaming content services, within your UX] but lots of people have them, so what is your real value, because over time that [having the apps] will not be enough. You need to put smartness into your aggregation.

“In the same way that someone can subscribe [to an app] in one click, they should be able to unsubscribe in one click directly on your TV service. It is very important that we give simplicity to consumers with one single billing relationship. We should be the main touchpoint with consumers who want to take those services. We are the middleman, so we must take ownership of this position.”

Bandeira’s third pillar is content-centric discovery. “This is where we can make a huge difference. Discovery should be independent of who is delivering the content. The consumer should not have to think about where the shows are that they want to consume, whether they are in Netflix, Disney or Amazon, and they might not know, anyway, but we have the answer for that.”

He pointed out that Deutsche Telekom’s focus on content aggregation, discovery and personalisation in the UI is not unique, and acknowledged that the quality of execution is key. “We do the fine-tuning based on the data, what is working and what is not working, and that is very important,” he pointed out.

Bandeira highlighted how Deutsche Telekom’s customer premise equipment strategy must align with these requirements, which led to the conclusion that the set-top box is still essential, for now. “The STB is the only place today where we can fully deliver on our vision for super-aggregation and a seamless subscribe/unsubscribe experience. I can’t do this on a third-party device. So, the STB is still central to our strategy today, but it can become less fundamental.”

The typical Pay TV operator app on a Smart TV, as seen today, is not part of the long-term CPE strategy, Bandeira revealed. “We are not happy to be just an app on an interface; I don’t want to be just an app.” He acknowledged that Deutsche Telekom’s Pay TV service (MagentaTV) is available on Smart TVs as an app, of course. [It is available on all Tizen OS Samsung Smart TVs since 2017, Sony Smart TVs running Android TV since 2015 and on all Android TV Smart TVs running Android 7, 8 and 9.] “But I am not happy to continue in this way in the future, as just an app on a Smart TV.

“If I am just an app on a Smart TV, then over time I will lose engagement with consumers because they will spend less time with me on my experience and more time with all the other apps that are available in the same UI. I can only replace the STB if I can replicate the STB experience without one, and that means I have to be the main app on the [Smart TV] ecosystem, where I contain the other apps [e.g. Netflix, Discovery, local broadcasters] in my app, as seen in my STB.”

Bandeira continued: “Being the aggregator that manages the subscribe and unsubscribe [across multiple third-party apps] is also fundamental, but this is very difficult if you are just one of the apps in the ecosystem. You have to control the experience, like you do today on the STB.”

This brought the Deutsche Telekom executive to his future CPE roadmap, because he made it clear that despite these reservations, his company does want to look beyond STBs. “Aggregating directly on the TV panel, without an STB, is the Holy Grail, and we need to do this. UIs in Smart TVs are becoming better and better. As an industry, we had a head-start on Smart TV makers, but they are catching up, and some UIs are becoming really good.

“These [Smart TV] guys are becoming our competitors with regards to aggregation, and they are well placed for this role because they have the [television] display in the customer home.”

So, how do you work around this, Bandeira asked the audience before answering for them. “We are working on two possible paths simultaneously, A and B. Either we will be successful with A, or we move to B,” he told the Connected TV World Summit audience.

“Path A is where you can broker a deal with TV providers in which you become the [primary] app. When someone buys the television, it asks if they are a Deutsche Telekom customer or if they take their Pay TV service from named competitors. If you are a Deutsche Telekom customer, you then get the Deutsche Telekom experience. We become the [primary TV] app. This is the path we would like to follow because doing [making, private-labelling, retailing] TVs is not our core business.

“But, if we are not successful on this path, we might need to go the other route, and ‘do’ televisions, in a similar way to Sky [with Sky Glass]. That is the only way you can continue to be relevant [as a Pay TV operator] in that case [where virtual STB on third-party branded Smart TVs is ruled out].”

Finally, Bandeira declared that Deutsche Telekom’s vision to be the super-aggregator and the subscriptions manager, as well as the primary content discovery agent, should not be limited to the STB today and the Smart TV (virtual STB or ‘DT Glass’) in the future. He is interested in mirroring this Pay TV role across multi-screen devices too, which requires a promotion for the classic operator TV Everywhere mobile/laptop app.

Noting that multiscreen devices are especially important to younger generations, he asked: “Why not apply the same vision to the smartphone or tablet, with an app that aggregates other apps? Of course, you can’t be the super-app on ecosystems that Google and Apple control, but you can still recreate the concept of an app that can aggregate other content apps and provide [unified] discovery and subscriptions [management]. That will give you service continuity between the experience you offer on a TV set and the experience you offer on these other touchpoints. This is a clear part of our vision.”

