Over the last two decades, content consumption has evolved significantly. In such a time of segmentation and personalized content, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that OTT (Over-the-top) platforms have become a driving force for greater audience engagement.

OTT Services For Greater Audience Engagement:

The Evolution of Content Consumption

In 1953, it was estimated that 44 million households were tuned in to “Lucy Goes to the Hospital” – an episode of the then-popular TV series “I Love Lucy” (1951–1957). This number translates to approximately 72% of the entire American audience at that time. We’re safe to say: just about everyone was watching the same thing!

Now, audiences can channel desired content that best meets their interest. We’re living in the era of OTT, connected devices, and smart TVs with 10,000+ apps. They satisfy every single niche and interest. As a result, the audience size is getting smaller with the abundance of content options. But is that a bad thing?

Switch to American Kennel Club for the answer! A show on NatGeo or the Westminster Dog Show might be the right place if you’re looking for general dog content and haven’t got your go-to channel. But one day, you stumble on AKC.TV’s shows, and you’ll be stuck there forever. Kennel Club is heaven for dog content!

The more niche the platform is, the easier it is to gain information on the viewer. Russell Quy, CEO of B Live and founder of AKTV, said it himself in this press release. “In today’s world, it’s critical to allow users to access content across all devices and platforms. With a great partner like the AKC we are able to not only create compelling dog-related content but also a whole new network of distribution channels. This strategic approach lets dog lovers watch great content wherever they like, and enables brands to reach this highly targeted group.”

So the personalization aspect of OTT attracts audiences from more generalized content and creates segmentation. However, it also acts as a catalyst for much higher monetization rates and leads to greater audience engagement and subscriber loyalty!

How OTT Will Boost Your Audience Engagement

How to boost your OTT audience engagement boils down to these critical points:

Your OTT platforms should be user-friendly. Make it easy and clickable with simple navigation. It’s better if you can launch an OTT channel for all major devices.
Use OTT to bring unique experiences to your subscribers. Whether it’s changing your app interface, live streaming, or even incorporating products, subscriptions, or member benefits, you can make it exciting to engage with your audience.
OTT gives you total leeway to monetize. The possibilities of what you offer are endless. You can follow in the footsteps of other OTT platforms like Netflix, Amazon, Disney+, or create something entirely new.

Want to deliver the best OTT services to your audience? You may want first to take a look at infrastructure holes.

The Rise of OTT Advertising

Many companies may have already tapped into the prospect of OTT as a strategic advertising channel in the shift from traditional to digital platforms.

Here are some key benefits of OTT advertising:

Ad Relevance: Traditional TV advertising with its large audience size hinders your ad relevance. OTT ads allow brands to delve deeper into the consumer’s persona and offer content relevant to their target audience’s interests, thus facilitating better audience engagement with ads.
Precise Targeting: Content metadata, device, and locale information all help OTT platforms gain insights into viewer preferences. Advertisers can gain access to these IDs to leverage the audience data for precise targeting and generate relevant ads. OTT targeting is customizable, depending on age, gender, geographic location, type of content and device, region, ad preferences, etc.
Better Return On Investment (ROI): OTT advertising can also lead to higher ROI compared to broadcast TV ads and other traditional forms of advertising.
Funding the Service: Content that is supported by advertisers could allow the end consumer to watch for free.

It’s also a good idea to expect more brands, SMBs, and influencers to migrate to OTT platforms as everyone wants to make good use of these powerful audience engagement tools! According to a report by Reportlinker, The OTT Market is expected to be worth over 194 Billion by 2025, with a CAGR of 13.87%.

Having gained popularity, OTT now becomes the ideal hybrid hub of digital marketing and traditional television advertising. Consumers now have an unlimited number of videos to watch at their fingertips, as compared to just a handful of options 70 years ago when I Love Lucy was getting over 40 million views per episode. A shift to OTT strategies in recent years is inevitable and more forces will join the OTT world very soon!

Are you looking for OTT strategies to optimize your OTT platforms and solutions today with Quickplay? Please leave us your contact here!