Five on Friday: Free Streaming, Media Trends and Top Subscription Jobs
Featuring AVODs, Mashable, Dataconomy, Spotify, LinkedIn and Reuters
Source: Bigstock Photo
TGIF. We hope you’ve had a good week so far and are ready for a three-day weekend! We are ready to kick things off with Five on Friday. This week’s edition features a growing trend in streaming services – the ad-supported video on demand model; how entertainment companies are using data to fuel the future; Spotify’s new strategy of selling its own ads; 2019 media trends according to Reuters; and everyone’s favorite, top subscription jobs from LinkedIn.
Streaming Video Trend: Ad-Supported Streaming Services (AVODs)
Free, ad-supported streaming video on demand services are a growing trend in the entertainment industry, complementing and competing with subscription services like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu. Why? Consumers who subscribe to a lot of different services have choices to make because their budgets can only stretch so far. By offering ad-supported streaming services, known as AVODs (ad-supported video on demand), companies like Amazon Prime and Hulu can offer additional options for viewers who don’t want to subscribe to yet another service. Here are a few ad-supported streaming services consumers can choose from:
Freedive: On Monday, we wrote about the latest free streaming video on demand service, IMDb’s Freedive. As an Amazon-owned company, this free movie and TV streaming channel complements Amazon Prime Video, which requires a paid subscription to Amazon Prime.
Roku: Roku announced earlier this month that it will add premium streaming services to The Roku Channel. However, those services complement free programming that is already available, including movies, news programs and free TV shows and documentaries.
Yahoo View: When Hulu ended its free streaming service, it partnered with Yahoo View, which offers recent episodes of TV shows for free, including popular series like New Amsterdam, This Is Us, Chicago P.D. and How to Get Away with Murder.
Tubi: We covered Tubi in our December 28 edition of Five on Friday. Like the other ad-supported services, Tubi is an ad-supported, free service offering thousands of movies and TV shows for free.
For consumers willing to tolerate advertising but not subscription fees, free streaming services offer a good option. For streaming services, the AVOD business model provides an alternative to the subscription model, and in the case of Amazon, it offers a way to diversify revenue, capturing both subscribers and non-subscribers.
Source: Bigstock Photo
How Entertainment Companies are Using Data to Fuel the Future
Source: Bigstock Photo
In a recent article for Dataconomy, Ganesh Sankaralingam explores how the entertainment industry is using data to make better business decisions. For example, Netflix and Amazon use consumer data to recommend new content to their subscribers. With data about your past viewing history, ratings and other data, the streaming services use algorithms to predict what other content you might enjoy watching. While that may be scientific or mathematical, it isn’t rocket science. If I watch Cold Justice, An Innocent Man and Forensic Files, it makes sense that I might also be interested in a new crime documentary series.
The recommendations may seem logical to us, but they are invaluable to a company like Netflix. According to Sankaralingam, Netflix believes that its utilization of content recommendation engines has saved the company more than $1 billion a year by improving retention. If Netflix couldn’t or didn’t learn your tastes and prompt you to watch content you are likely to enjoy, it might lose you to the competition.
Sankaralingam says that studios and entertainment companies can also use consumer data to develop new content. What shows were the most watched? By whom? What goes viral most quickly? By studying data provided by the services themselves and by analyzing social media, those studios and companies can make a lot of intelligent decisions about what content is the most popular. Learn more about how those companies are using data and the possible pitfalls at Dataconomy.
Spotify Plans to Invest in Podcasts This Year
TechCrunch reports that Spotify’s business strategy this year includes growing its podcast service by leveraging technology to make better recommendations to listeners, updating the Spotify podcast interface to make podcasts more discoverable, and making exclusive deals with podcast creators.
To fund those improvements, Spotify is selling its own ads which are featured on original programming, including podcasts like Dissect and Showstopper. According to TechCrunch, Spotify started testing those ads in the middle of last year through its in-house sales team. If this takes off as a funding source for its podcast business, it is possible that Spotify would need to expand its in-house team.
One issue, of course, is technology. Does the Spotify platform allow for easy “digital insertion” of podcast ads. TechCrunch says Spotify is considering how to handle that, while competitors like Pandora solved that problem by acquiring Adswizz last spring. Can Spotify catch up? Time will tell. In the meantime, Spotify listeners can check out their favorites including top podcasts like The Joe Budden Podcast, The Daily, Pardon My Take and Crime Junkie.
Source: Spotify
Reuters: Media Trends and Predictions for 2019
Source: Reuters
In a January 2019 report, Reuters reports on journalism, media and technology trends and predictions for the coming year. We don’t want to spoil this fascinating 48-page read written by Nic Newman, senior research associate for Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, but we’ll share some of the fascinating highlights from the report. The information in the report is based on a survey of 200 media executives, senior editors and digital leaders in 29 countries.
52 percent of respondents expect subscription and membership models to be the primary revenue focus in 2019, compared to 27 percent for display advertising, 8 percent for native advertising and 7 percent for donations.
43 percent said that Facebook will be an important or extremely important platform this year, but they believe consumers will start leaving social media networks.
78 percent believe that investments in artificial intelligence could help secure the future of the journalism industry.
75 percent said audio is becoming a more important ingredient in their content strategies.
Other predictions include that platforms will need to do a better job of fighting fake news, focus on rebuilding trust with news consumers, prepare for tighter regulations, and find alternatives to paywalls which are barriers to news consumption.
“It is a crucial year [in which] social media platforms have to prove they care about the truth and about paying for serious journalism, or be properly forced to do both by regulation,” said survey respondent Ben De Pear, editor, Channel4 News, U.K.
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Dana Neuts is Subscription Insider's Editorial Director, covering our daily subscription news as well as member features, case studies, premium content, and reports. Dana is also a writer, editor, marketer and communications professional. Her work has appeared in AARP Bulletin, The Seattle Times, Seattle Business, 425 Business, 425 Magazine, South Sound Magazine, Northwest Travel and more. Her specialties include business writing, community news, senior issues, travel and, of course, subscriptions!
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