The app would also provide the means to subscribe and unsubscribe to the third-party hosted streaming services, with the Pay TV provider being the universal subscriptions manager – a core future Pay TV operator function that Bandeira believes should also appear in all Deutsche Telekom’s consumer touchpoints.

“This is a clear part of our vision,” he revealed at Connected TV World Summit this spring. You can read where this multiscreen super-aggregator app fits into the wider Deutsche Telekom Pay TV and CPE roadmap in our separate report, here.

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Deutsche Telekom reveals its CPE roadmap: virtual STBs or its own version of Sky Glass, and away from standard Smart TV apps

Deutsche Telekom presents its vision for long-term Pay TV operator success

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

Cyta (which also provides broadband), offers multichannel linear TV spanning entertainment and sports, plus VOD via its Cytavision packages. It also has the CytavisionGo streaming service for mobile, tablet and computer. Last year the company implemented a Smart TV app for Android, Tizen and WebOS that largely replicates the Pay TV experience already delivered via set-top boxes on the managed IPTV network, including the provision of pay-per-view as well as VOD.

At Connected TV World Summit this spring, Anna Agrotou, Senior Engineer at Cyta, explained the operator-as-an-app Smart TV strategy. “We want to target our younger audience and we need to gradually replace the set-top box. It is more cost-efficient for us [to provide the TV service via a Smart TV app] because if there was a set-top box we would have to install it in the home. The app provides immediate service activation: you just phone our call centre and download the application [to an existing supported Smart TV].”

Smart TV app users get a three-month free trial period that gives them access to a subset of the content. If they then subscribe, the full service begins at a lower monthly price than the set-top box service offering. A subscription comes with multiscreen viewing on three devices plus the television app, with sign-on allowing for one concurrent Smart TV stream on the same IP address. If someone tries to log-in from a different IP address, they are asked if they want to end the viewing session on the first device. But viewing is allowed from different locations, with the ‘portable’ television app ready for use in holiday homes, for example. Additional concurrent Smart TV streams are allowed at extra cost.

Cyta is actively encouraging new customers to take the Smart TV approach rather than the set-top box, and has been doing this since late 2022. Customers who want to convert from STB consumption to Smart TV app usage can do so, to take advantage of the reduced subscription fee. Agrotou acknowledged that even as more customers take up the Smart TV app approach, there will be a need for STBs to serve second, non-Smart TVs in a home (in multiroom homes). “It won’t be easy to migrate these customers [from STB to Smart TV app],” she pointed out.

In 2020, Cyta introduced a pre-paid model for sports packages and discreet sports events on the STB offer, and one of the next steps is to bring this to the Smart TV app.

Agrotou gave the London audience a list of the challenges that Cyta has faced with its operator TV app deployment. The most notable item is the need to support software across multiple TV operating systems and then test upgrades, and ensuring users update the app if this process is not automatic.

“Monitoring the quality of our user experience is a big challenge, like if there is buffering”, she said, admitting that this is a work-in-progress. Stream delivery must be optimised for non-managed networks. The TV app must also contend with any in-home Wi-Fi issues, of course. The Pay TV provider has already fixed one UX issue for its sports content by using CMAF to dramatically reduce the delay from when the STB signal arrives and when a stream plays out on the Smart TV app.

“We had to update our existing agreements with content providers to include the TV app in our portfolio,” Agrotou added. Having to use the television manufacturer’s remote control was not a problem, however. “We manged to put a lot of the navigation process into the UX.”

Cytavision on Smart TVs is the classic ‘app among apps’ model where the Smart TV maker’s UI is the home screen, and users then go into the Cyta app. When they exit the app, they return to the television’s default UI.

Related content:

Deutsche Telekom reveals its CPE roadmap: virtual STBs or its own version of Sky Glass, and away from standard Smart TV apps

Deutsche Telekom’s Bandeira: Let’s recreate the super-aggregator experience on phones and tablets

“There is a real advantage in acquiring content in the bundle model because we have some predictability in the volumes we will deliver. It’s then easier to negotiate segregation with providers. Once we know what we can commit to, we can trade volume for wholesale discounts. It allows us to deliver value upstream to providers, who can count on a certain revenue, which in turn enables us to deliver value downstream, to our subscribers. It’s a win-win deal.”