The DT executive concluded: “Our vision [for the role of Pay TV operators in future and the CPE that underpins it] puts us on a long path, and one we started a long time ago, but it is fundamental to the sustainability [economic] of the TV business, because we feel the TV ecosystem is going to become more and more challenged unless we do this. There is risk, but there is opportunity to capitalise by doing things that others cannot.”

Related content:

Cyta encouraging operator-as-an-app usage by selling Smart TVs on two-year instalment plan

“I am thrilled to extend a very warm welcome to Gracenote as they join the EIDR Board,” said Hollie Choi, Managing Director of EIDR. “Gracenote and EIDR share in the mission to improve the accuracy and efficiency of content management and distribution for the media and entertainment industry. I’m looking forward to finding ways for our two organisations to work together on our common goals.”

Filiz Bahmanpour, VP of Product at Gracenote, says. “We are enthusiastic about joining the EIDR Board and will use this seat at the table to open conversations with the industry on how we can work together to bring incremental value.”

• 30+ Predicted Genres for Plex to categorise each title, which can be combined with other nuances in the data such as mood and keywords to create many micro-taste groups.
• Measurement of the emotion and mood of each scene or character with what is claimed to be unprecedented levels of accuracy, with the ability to recognise 65+ different mood Tags inside a single video file.
• 20+ mood categories extracted by AI, allowing Plex to connect titles across different genres.
• Classification of each Mood Tag into a more general category so that content will be accurately categorised.
• 1200+ descriptive keywords for the content story, with weights reflecting the story of the content from different perspectives, resulting in relevant keywords to describe the main topic or elements of the content.
• Fingerprint embedding that can be utilised by data scientists to innovate around personalisation, content analysis, and more.

All of this enables Plex to create detailed personalisation around topics, genres and more, and significantly improve the search and discovery experience to keep viewers engaged. Shawn Eldridge, Vice President of Business Development and Content at Plex, says:  “Vionlabs’ technology provides some truly unique capabilities that we believe will be invaluable in helping us achieve our goal of making streaming content even more accessible and enjoyable for everyone.”

“As a user myself, I still sometimes end up in the situation where on a Saturday evening, I can’t find anything to watch,” Brigita Brjuhhanov, TV Product Owner at Elisa Estonia, told  Connected TV World Summit two weeks ago. “And that shouldn’t happen. We should never have to search for half an hour, or an hour, to find what we want to watch.” She added: “It’s our responsibility to have happy eyeballs in front of the TV and not the ones feeling frustrated.”

While it may be tempting to blame discovery on the viewer and their indecisiveness, the panel firmly asserted that it was the role of content and service  providers to make discovery as painless as possible. And this starts with ensuring that platforms are optimised for every device and environment.

“The reality is that we need to be where the eyeballs are to make our business models work. So, we can’t assume everyone has a particular device. It’s about understanding that the consumer probably isn’t going to change their input source,” Gary Woolf, EVP Strategic Development at All3Media International, explained.

Even once a user is on a platform, the sheer volume of content can be hard to negotiate. “There’s an abundance of content and greater choice creates a challenge,” said Matthias Puschmann, TV Platform Partnerships EMEA at Google. “Our first priority is making the content available or helping our partners to provide the content to users, but then also putting them in position to understand what’s happening on a user’s device, and then presenting the content in a way that resonates.”

Platforms have always looked to keep users engaged by delivering recommendations, and while “curated recommendations are still relevant” according to Brjuhhanov, providers cannot rest on their laurels and must ‘be bold’ with creating recommendation engines. But if these backfire “you can lose the audience’s trust,” she asserted.

A key part of being able to recommend content, and making it searchable, is having complete and accurate metadata. “A problem we have as an industry is one of legacy,” said Woolf. He described the issues he had recently when bringing an old TV series  onto a streaming platform: “Not only are you cleaning up these episodes and getting them digitised, but the level of metadata that was recorded 40 years ago is nowhere near what is required. So immediately you need an army of people to create this metadata.”

Brjuhhanov agreed, stating that this issue also affects content in lesser used languages. “Having a ‘smaller’ language, and creating the metadata for that, I think it’s a challenge. And we don’t have an easy solution for that.”

Every provider wants their content to be discovered easily by all viewers. But at the end of the day, as Brjuhhanov pointed out, “We all want to be a button on the remote, but in the end we’ll run out of buttons.” Woolf pointed towards FAST (free ad-supported linear streaming channels) as an emerging way to offer consumers a different service in order to stand out. “Sometimes people just want to come home and have content on, and not have their TV ask them what to put on. This is where FAST has developed.”

However, according to Brjuhhanov, grabbing and keeping the attention of customers comes down to content, “and when we talk about what content should be prioritised, it should be what the customer wants to watch. We need to put egos aside.”

