Alex Froment-Curtil, Chief Commercial Officer of Vodafone Group, is among the speakers at Connected TV World Summit in May. You can read here about the integration of Vodafaone TV and HBO Max in multiple European markets, with Froment-Curtil declaring that, “As one of the largest television operators in Europe, Vodafone has made provision of the best available content, with the highest quality viewer experience, the central pillars of the Vodafone TV strategy. With television shifting away from linear viewing, we have set about aggregating the best content available for our customers. The addition of HBO Max will underline that strategy with its rich entertainment choice and an incredible user experience.”
Vodafone feature in a session dedicated to the future of Pay TV, titled, ‘Pay TV: Beyond exclusivity’, which is chaired by Ben Keen, Analyst & Advisor, Technology, Media & Telecoms. This session explores how Pay TV operators remain relevant in the 2020s, with a special focus on content curation, discovery and navigation in an expanded universe of global and local apps where content exclusivity becomes more elusive.
Connected TV World Summit is on May 24-25 at the Royal College of Physicians in London.
Dan Fahy, SVP Streaming, UK at Paramount is also confirmed to speak and will provide insights into Paramount’s streaming momentum and how the company will secure its place as a must-have streamer, harnessing Paramount+, Pluto and My5. Fahy will outline the role of Paramount’s existing brands and distribution in driving streaming and how genre-diversity is key to super-serving entire households. There will be a focus on how Paramount is ensuring consumer prominence, including through strategic partnerships. This presentation is part of a session called ‘The Battle for Attention’. This session focuses on how media owners increase total hours viewed and the stickiness of television services.
Rhys McLachlan, Director of Advanced Advertising at ITV will present on ‘Building advertising innovation into broadcaster DNA’, which includes more detail on ITV AdLabs and its work. ITV AdLabs brings together all ITV’s commercial innovation, spanning contextual targeting, dynamic creative, Shoppable TV, addressable broadcast TV advertising, progressive analytics & measurement and even marketing opportunities within the entertainment metaverse, which the UK broadcaster is pioneering. Delegates will hear how ITV AdLabs works in practice, how ITV has built development agility into its DNA, and how it is helping to drive digital transformation. Early results from this initiative will be revealed.
Early speaker confirmations for Connected TV World Summit also include:
- Brigita Brjuhhanov, TV Development Team Lead, Elisa
- Akhila Khanna, VP, Partnerships and Business Development, UK, Paramount
- Ingmar Schmidt, Senior Product Manager, Swisscom blue TV
- Paola Colombo, General Manager, Adtech, Publitalia ’80
- Chris Edwards, Director, Business Development – EMEA, Rakuten Advertising
- Rose Adkins Hulse, Founder and CEO, ScreenHits TV
You can see more event details here.
Delegates can register here.
There are sessions at Connected TV World Summit dedicated to content strategies, the future of free-to-view television, monetising connected TV audiences, and TV sport, among many others. A session is also devoted to ‘The Million-&-One Operator Club’ – “that special group of Pay TV providers with less than 1,000,001 subscribers who service large chunks of the global subscription TV population and have to compete with increasingly consolidated giants that could be ten times their size, and fight for consumer engagement in the face of SVOD and AVOD growth.”
This session explores how smaller operators guarantee their role as the aggregators and navigators for premium entertainment, how they onboard the apps that consumers expect on set-top boxes, and how they achieve the operational agility to introduce more complex services, faster, at reasonable cost. Brigita Brjuhhanov at Elisa will help lead the thinking in this session, chaired by Anette Schaefer, Managing Director, BIG Picture.
Connected TV World Summit boasts a list of exceptional moderators and chairs, including:
- Colin Dixon, Founder & Chief Analyst, nScreenMedia
- Jon Watts, Executive Director, The Project X Institute & Managing Director, CIMM
- Bernd Riefler, Founder & CEO, veed analytics
- Thomas Helbo, COO, JT Group
- Nathalie Lethbridge, Founder and Principal, Atonik Digital
The conference has already gathered some of the best new thinking from analyst, research and consulting firms to set the scene in each session. Presentations include:
The rise of studio ‘sell-to-self’: a revolution in content distribution. Jack Davison, Executive Vice President, 3Vision. Setting the scene for the session: Content-to-consumer
3Vision research reveals the rapid trend towards vertical integration of studio content production and distribution, driven by the growth of direct-to-consumer services. With major studios selling 40%, 61%, 93% and even 100% of new TV series to themselves in Europe, this phenomenon could fundamentally transform the content distribution business – so where are we now, and what happens next? This presentation sheds light on how ‘sell-to-self’ is unfolding across different markets, comparing the pace at which each studio has ramped up the vertical integration of its pipelines. Davison gives his opinion on whether it is sustainable for studios to give up other licensing opportunities for exclusivity on their own streaming services, and if innovative windowing improves the business case. You will hear how far sell-to-self is likely to grow as a proportion of all content deals.
