Blair was formerly the cloud-based multiscreen delivery provider’s VP for APAC, and has been reflecting on the differences between the OTT environments in the two regions.
“There are an awful lot of people in Asia experimenting with SVOD initiatives that are Netflix-like in that they’re looking for a kind of mass-market initiative,”he says. “And I think part of the reason for that is that in Asia – versus Europe – the ad CPMs for video aren’t as compelling today: those rates are in many cases lower.”
Blair cites Singapore-based Hooq and Malaysia’s iFlix as examples: Hooq, a JV between Singtel, Sony Pictures and Warner Bros, launched in the Philippines in February 2015; while iFlix, initially funded by investment firm Catcha Group and Filipino telco PLDT, and latterly also by MGM, launched in the Philippines and Malaysia three months later. Both are ad-free SVOD ventures.
Blair also notes that growth in online video has been driven more by mobile networks in APAC than fixed-line broadband ones, the reverse of the situation in Europe: “In many cases it’s been ‘mobile first’ in terms of changing end-users’ consumption of content online, “because it’s easier these days to deploy that kind of [mobile] network infrastructure than it is digging holes in the ground.”
Also, in contrast to Europe, where Blair sees the ability of local network infrastructures to support high-quality OTT video streaming as broadly consistent across different EU countries, “there are countries in Asia where it still big challenge. And that is obviously holding back the consumption of video content.”
Nevertheless, Blair says this is something that is “changing rapidly” and he believes there remain “untapped consumption opportunities” in APAC, particularly in territories where the mobile infrastructure is still being built out. What is required for operators to capitalize on this are consumer offers that combine “high-quality viewing proposition” with data-plans which allow them to “feel comfortable when hitting play on a piece of long-form content”, he suggests.
One of the other significant differences between the two regions is a much lower readiness and ability to use credit cards to pay for online video (“there’s just less usage and less penetration of credit cards in the mass audience”), which has spurred payment approaches which integrate micro-payments into telco billing systems, or use redemption scratch-cards.
A case in point is Brightcove client Spuul, a niche SVOD proposition targeting fans of Bollywood movies both inside and outside India.
Spuul combines three separate business models: ad-supported, free access to lower-value content; SVOD for premium content; and TVOD for the highest-value content – and in certain markets supports all three through partnerships with mobile operators where the fees get added to phone bills.
Blair also finds that the European mobile billing environment is much more consistent across different territories than is the case in APAC. “I found the whole Eurozone roaming debate interesting from an outsider’s perspective coming over here and just looking at the way mobile providers package and market their roaming data plans across Europe. That’s a lot more consistent. There’s a lot more difference in the way each telco works across APAC, versus Europe where it seems like there’s a lot more alignment and consistency around the types of plans and the real cost to a consumer [of accessing content], given the average income of people in different markets.”
However, there are also similarities between the two regions. “The ad-blocking debate is as topical in APAC,” says Blair, “particularly in markets such as Australia and New Zealand, where the ad CPMs today are more in line with the ad CPMs you would see in Europe. The focus on ad blocking is as intense because of that, and because of the [high] consumption of video in those markets.”
