Personalizing is the Future of OTT
Imagine a world where content is not only recommended for you to watch, but it’s also programmed to tell a story that is uniquely tailored to you, the viewer. I’m not talking about a linear channel that may only be 24 hours of your favorite shows, like The Golden Girls (can you tell I grew up in the ’80s?). I’m referring to a totally new and content-relevant linear experience that’s dynamically created, based on countless pieces of data that the content owner has collected about you over time.
This type of viewing experience could manifest itself in many different ways. A streaming service with a large back catalog of ’80s sitcoms could spin up multiple episodes of your favorites shows, back to back. This would allow you to kick up your feet, relax and simply watch the experience — all while the content owner serves up dynamic ads — where broadcast ads used to be — to drive up the value of the CPM.
In a nutshell, the future of OTT is the delivery of a seamless, personalized streaming experience for each individual media consumer. With programming, advertising and even delivery tailored to the habits and preferences of each individual consumer, OTT’s future promises an engaging viewing experience unlike anything we know today.
With the advances we are seeing in data aggregation and analysis tools, content owners are empowered to capture key viewing statistics and to create insights on everything from content popularity — what viewers watch, when, where and for how long — to the devices used. Think about it. Real-time data on device type and network conditions can be combined with information from customer relationship management systems to generate a detailed and accurate profile of every viewer on an individual level. This knowledge is the foundation for ensuring consistent, TV-like experiences for every viewer on any device.
In this world of 1 to 1 engagement, each press of “play” can automatically generate a custom experience that delivers a compelling lineup of content and advertising at the optimal bitrate and in the ideal format for a viewer’s device.
In another example of the scenario laid out above, if I subscribed to a financial news network’s OTT service, it could compare the content I watch to my investment portfolio to dynamically generate a virtual linear channel of stock news on the companies I invest in, along with ads relevant to my interests.
At the streaming level, factors ranging from IP address, device and operating system to viewing rights and internet speed will also guide the creation and updating of the manifest. The OTT system can continually adjust the manifest in real time in response to the viewer’s actions and choices, all while ensuring that the quality of the stream remains exceptional. Decisions about quality will be made at the individual stream level and delivered from the closest CDN edge node. The integration of real-time health status and alerts with monitoring, management and failover tools will guarantee the quality and continuity of this personalized viewing experience.
Creating this 1 to 1 connection with every viewer is no simple task; at scale, it represents a tremendous technical undertaking. For larger content providers, it could mean streaming tens of millions of concurrent streams and handling tens of thousands of session starts per second. Cloud-based processing plays a central role in content generation and distribution, effectively eliminating the need for content owners to worry about creating numerous profiles and delivering the appropriate content. Automated segmentation of both linear feeds and video on demand (VOD) assets into smaller chunks for adaptive bitrate (ABR) playback combine with automated transcoding of these content segments in the cloud, making it possible to stitch together the right content at the right bitrate for the target device, delivering content similar to the consistency of linear broadcast television.
The basis for all of this functionality stems from the technology behind dynamic server-side ad insertion. If content owners can use the right tools to generate dynamic ad experience, why aren’t they using those tools to generate dynamic content experiences as well? This same technology makes it possible to replace specific content, such as sports highlights for which the provider does not have OTT rights, with other content, such as a slate, VOD asset or a different live linear feed all together — with no additional costs.
Creating and maintaining a 1 to 1 relationship with every viewer demands remarkable agility and a lot of experimentation and iteration, but it will also pay big dividends for all parties: the viewer, the content provider and advertisers. This is not some futuristic dream scenario, the tech exists today and consumers are just waiting for content owners to begin to experiment with personalized linear services in a big way. Who is going to be the first content owner to really embrace the next phase of TV viewing and revolutionize the way we think of linear TV and start to offer this type of personalized linear experience to their end users, at scale?
