Connected TV World Summit 2024: Broadcasters need to get personal

It was an incredibly insightful couple of days in London, and amazing to reconnect with so many industry peers and friends.

In particular, it was great to chat alongside Rufus Radcliffe, MD Streaming at ITV and Nicole Agudo Berbel, MD and Chief Distribution Officer at Seven.One Entertainment and Joyn, about the challenges and opportunities broadcasters face as they look to maximize engagement across BVOD streaming platforms.

As well as broadcaster streaming, there were talks on a range of pertinent topics, from content aggregation and the future of pay TV to FAST and direct-to-TV strategy. However, one thing that stuck with me is the need for broadcast OTT platforms to personalize their experience to succeed.

Everyone is distributing similar content

In a world dominated by aggregation, content alone can no longer be the only king. Most streamers distribute a similar variety of content as each other, meaning broadcasters need to work harder to attract and retain subscribers to their OTT services. With content no longer a significant differentiator, broadcasters' focus must be building a brand that will stand out and connect with their target audience.

Tom Morrod, co-founder of Caretta Research, raised a good point in his presentation at CTVWS, about the importance of building sub-brands into one “super product”. The example he used looked at BBC iPlayer, which aggregates content from a range of channels into one streaming platform. It is perhaps one of the best-known streaming platforms in the UK – a brand viewers instantly recognize, and one that many have formed a personal relationship with over the years.

Personalization via audience segmentation

During my panel with Rufus and Nicole, I highlighted the importance of audience segmentation for streamers and broadcasters when it comes to personalization. Knowing your audience is the key to providing a data-driven personalized experience that will keep users engaged. FAST, SVOD and free-to-air models all provide broadcasters with important data points including age, habits, interests, location and culture. The key for a broadcaster is to be able to leverage this audience segmentation with tools that enable the editorial team to set up and control specific personalization strategies. Another factor to consider with audience segmentation is the importance of automation and how this can help simplify and keep under control a process which is getting more and more sophisticated.

Engage and retain with UX

Good segmentation is key to building a first-class user experience (UX) for subscribers, and a good UX can be a vital tool in engaging and retaining users. By creating a UX that serves viewers with shows or content that they’re genuinely interested in, broadcasters can keep them engaged and ensure they stay on their streaming service. UX should be such a simple thing to get right, and broadcasters need to ensure their platforms are easy to use with personalized recommendations and simple discoverability.

The entertainment world can learn a lot from streaming platforms that primarily focus on sports. From ensuring your favorite sports are the first thing you see to re-branding the home page with your team’s colors, there are so many aspects of UX that sports OTT services are getting right.

Personalization = monetization

There’s never been a more important time for broadcasters to embrace personalization. By personalizing a streaming offering to reach and retain users in the long term, broadcasters can look to layer different aspects of monetization to make BVOD platforms commercially viable. From targeted ad insertion and display ads to video-driven ecommerce and loyalty programs, broadcasters need to pay close attention to these popular monetization trends in sports streaming.

As a product company with extensive experience at the intersection between sport and entertainment, Deltatre’s award-winning products offer the perfect solution for broadcasters looking to create a personalized streaming experience across multiple devices and a data-driven user interactivity for sports content.