In the exhibition halls themselves, there will be an array of exhibitor and sponsor content across special stages and theatres, with the main focus on the transformative tech and changing business models part of the programme. The IBC Technical Papers – which are one of the unique benefits of IBC for technologists – are on the agenda, of course.

Some of the headline speakers already announced are:

• Phil Wiser, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Paramount Global
• Leah Hooper Rosa, Senior Vice President, EMEA Streaming and Global Integration Lead at Warner Bros. Discovery
• Kishore AK, President Technology and Chief Technology Officer at Zee
• Bill Baggelaar, Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President, Technology Development at Sony Pictures Entertainment
• Aditi Pandey, Head of Vendor Management & Partnerships at NRK
• Michael Wise, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Universal Pictures
• Richard Berger, Chief Executive Officer at MovieLabs
• Ralph Lee, Chief Executive Officer at BBC Studios Productions
• Anthony Guarino, Executive Vice President, Global Production & Studio Technology at Paramount.

The ‘Transformative Tech’ and ‘Shifting Business Models’ content pillars are spread across the IBC Conference and the show-floor venues, which include the Showcase Theatre in Hall 12, the Innovation Stage in Hall 3 and two theatres in the Content Everywhere zone in Hall 5. Showcase Theatre sponsors include Accenture, AWS, Google, Microsoft and Zixi, while LTN and Tencent are each sponsoring one of the Content Everywhere theatres.

The results of the IBC Accelerator Media Innovation Programme, which brings together media companies and technology partners as they collaborate to solve real-world challenges and drive advances across a range of areas, can be found on the Innovation Stage.

The IBC Changemakers Programme focuses on individuals and initiatives that are changing the industry culture and pushing the boundaries of creativity and technology. They will address topics such as gender equality in broadcasting, advancing sustainability and inclusive tech. RISE, Soho Media Club, Women in Immersive Tech and Albert are some of the groups involved. The IBC Social Impact Awards will also be part of the Changemakers Programme.

You can find more details on the IBC conference programme here.

Max will be the destination for HBO Originals, Warner Bros. films, Max Originals, the DC universe, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, an expansive offering of kids content, and renowned programming across food, home, reality, lifestyle and documentaries from leading brands like HGTV, Food Network, Discovery Channel, TLC, and ID. Warner Bros. Discovery is promising an average of 40+ new titles and seasons every month to keep the Max catalogue fresh.

“Max will offer an unrivalled range of choice,” declared JB Perrette, President & CEO, Global Streaming & Games at Warner Bros. Discovery. “This new brand signals an important change from two narrower products, HBO Max and discovery+, to our broader content offering and consumer proposition. While each product offered something for some people, Max will have a broad array of quality choices for everybody.”

Max will arrive with three pricing options:

• Max Ad-Lite at $9.99/month or $99.99/year, which comes with two concurrent streams, 1080p resolution and 5.1 surround sound quality, with advertising.
• Max Ad Free at $15.99/month or $149.99/year, which adds 30 offline downloads and removes the ads.
• Max Ultimate Ad Free at $19.99/month or $199.99/year, which is still ad-free and adds two additional concurrent streams, supports resolution up to 4K UHD, boosts offline downloads to 100 and provides Dolby Atmos sound quality.

Existing HBO Max subscribers will have access to Max at the same price as their HBO Max subscription, and will still have access to their current plan features for a minimum of six months following the launch of Max. HBO Max subscriber profiles, settings, watch history, ‘Continue Watching’, and ‘My List’ items will also migrate to Max.

Returning to the subject of content, Casey Bloys, Chairman and CEO, HBO and Max Content, says: “The Max service is a wide-ranging mosaic of content that will be unmatched in the breadth, reach, and excellence of its offerings. We are unique because we have the best-in-all-categories across the board by any measure – be they ratings, awards, fandom. We know we can satisfy any craving because we have the brands that people love. At Max, they will find what they want, when they want it.”

HBO Max’s offering includes series, movies, family content, Max Originals and specials from across the company’s brands  – including Warner Bros. and DC.

Jenifer Robertson, EVP & General Manager – Mass Markets, AT&T Inc., said: “HBO Max is a great product that is popular with our customers, and we like the fact that we’re viewed as being the place to come to get it. This adjusted agreement represents an important step in positioning both AT&T and Warner Bros. Discovery for continued success.”

Scott Miller, Executive Vice President, Distribution, Warner Bros. Discovery, commented: “AT&T continues to be an important partner and we are thrilled that HBO Max will continue to be part of AT&T internet and mobility plans. It has always been our goal to deliver an unparalleled entertainment experience with as many subscribers as possible and the return of HBO Max to AT&T plans ensures that even more people will have access to HBO Max’s world-class and award-winning content.”