Explaining consumer needs (and what Pay TV providers must deliver for them), Adam Nightingale, Chief Commercial Officer at 3SS, summarised it in one word: simplicity. “TV is entertainment, where you go to stay informed or to distract yourself, and it’s crucial to make it easy. Ironically, we build huge user experiences but we don’t want people to use them – we want to get viewers watching TV as quickly as possible.”

Nightingale also emphasised the importance of personalisation in a bid to appeal to younger users. “It’s important to understand what kind of user experience appeals to the individual, and make sure what they’re seeing on TV is relevant for them. There is no one size-fits-all.

“Aggregation is key, and non-traditional content sources, such as TikTok, YouTube or local content are all important; but making sure you have them in the right format, in front of people they most appeal to, is what matters. Then comes super-personalisation: understanding, monitoring and tweaking what works and what doesn’t. It’s a never-ending editorial task, but having the means to manage user experience at a fairly granular level will be increasingly important if you want to remain relevant.”

Nancy Goldberg, EVP and Chief Marketing and Sales Officer at NAGRA Kudelski Group, also pointed to the power of personalisation, including as a way to combat the attraction of pirate services. “Piracy means users can find content easily for free, so keeping them [consumers, on Pay TV] will be harder. We must give them added flexibility, value, experience. There can’t just be one thing everybody wants; it must be hyper-personalised. The adage, give them what they want, whenever they want, couldn’t be truer today.”

Andy Waltenspiel, Managing Director, Waltenspiel Management Consulting, moderated the Connected TV World Summit panel, ‘Pay TV in the 2020s – keeping subscribers and channels onboard’. You can see the discussion here.

According to Jonas Engwall, CEO of Bedrock (which provides video streaming platforms to broadcasters and media companies in Europe), the answer is simple. “Content is still king in the streaming world. But the platform is queen.”

He continued that while there are exceptions, “If you look at the global streamers, they are well ahead of the local players. They are quite advanced in their content offering, massively pushing content with the platforms. And I think from a platform perspective, they’re also very advanced. They provide very personalised platforms, they’re stable, they work well.”

Ivars Lubāns, Head of Product at Go3, a local streaming provider in the Baltics (and part of TV3 Group), pointed out that the key to growth for this service was providing variety and locally-focussed content. “Regarding the Baltics, it’s a small market and Netflix is probably not that interested [in providing local content], as it’s three separate countries, three separate languages. So, we have the local knowledge and the local understanding and relevance, which is especially important for the 25+ [demographic] market.”

This was echoed by Anita Barnard, Head of Distribution and Commercial Partnerships at Marquee TV, which offers ballet theatre and opera, and whose service focuses on “content from places where people cannot or cannot afford to go to, such as the Sydney Opera House”. However, Engwall asserted that, “Local players are great at storytelling. But the challenge is to bring that content on a platform that can compete with the big players.”

The panel agreed that consolidation and partnerships could be a key differentiator for driving growth in D2C platforms. But more than that, without consolidation the CTV landscape will become too fractured for consumers. “Consolidation is the future,” said Parul Goel, Territory Head UK and Director Finance, UK/EU/Americas at ZEE Entertainment. “It’s got to happen because there is so much leaking of money everywhere. And we have to stop it to grow our industry. Otherwise, there will be hundreds of channels people won’t watch.”

Marquee TV works with local and global providers to bring its content to wider audiences and provide a better viewing experience, and Barnard sees a customer experience opportunity in this marketplace. “From a consumer point of view, there’s so many different subscriptions in their life and they just want to manage that in one place. Consolidation doesn’t have to be companies buying companies, but it needs cooperation to find an easier way for consumers to manage their subscriptions.”

Lubāns agreed on the need to evolve the CX. “[For consumers] one part is the money and the other is the experience. If you have to switch between providers to watch different content, it’s inconvenient. Some kind of aggregation has to happen within the industry.”

With the current economic situation, it can be hard to justify the investments needed to grow – and the days of growth at all costs may be coming to an end. “For global players it’s a land grab race. They are creating lots of content, but at some point they will have to stabilise to make a profit,” asserted Engwall. From Goel’s point of view, “Cost control in terms of content is the quickest way to get profit.”

With a plethora of ways to monetise content – whether using AVOD, FAST or SVOD – D2C providers should not be afraid to experiment with different strategies. As Engwall explained, “Nowadays, technology allows you to have a broader monetisation strategy; I think it’s up to everyone to try and see how it ends up … Spotify has shown in music that people will pay eventually to get a better experience. I think we’re heading in that direction.”

