We gave up on Tata Sky quite some time ago. I still have the box at home, but it’s lost somewhere and I don’t intend to restart my subscription anytime soon.
When we had Tata Sky (meaning: satellite TV/appointment viewing), my wife was managing the monthly payment and we were paying something close to Rs.500 or so per month, I do not recall exactly. When we moved to OTT completely, I started taking care of the payments to entities like Netflix, Disney Hotstar, Amazon Prime Video, among others. Recently, I told my wife that Amazon Prime (and hence Video too) is increasing the annual subscription to Rs. 1,499, she was surprised at the cost till I told her that it was the annual fee, and not monthly. But when I added that we do pay Netflix a monthly fee (Rs. 649) she exclaimed that it was more than what we paid Tata Sky every month and that too, for just one channel (as against many, many channels on Tata Sky).
Why this preamble? Because of the increasing importance and presence of non-linear/OTT/on-demand/Connected TV in our lives. We are moving from paying a single fee for hundreds of channels (of which we see very few) to paying for individual OTT streams and this is now at an average of 3-4 streams per home (the basic ones like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney Hotstar + an extra like Apple TV+, SonyLIV, Voot, etc.).
Ormax Media recently revealed that only 25% of India now has access to OTT, and this proves that there’s a huge market waiting to be explored. But even within the 25%, OTT has an oversized influence on pop culture already. Take for instance the basic fact that most newspapers don’t even have a TV program listing section anymore! And the few that do have actually list programs and movies worth watching on OTT!
Add to this the proliferation of regional language OTTs! There are tons of them in India and most are investing heavily in creating original content. The latest FICCI-EY report claims that the share of regional language consumption on OTT platforms will cross 50% by 2025, going past even Hindi at 45%. So the list is long – Aha (Telugu), Hoichoi (Bengali), Koode and Neestream (Malayalam), Planet Marathi (Marathi), SunNXT (Tamil), Olly Plus (Odia), Talkies (Tulu, Konkani, Kannada), Reel Drama, (Assamese), Chaupal (Punjabi), Oho Gujarati and CityShor.TV (Gujarati), and more!
The one interesting feature that unites them all, global and Indian OTTs, is that all these are free of advertising!
That OTTs are about on-demand content is by technology, but that they play content without advertising is by choice!
The top platforms that invest a disproportionate amount of money in creating new, exclusive, and original content—Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, and to some extent Apple TV+, among others—have chosen to be ad-free and keep the user experience that way for a foreseeable future. Even as other platforms that spend money on content creation do offer ads (like Hulu), they spend much lesser compared to the top OTTs and hence, have relatively lesser viewer share.
Also, connected TV advertising, while being sporadic, also has other peculiarities. Despite being on the internet, because of the primary device through which it is delivered (smart television), it acts very differently from other internet-enabled devices like the laptop and the smartphone. For one, TVs do not store cookies to identify our preferences. Instead, connected TV advertising uses first-party data that the platforms themselves own close to their hearts, besides IP addresses, to improve targeting.
Yet, for all the promise of hyper-targeting via the internet and digital advertising, one of the most important content delivery mechanisms of our times is largely free of advertising! That’s quite something in the larger scheme of things.
So, let’s look at why OTTs currently don’t have advertising.
The simple reason is that OTTs are subscriber-supported businesses as against advertising-supported businesses. Add to that, everything on OTT is delivered only on-demand. A user has to seek something specifically, by choice, and only then do they get to see it.
Advertising on mass media, as we know it, is the anti-thesis of on-demand – it interrupts.
We have already mapped interruption-based advertising to support free content on the open web – like pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll spots in video advertising. The idea is a direct lift from linear TV advertising – force people to watch the ads before, in the middle of, and towards the end of a piece of content that they are keen to watch. The assumption is that the device has the attention of the viewer, and brands stretch that attention to also include their promotional material. To a large extent, this is also similar to print advertising – our attention is on news or features in a print publication, and that attention is stretched by brands to also insert promotional content. But in print, we can move to the next page immediately, but on linear TV, we cannot wish an ad away.
The one thing brands are yet to try, and this may be worth trying, is on-demand advertising on connected TVs.
Brands are attempting on-demand advertising in small, and early ways.
See: We are now paying to watch long-form advertising.
But why should it only be long-form? Why not make short (say a minute or two), highly engaging ad films and place them on the Netflix program menu (for instance), by paying a fee to the OTT platform?
We already watch ads by choice, on-demand, when someone shares an ad on social media platforms. We see someone praise the ad (or outrage over an ad), we get intrigued and we click on the link by choice to watch the ad!
We also watch ads by choice, on-demand, sometimes on the open web – if we see a banner announcing something and we click on it (because we are interested in what it is leading us towards), that on-demand advertising too. To a lesser extent, if we do not click on ‘skip ad’ on a YouTube pre-roll and let it play in full, that’s also a milder form of on-demand advertising 🙂
So why not treat ads also as engaging art and place them on on-demand OTT platforms for a fee for us to pick them by choice and watch them on-demand?
The branded content experience assumes that people sit in front of a TV to consume longer, immersive pieces of content. Why not presume that people would want to watch even shorter forms of content (branded) if it is adequately engaging?
Yes, the conventional and transactional 10-seconds, 15-seconds, and 30-seconds ad spots do not fit this scheme, but anything above 60 seconds could be used to engage our attention on-demand on OTT platforms.
And while we are at it, why not also promote them as a standalone piece of art too on other media, and direct us to demand that branded content on Netflix, for instance, instead of YouTube?
Brands already advertise their video ads on print media with a QR code or a short URL – this is not new. Where the ad is hosted is the difference – usually, they ask us to watch it on YouTube (a free platform). But why not restrict the audience to an OTT channel to earn the attention for an initial period before taking it wider to free platforms like YouTube?
The benefit? People who pay Rs. 649 (for instance) to a platform picking your branded advertising by choice and consuming it on-demand! That makes your branded content as important as the shows and movies they are watching on the same platform! We always retain more (and hopefully like) of what we pick by choice, isn’t it? If there’s a call-to-action in the on-demand ads, that could help brands ascertain the quality of incoming interest (in any form – footfalls, website visits, sales based on specific promotional offers on the brand-owned websites or e-commerce platforms, amongst others). This may apply not just for transactional messaging but mainly for brand-building/brand salience building. The ingredient that works in their favor is the quality of narrative more than just a functional message about a brand, to earn the attention of the audience not just to watch, but to be picked by choice.
After all, if brands are going to hire a film production company and a leading film director to direct cinematic advertising like this, why not treat it with the same importance accorded to content on OTTs?