Turn the clock back to four or five years ago and one of the buzz phrases at marketing conferences was ‘TV is dead’, with experts looking at the wider implications this would have for the advertising industry. While this deathknell seems to have been a little premature, there’s no doubt the TV experience as we knew it has changed considerably over the past few years, shaped, unquestionably, by the internet and technology.
One growth area in the TV sector in AsiaPacific (and globally) is the OTT video services and streaming subsectors. The OTT market is set to reach US$8 billion by 2020, more than doubling in size from US$3 billion today. While the traditional linear TV market is still dominant in AsiaPacific, the likes of HBO and Netflix are looking at the region’s OTT market as a source of growth, and local players are adapting offers to cope with consumers’ desires for internet TV on demand.
Viewing TV online or on mobile is not new in Asia, but Jonas Engwall, CEO of RTL CBS Asia Entertainment Network, points out that a huge amount of content is via pirate websites, partly as a result of the industry lagging behind consumer behaviour but also due to a generally “relaxed” approach towards piracy throughout Asia.
TV brands in Asia may well look to Europe and the US for ways to market such services and — for the more established organisations — to look at ways to combat the streaming startups that have experienced rapid growth.
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