Ultimately, the panel decided, the key to growth in this sector is putting user experience first. “We want viewers to have a good experience on the bigger screens. Those who do watch via those bigger screens tend to stay longer,” Barnard observed. Lubāns concluded: “Going forward, I think the industry will focus not on the quantity, but on the quality of the content.”

The panel was moderated by Lydia Fairfax, Founder & MD at Triple Crown Consulting.

“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.

The first approach is a greater focus on scripted content, with Towler arguing that BVOD (broadcaster VOD/streaming) services are underweight in this department when compared to SVODs (both for current catalogues and upcoming commissions).

She presented figures showing the proportion of UK SVOD and BVOD content catalogues that are scripted. Taken in January 2023 (from the Ampere service Ampere Analytics) these reveal that ITV has the highest proportion of scripted content among UK broadcaster streaming services, at 53%, but this is still lower than all the major SVODs.

The UK SVOD with the lowest proportion of scripted content is NOW, at 57%, while Disney+ leads with 84%. The Ampere Analysis figures show that My5 (the Channel 5 BVOD offer) has 23% scripted content, with All4 (from Channel 4) at 33% and BBC iPlayer at 45%.

Towler’s advice is that while scripted content is more expensive, it has higher engagement and better longevity. To support this, she offered the London audience a graph showing the average relative popularity of scripted vs unscripted titles in the months following release, using an Ampere Analysis Popularity Score that is a measure of relative consumer search activity levels on third-party sources such as Google and Wikipedia. This showed that scripted content begins life significantly more ‘popular’ than unscripted content and then increases that relative advantage dramatically in the months that follow.

The popularity data came from ‘Ampere Analytics, Ampere Commissioning’ (a service within Ampere Analysis) and covered the top 25 scripted titles and top 25 unscripted titles released by BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 for seasons released since 2018.

At launch, scripted content was around five times as popular as unscripted (based on the search activity), but at three months this was closer to 8x as popular, and at nine months it was in the region of 12 times as popular as unscripted.

With the cost of scripted content in mind, Towler demonstrated how the rate of growth for global content spend is slowing, but noted that co-commissions can be used to increase output. This is the second of her strategies to increase broadcaster share of digital viewing time.

She gave figures for the % of broadcaster scripted series that are co-commissions on a quarter-by-quarter basis. These showed regular fluctuations but a general downward trend.

For example, the highest peak for broadcaster scripted series co-commissions since Q2 2022 has been 11%, whereas there were peaks of 17% in Q2 2020 and 14% in Q1 2021. The most recent trough was 8% in Q3 2022, whereas previous troughs were 12% (e.g. Q3/Q4 2020) and 10% (e.g. Q3 2021 and Q1 2022).

Co-commissions are often among broadcasters’ most popular recent shows, Towler told the Connected TV World Summit gathering (once again using Ampere’s Popularity Score, and so based on relative consumer third-party search activity).

A diagram outlined the proportion of Top 50 popular titles in 2022 (in the UK) that were co-commissions (using the Top 50 across BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 – with the data again from ‘Ampere Analytics, Ampere Commissioning’). For all shows in the Top 50 during 2022, one-fifth were co-commissions. If you count only the newer content – the Top 50 shows in 2022 that were also released after 2020 – two-thirds were co-commissions.

“Co-commissions offer a cost-effective opportunity to increase the volume of premium scripted content in broadcasters’ slates,” Towler concluded.

Towler’s third suggestion is that broadcasters should take advantage of the fact that non-exclusive licensing is set to increase – meaning more studio titles will be available to license. She used HBO Max in the USA as an example, where the proportion of the catalogue that is exclusive was 80% in August 2022 but 75% in January 2023.

[The context, of course, is that when major international studios launched their direct-to-consumer ‘+’ services there was a general shift towards studios feeding their own streaming services with their own content – sometimes at the expense of third-party licensing. If studios are licensing more to third-parties again, broadcasters can boost their BVOD offer with the titles that become available.]

Towler also suggested that broadcasters can license their own content to (non-broadcaster) AVOD and FAST services to reach new audiences.