The implications of subscription super-fans and a free-to-view ‘hardcore’ for Pay TV curation. Maria Rua Aguete, Senior Research Director, TV, Video and Advertising, Omdia. Setting the scene for the session: Pay TV: Beyond exclusivity
Omdia’s Multisubscription TV and Video research shows that the growth in online video subscriptions is driven by homes that are adding services to existing Pay TV and/or SVOD accounts. It also reveals a hardcore of free-only homes that is actually growing slowly and will be nearly 40% of the potential TV/video viewing population by 2025, helped by the strength of AVOD and FAST. We hear the latest data on how households globally take their television, then explore the implications for Pay TV aggregation. How do Pay TV operators make themselves central to the multi-SVOD stacking phenomenon, and should they do more to embrace free streamers behind their pay walls?
How sports leagues can leverage streaming to engage audiences more effectively. Minal Modha, Principal Analyst, Consumer Research Lead, Ampere Analysis. Setting the scene for the session: Sports TV: the second half
Ampere Analysis closely follows the migration of sports onto streaming platforms and the changing expectations of sports fans. This presentation sheds light on why streaming services are increasingly attractive to sports leagues as potential rights buyers. Minal Modha offers advice to sport federations and rights holders on how they can leverage digital platforms to grow audiences while super-serving existing fans. We will hear how streaming facilitates novel forms of non-live content – such as clippings – and the chance to connect with sports fans through a “player-first” approach.
How D2C streamers can avoid churn and grow subscribers. Tim Mulligan, Executive Vice President and Research Director, MIDiA Research. Setting the scene for the session: Winning and keeping subscribers.
What D2C streaming services must do to avoid churn and grow subscribers against a backdrop of increased competition and an ‘attention recession’. The different approaches to content differentiation are outlined, whether focusing on zeitgeisty Originals or deep libraries. You will hear why MIDiA believes the long-term strength of direct-to-consumer relies on becoming a replacement for traditional Pay TV which, in turn, requires multi-genre diversity to attract broad audiences including the Silver Streamers – with sports and news leading the list of content that can drive regular usage.
Delivering digital growth: European broadcaster strategies. Richard Broughton, Director, Ampere Analysis. Setting the scene for the session: The future of free-to-view
Assessing how broadcasters can maximise linear (broadcast) audiences and grow their ‘share of time’ in the streaming space, with a special focus on the evolution of BVOD. This presentation assesses the strategies seen across multiple European markets, highlighting the common themes and local innovations. Among other things you will hear about commissioning, windowing and licensing strategies, and the development of solo and collaborative SVOD services. We ask: is there a repeatable winning formula for engaging the 18-34 demographic, and what is it?
Technology decisions and the battle for consumer experience. Tom Morrod, Research Director, Caretta Research. Setting the scene for the session: Next-Generation Entertainment Platforms.
The battle for consumer experience is fought on two fronts – content and technology. How platforms approach technology strategy has a huge bearing on the devices they can reach, what content is available, how content can be discovered, how experiences are personalised and how attention is monetised. Platforms must make critical decisions as to how much they invest in in-house development to have that ‘secret sauce’ or work through technology vendors and partners to scale their offering in an ever more complicated and technologically advanced world. This presentation explores the options and reviews how tech choices are influencing short and long-term implementation strategies.
Connected TV World Summit is produced by Mediatel Events, which owns Videonet.
For more information about this event, including remaining speaking opportunities, please email: team@mediatelevents.com
The umbrella theme for this year’s Connected TV World Summit is The Great Recalibration, with the event organisers saying: “TV is changing at breakneck speed and much of what we took for granted is being challenged or reimagined. Studio groups are now their own distributors. Broadcasters are becoming digital-first. Sports leagues are going direct-to-consumer. Streamers are winning domestic sports rights. Pay TV has lost its exclusivity on premium networks. Movies are premiered in SVOD. Boxsets precede linear release. Aggregation is morphing into super-aggregation. Pay TV operators make their own Smart TVs. Television makers aggregate channels and sell advertising. ‘Library channels’ produce Originals. Advertising can be individually targeted. Streaming can look as good as broadcast…
“What we are witnessing is The Great Recalibration of television, as the forces of convergence create new media companies, business models, partnerships, audiences and user experiences – all backed by technology innovation. Connected TV World Summit 2022 will explore the new TV blueprint and what every TV stakeholder must do to grow their business and ensure their continued relevance into the 2030s. This is where we combine business-critical strategy with implementation detail, and share best practice from around the world. And this is where we look for the revenue pipelines that can sustain an expanded ecosystem.”