The panel was moderated by Bernd Riefler, Founder & CEO at veed analytics.

Due to the large number of subscription services available in the market, Verizon believes customers are finding it hard to keep up with new services, as well as to access attractive promotions and manage the services they already have. +play helps by, among other things, sending alerts when free trial periods end or prices change. Access to the web-based platform is free no additional cost for Verizon customers.

Users can join by visiting plusplay.verizon.com from a desktop or mobile device. From there they can log into the platform using their existing Verizon credentials and can toggle between the Discover tab to explore content available through +play, the Shop tab to access exclusive offers and savings and the Manage tab to centralise account payments in one place.

Once subscribed to a service through +play, customers will continue to access the service directly through the provider’s streaming app or online portal (not via +play). Customers signing up for early access to the +play beta will get 12 free months of Netflix’s Premium plan if they purchase a 12-month or seasonal subscription from a range of +play partners, including NFL+, NBA League Pass, AMC+ and more. This offer results in an annual savings of $240 and is available for a limited time during early access.

Erin McPherson, Chief Content Officer for Verizon, says: “We’re thrilled to officially launch +play in an open beta, offering our customers exclusive access and to offers and the tools to manage their growing number of subscription services. As one of the largest direct to consumer distributors in the U.S., Verizon is the partner of choice for content and subscriptions services, and we’re positioned to move the industry forward by offering customers more choice, and enabling a seamless billing and management experience.

“The exclusive relationships Verizon has with the top subscription services and content providers, coupled with our distribution scale and customer retention, differentiates us and makes us the partner of choice for providers and customers alike. On +play, customers can get savings and value they can’t access anywhere else and our content providers get vast distribution and stickiness that’s beyond reproach.”

The companies say the move will enhance the user experience for more than one million Magyar Telekom subscribers and improve the telco’s ability to monetise its content.

Magyar Telekom joins other Deutsche Telekom MagentaTV subsidiaries in deploying Think360. The platform was originally deployed by Deutsche Telekom in 2019, and is used by the telco in Germany, as well as by Hrvatski Telekom in Croatia, OTE Group in Greece, and Magenta Telekom in Austria.

Samuel Sweet, EMEA & APAC CEO at ThinkAnalytics, says: “It is a testament to ThinkAnalytics’ reputation and Think360’s proven results that that Magyar Telekom has selected ThinkAnalytics to power richer content discovery and personalisation across all its Telekom TV devices including its latest Android TV platform.

“This extension of our partnership with Deutsche Telekom demonstrates the importance of our tools to monitor, manage and deliver measurable personalised content and promotions.”

According to Media Distillery, one of the challenges NLZIET faces is that, especially for non-scripted live programmes like news, talk shows, and sports programming, there is a lack of descriptions of the actual topics the programme contains, included in the EPG.

Media Distillery elaborates: “Due to the nature of these shows, the programme description provided in a TV guide / EPG is typically very limited and superficial and offers little informative value. An example would be the news: EPG descriptions typically state that a news programme contains news of the latest internal and foreign affairs and the weather, instead of more specific topics such as, for instance, the war in Ukraine, the Eurovision Song Contest, Will Smith or the Champions League Final. With Topic Distillery, such topics are detected and added to the metadata.”

The partnership will mean NLZIET viewers will be able to find content based on the detected topics, decide whether they want to watch based on these topics, and jump to particular parts of the show based on automatically generated chapter markers and chapter titles.

Survey results from a beta trial of the solution shows that 92% of respondents said they would use the solution when it becomes available. 90% of users said they would be interested in jumping straight to the segment of choice (as enabled by the solution) – this is made more significant by the fact that 85% of respondents currently manually scroll through the video timeline to find interesting parts.

The survey also finds that 72% of respondents said the solution gives more control over the desired topics and 74% said it gives them a better idea about what the content is about.

NLZIET and Media Distillery are currently testing several additional new features. New forms of chapterisation are in development, allowing viewers to quickly navigate in the playbar to specific topics without needing to search, and to watch items in short-form.

Sander Kouwenhoven, CTO at NLZIET, says: “Media Distillery is the natural partner for NLZIET. We both believe that innovation is the key factor for taking the quality of video entertainment to the next level.”

“With Topic Distillery, users no longer need to watch a whole programme to find their desired content, and content consumption is much easier. This solution could really transform the non-scripted live TV watching experience. By making more content easily discoverable, Topic Distillery prolongs the lifetime value of the content.”

Roland Sars, CEO at Media Distillery, comments: “We’ve only just begun to grasp the myriad ways AI can provide consumers with more personalised, user-friendly experiences, and we’re excited to discover more.”