The fourth item on the ‘to-do’ list is to release more digital-first premieres, which Towler described as “key for transitioning viewers to the online platform.” Based on first-run series released in 2022, ITV is leading the way among UK broadcasters for BVOD premieres, with 7% of those first-runs going to the streaming service first. For Channel 4 the figure was 6%, with the BBC at 3%.

As well as getting linear viewers into streaming, first-run digital premieres will help draw in new audiences, she noted. Towler also advised that weekly releases on VOD help retain users and prolong engagement, compared to full-series drops.

The final part of Towler’s five-point plan is a focus on younger viewers. She had a graph showing that Netflix Originals skew younger than content on SVOD in general, and pointed out that these are backed by an aggressive social media strategy “that is key for engaging younger groups.”

Broadcasters could learn from Netflix in this regard. “A successful social media strategy across Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat can help engage this demographic,” Towler advised.

Peter Parmenter, SVP of Business Development at DAZN Group, shared his insights at Connected TV World Summit last month, where he was interviewed by Minal Modha of Ampere Analysis.

Investing in local teams to create the best experience

Asked how DAZN has managed to scale successfully with its expansion into new markets across Europe and the differing rights to manage across these, Parmenter highlighted the need to have boots on the ground wherever DAZN plants its flag.

“Our rights portfolio in every market is very different,” he said. “Therefore, we have to have a very local feel to the product. We’ve put new management teams in many of our biggest markets to really take us to the next level in terms of delivering to local consumers.”

One of DAZN’s biggest achievements was securing the UEFA Women’s Champions League, which was the result of a collaboration with YouTube, and Parmenter explained how this came about.

“This was the first time UEFA centrally sold the competition through the group stages right up to the final. It was a four-year deal and we desperately wanted to be involved. We operate in 9–10 core markets and didn’t feel we had the scale on our own to deliver the mission, which is ultimately to grow the women’s game.

“We took what we think was a very innovative proposition to UEFA by partnering with YouTube, the world’s biggest video platform — that can literally get video to every device in every corner of the world — to deliver on that mission. YouTube and Google massively bought into this and we had, collaboratively, an incredible proposition to take to UEFA.”

Uniting linear and OTT to give sports fans choice

In addition to its streaming partnership with YouTube, DAZN worked with various free-to-air broadcasters across Europe — such as ITV in the UK — to ensure the Women’s Champion’s League couldn’t be missed.

Asked if DAZN saw a difference between their OTT and broadcast offerings, Parmenter said: “We take a very practical view about where people want to watch; we make a service available to as many people as we possibly can.

“So, it’s not just about device penetration and making sure we have an app that works on a phone screen all the way up to 85” OLED screens in your living room, which we do. But if there’s an audience out there that would prefer to watch via a linear channel, why not? There are hundreds and thousands of fans out there who have been used to watching [football] on channel 253 every Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. Why change that?

“What we can do, over time, is convert that audience into an app-based audience, but the app’s got to be better, it’s got to deliver value more than the linear channel, and that’s something that anybody who’s involved in the OTT space is trying to do.”

Avoiding streaming gridlock by collaborating with ISPs

Among all of DAZN’s successes there have also been stumbles, such as the opening weekend of Serie A in Italy when its streams became gridlocked. When it came to learnings from this, Parmenter said it was all about understanding what they could and couldn’t control, and boosting technology to avoid similar issues in future.

“We can’t control when the season starts and we can’t control Italians’ holiday plans,” he commented. “What you saw in the opening weekend of Serie A was a huge, huge amount of the potential audience travelling, particularly in the south where some of the networks aren’t as strong as they are in major cities.”

To bolster DAZN’s network capabilities, it has become more network-aware, installing its own technology stacks with big ISPs in Italy to get closer to users, while developing its video player to better support adaptable bitrates to ensure a continuity of service when there are fluctuations in bandwidth.

“It wasn’t a great weekend,” Parmenter admitted, “but every weekend subsequently we are delivering millions of concurrent streams of Serie A in full HD to devices all over Italy very, very successfully. We will never rest on our laurels, and we will continue to innovate.”

Filling the gaps with diverse content

When asked what makes DAZN better than the linear experience for investors, sports rights holders and sports fans, Parmenter said that beyond the obvious benefits of being able to watch anywhere the DAZN app is available, it was also about how the diversity of content keeps users coming back.

