Written by: Roshan Dwivedi
You have read about the Reed Hastings success story with Netflix or the amazing things Jeff Bezos tried to bring to the streaming industry with Amazon Prime. There will be more stories about how Hulu is going to change the streaming industry with its ad-based model or how geo-specific streamers like HTVFun and Chitagade are making the cut despite fierce competition from major broadcasters.
But here’s something you really need to know about running a streaming video business. Before aspiring to be Netflix or Hulu or HTVFun, you should know how they became what they are now.
The 3 mantras to be successful in the video streaming industry:-
1. Know Your Audience
It’s not like Netflix was the first service to stream video over the web. In fact, it started as a DVD-mailer service. How did it help later?
Well, they got to know their audience well. They knew the subscribers, had details on those who ordered the most and the kind of titles they ordered the most. All this later evolved in to big data analytics behind the Netflix service that would go on to predict successfully the audience behavior, preference and demands.
Know Your Audience: With Muvi, you have an open access to a set of basic video analytics and also the option for integration of popular tools like Google Analytics. Here are two things you can do with the analytics support:
– Analyze the kind of audience your content attracts. Filter big data in to metrics like age, gender, location, device and demographics. This helps in better targeting of content and is key to your content development strategy.
– Know the market sentiment today by turning to the admin panel that tells you what are people paying, how much are they paying and what model is more preferable. This helps you in setting up long term revenue goals.
Serve the right content to the right customers and you get to tell your own story like Reed Hastings.
2. Secure Your Content
One of the prime reasons that content owners did not fully trust video streaming solutions was due to the lack of a promising content security solution. Too much of content security also became a bane, disrupting user experience. Since then, different platforms have come up with different content security solutions like digital watermarking and stronger encryption technologies. Also, piracy hurts.
Enhanced Content Security Solution: DRMs have courted a lot of controversy over the years for dampening user experience and in some cases, for being too easy to bypass. Not anymore. The Muvi platform uses custom DRM solutions that will not just secure your video content but also enable it to run on all platforms and devices, which is unfortunately not the case with most popular DRM solutions from major technology providers. Finally, a video streaming platform that secures your content across all devices without compromising on the user experience.
3. Don’t Forget The Money They All Make
At the heart of any successful streaming business today is a revenue model. You need to be spot-on with your revenue targeting to survive, flourish and expand in the industry. Imagine what a cash-strapped Netflix would do if it had no subscriptions and just allowed downloads? Who would follow House of Cards if they didn’t have the subscription for the entire series? Where would Netflix be? What would Hulu do if it had no ads? Would it have survived to pay a fortune for The Mindy Project or South Park or even Seinfield?
Standard and Hybrid Revenue Models: Within the Muvi platform lies the opportunity to unlock the maximum potential for your business. You can now choose from standard revenue models like subscription (SVOD), transactional (TVOD), advertisement (AVOD) or a hybrid of any two or three of these models. Because, not all businesses are the same and that should not limit their opportunity to make the most of your content.
History
Muvi is a PaaS solution from the New York based technology service provider Muvi LLC. Muvi was founded in 2014 and offers live and on-demand video streaming solution to broadcasters, MSOs, film studios, media agencies and independent content owners. The idea that powers Muvi is not just tech, but the concern that video streaming startups really need a ‘Zero CapEx’ solution and that should not come with discounted technical features.
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