The service launched in the United States in May 2020 before rolling out an ad-supported tier in June of last year. HBO Max launched in markets across Latin America and the Caribbean last summer, followed by European rollouts in the Nordics, Iberia, the Netherlands and Central and Eastern Europe. The service is currently available in 61 countries.

She said: “Unless you are a very specific advertiser, you can’t build scale [through targeted CTV campaigns]. We have got to collaborate more. If you are a big brand advertiser, you’ll be using this as reach extension…and that comes back to needing centralised measurement, and being able to buy from one point in the same way across all different sources.”

She also believes that the costs associated with buying addressable spots on quality CTV inventory is a large barrier for some mass market brands. Coteman elaborated: “Why some mass market brands haven’t been leaping on the CTV bandwagon is about CPMs and CPTs – on [linear] TV, historically, they’ve been paying quite reasonable CPTs. Quality CTV inventory is much higher priced.”

Coteman was joined on the panel by Chris Edwards, Director of Business Development – EMEA at Rakuten Advertising, Paul Gubbins, VP of CTV Strategy, Publica, and Jaidev Kakar, Director of Advertising Solutions, CTV & OTT at PubMatic.

Gubbins argued that when search and discoverability functions for the AVOD/FAST space improve, viewers will spend more time within that ecosystem: “That’s when we get inventory liquidity and that’s when we start to get to a particular point around scale when it becomes really attractive for those big linear advertisers to transition from those traditional environments into addressable environments.”

Kakar said the low cost of programmatic buying has opened up space for certain direct-to-consumer and local brands to advertise on connected TV. He said: “We’re seeing studies which show – probably because of the type of content or audience or because they have more local reach – that when [these DTC and local brands] buy with broadcasters there’s more mass, but there always seems to be around six times greater ROI through programmatic than linear.”

He suggested that smaller brands may be better positioned to see their ROI from advertising on CTV while larger brands will find it more difficult, needing to conduct more econometric modelling to see the effect of advertising on the platform.

Agreeing with Coteman about the challenge posed to CTV by measurement, Gubbins noted that brands are struggling to measure their reach holistically across a growing number of AVOD and FAST services. In particular, he believes ‘legacy’ linear advertisers may only now be starting to test advertising on BVOD and only because they can still apply traditional TV measurement practices in that environment.

While Gubbins does not believe there is adequate cross-platform measurement yet, he thinks initiatives such as C-flight and Project Origin can help advertisers try to understand incremental reach, attribution and frequency management when they plan and buy in TV environments.

Gubbins goes on to predict that measurement for CTV will differ from measuring traditional linear. He remarked: “Traditional TV has taken a panel-based approach to measurement. With the evolution of addressable TV and connected TVs that are plugged into the internet, it’s now more about impression-level measurement. The way we’ve historically measured for traditional TV may not be the way we do it moving forward because fundamentally – while it’s still a big screen TV in people’s living rooms – the delivery mechanism is very different to what it was maybe 15-20 years ago.”

Edwards registered his belief that there will be a universal approach to CTV measurement which the trade consolidates around, but there may be a long way to go before this is achieved.

Another issue which the panelists believed was important to support further monetisation of free connected TV, is achieving a “linear-like” quality to ad breaks in the AVOD/FAST space.

Coteman described broadcast linear ad breaks as “best practice” and highlighted some of the challenges CTV faces in trying to emulate linear. She said: “What people don’t understand is that it’s really difficult to run a streaming product. You’re trying to integrate lots of different proprietary and third-party pieces of technology that don’t all speak to each other properly, and not everyone has thought of every part of the process – especially when you’re approaching it from the broadcaster perspective. We’re at a stage where we’re all learning and developing and therefore, unfortunately, some viewers aren’t receiving the best service.”

Gubbins elaborated on these technical challenges, noting that AVOD/FAST services are relying on programmatic trading to monetise their ad-break, but that each of the different SSPs that participate in a programmatic auction for a slot within a publisher’s ad  break may be responding to that publisher in a slightly different way. This will often mean that bidders may not include the IAB category of the brand, or the name of the advertiser, which results in viewers sometimes seeing the same ad back-to-back in the same ad pods.

He said: “If advertisers can’t manage basic things – such as frequency and competitive ad separation – like they’ve been doing for the last 50 years on linear, they will spend their money with another streaming service that can provide structured ad pods.”