“We’re not just serving you live content, we’re giving editorial, we’re giving you statistics, we’re giving you data. All of these services combine in your pocket so that it’s multiple views a day rather than an appointment-to-view in front of your TV in the evening.”

Speaking at Connected TV World Summit last month, the Belgian telco noted that by tagging data streams and tagging the video in which the ad is played, it knows which viewers have watched any given linear ad. As Proximus moves towards linking both linear and digital with addressable, the ability for the company to track which viewers have not been exposed to certain ads allows for addressable campaigns to run across devices.

He remarked: “If you saw certain ads on TV – addressable ads on TV –  a little bit later you could come to your PC environment and see a follow up ad.

“We don’t do this today, but as a telco we are really rich with traffic data. We know all the websites which you [visit]. Unlocking all that traffic data would mean consumers could go to a website about house renovations and we could link that on TV with an addressable spot for a new refrigerator or something for the bathroom.”

Marien believes merging the linear and digital worlds will come with a learning curve due to differences between the two domains – such as the CPM on digital being significantly lower than for the TV world. But he noted that Proximus has already begun the work of linking the two, establishing a joint venture called Ads and Data, to explore how addressable campaigns can be coordinated across linear and digital.

A significant challenge involved in targeting ads across these domains is consent gathering and privacy, according to Marien. He commented: “We are the tech provider but we are also the data provider. We gather our data and we create different segments of the data which are available to broadcasters. This is not just our data but also third-party data that we integrate in an anonymous way through a sort of bunker system, where we can create even larger segments or have data from advertisers in there. Everything has to be privacy, privacy, privacy.”

To tackle consent gathering, Marien said that Proximus built a very large, GDPR-compliant consent engine which the company uses, not only for advertisers, but at other points where people should give their consent.

He noted that Proximus was the first IP TV operator worldwide to introduce addressable: “At a certain moment, we saw the tech became available to do addressability, we saw that broadcaster and advertisers were willing and starting to adopt it. So, we started a project – not on the big screen at first – but on smart phones and tablets because there the tech integration was much easier. We learned a lot and did a lot of trials. We then moved that implementation to set-top-boxes (STB) because we work with STB.”

To track light TV viewers on connected TV and run addressable campaigns to viewers who haven’t yet been exposed, the Italian sales house for Mediaset developed an HbbTV app. Colombo explained: “Once a user is connecting to one of our broadcast channels, minute by minute we know what is going on over the TV screen, so we know if they’ve been exposed to an ad or if they haven’t been reached at all.”

This allows media planners to reach effective frequency levels with each viewer, Colombo said, as Publitalia ‘80 can identify who has been exposed to a linear campaign only once or twice, and can then target those viewers [in connected TV] to increase frequency to four or five exposures.

Colombo stressed that advertising – just like content – should be a conversation between a brand and a consumer across different media. She explained how, through an algorithm, Publitalia ’80 was able to link a TV set with all the people in a household and other media they are consuming, as part of its efforts to establish consumer identity. “We call it the family graph,” Colombo said, “We are able to create this family and know what they are interested in.

“For example, if we knew they were passionate about cooking because they were surfing a specific page on a website, we could serve them a campaign on connected TV based on that.” She elaborated that the company can create extra reach by targeting consumers on mobile phones when Publitalia ‘80 detects that the user has not been served an ad on their TV screen. The sales house can also do sequencing, where the big branding message of a campaign is delivered to users on the TV, and then, later in the afternoon or the next day, they can be targeted [using adjusted creative] with a call to action.

Speaking at Connected TV World Summit last month, Colombo also said  attribution modelling performed by Publitalia ’80 could prove the effectiveness of a campaign on business outcomes. Eight million users in Italy have the software that supports the company’s attribution modelling on their mobile devices. Based on the websites, as well as the physical locations, that this super-panel of consumers visits, Publitalia ’80 is able to track their interests.

Speaking about a campaign for automotive brands, she said: “We knew the family behind the TV screen and could see whether they were going to a dealership after watching the ad, or if they were surfing a website after we showed them the CTV campaign. So, we started building attribution modelling and proved that it worked. We could see an uplift in people going to the dealership.” In this way, the sales house is able to “connect the last mile”.

Colombo believes that this kind of attribution modelling points towards a cookie-free future. In the past, linear TV has always worked with panels, she noted, where between 2,000 and 3,000 people would be interviewed and this data would be extrapolated to reflect the population. With attribution modelling, Publitalia ’80 often sees 200,000 to 300,000 users taking an action after seeing ad, which the company tracks. This scale allows the company to “sit in between the two worlds” of linear and digital, while getting the “very explicit consent of the consumer”.

In addition to linear and connected TV, the company recently introduced digital into its attribution modelling, and Colombo says it is now looking to introduce Digital Out Of Home (DOOH).

Instead Vodafone Group, which counts 22 million TV households across 11 European markets, believes it will stand out by providing homes with a mix of broadcast linear TV and the streaming services they want, in a unified experience that is built upon bespoke and individualised discovery for each household, itself driven by smart metadata integrations, plus complementary partnerships with direct-to-consumer streaming services that range from simple reselling to carrier billing to customer care. And Wierig added that centralised negotiations with content providers should enable discounting for Vodafone customers.

Reiterating the commitment to television, the executive pointed to the strategic reorganisation of Vodafone Group to create a harmonised, pan-European approach to television product and innovation. Wierig heads the new Group Entertainment department, created 2.5 years ago, that is creating this more holistic entertainment strategy, backed by a global product management team and featuring centralised negotiations with content providers.

Speaking at Connected TV World Summit in May, Wierig said Vodafone avoids any possibility of becoming a ‘dumb pipe’ by extending its connectivity DNA and customer footprint to new product categories spanning entertainment, smart-tech, home ecosystems and payment solutions. And in entertainment, it is the complementary nature of the partnerships with streaming TV services that is driving innovation. “We support the direct-to-consumer strategies of content providers by giving them access to our connectivity customer base and our strong marketing and sales performance. We work closely with them to help them penetrate our customer base with their content and services.”

Wierig said that yes, Vodafone is a super-aggregator, but he emphasised that this means the aggregation of both broadcast TV and “the very valuable and relevant content from the OTT streamers.” It is not just about aggregating apps. He pointed to a 60% viewing share for linear TV today – and believes it will remain at this level. “That means our clear goal is to bring relevant content to our Vodafone homes as a hybrid solution – a best-of-breed and ‘best-of-blend’ across linear TV, with its associated TV Anytime and TV Anywhere, plus the best OTT services.”

Asked by interviewer Ben Keen, Analyst & Advisor, Technology, Media & Telecoms, if more apps would mean less subscription TV linear channel deals, the answer was a firm ‘no’. Wierig made it clear that Vodafone Group is committed to aggregating linear Pay TV channels that it licenses, packages, prices and markets.” But it was clear that more apps onboarding and apps-based viewing will mean holistic packaging and pricing innovation, with bundling viewed as a key value-add. “One of the elements we can bring to the table is centralised negotiations, and the chance of a discount [on the cost of a streaming service].”

Wierig believes Vodafone can help streaming services to grow at a time when consumers may need convincing that they should add a second or third paid service to their streaming stack. He also believes that the introduction of lower-priced, ad-supported tiers by some formerly subscription dominated streaming services will give Pay TV operators more flexibility when creating bundles and placing OTT services into packages.

Content discovery is where Vodafone can add serious value to streaming apps partners and, given that streaming services can be found pretty much everywhere, this is a business imperative if you want to play in the future aggregation marketplace. “The question is how every consumer can find the right content, given that content sources are increasing significantly. So, we look closely into customer segmentation. Our goal is to give every customer – whether a family with kids or a single person household, or a couple – an individualised experience.

So, this is about discovery, and that requires proper metadata integration and unified search across various content offerings. “It is not always easy to convince OTT service providers to be really open [with metadata] but we are getting there, first of all because we are complementary to their D2C approach and we can offer strong marketing and sales, and that is a perfect fit strategically,” Wierig told the London audience.

Vodafone Group is particularly active as a TV provider in Germany, Spain and Portugal, and has enjoyed content exclusivity – as with sports rights – in certain markets. But the Group has concluded that it is generally happy with non-exclusive partnerships. Wierig agreed that this has the affect of de-risking the business, providing a better ‘risk-to-reward’ balance. Shunning exclusive content rights like sport does not mean turning down any exclusives, however, as seen by the recent HBO Max exclusive telco marketing partnership with Warner Bros. Discovery, for example. “It does depend on the opportunity, and where it is needed and it is helpful, and where the risk/reward profile works, it is something we can look at. But in general, we are more on the non-exclusive path.”