Top 7 Factors to Launch a Successful OTT Service For 2024

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To witness how diverse content consumption patterns have evolved keeps us in awe. 

“Abandoning cable TV subscriptions to adopt newer means of broadcast mediums have become the new norm.”

Particularly in times of the COVID-19 crisis when social meetups were put to a stand still, it was over-the-top platforms that saved the day from the pandemic boredom, peaking by 23% in the US alone. 

Now that the catastrophe has begun settling down, the fondness towards OTTs has only heightened, providing content owners a profitable road to look forward to. 

The Future of OTTs & Beyond 

Setting your debut OTT service in motion might sound highly laborious. With the whooping rise in new entrants, publishers and business owners are left in deep waters in bringing their dream platform to life. 

Especially considering the stupendous growth of cord-cutting services in the past decade and the revenue being projected to surpass $210 billion by 2026, content is being produced and monetized in abundance. 

This boils down to a situation where streaming services must remain competent right from day one. 

In essence, OTT businesses ought to find answers to the following:

How inclined are you to your streaming niche?

How do you plan to price your content effectively?

Does your revenue model support your business goals?

What marketing channels do you choose to advertise profusely?

Have you streamlined your customer acquisition workflow?

Factors that Impact the Success of your OTT Launch

— Kick-Start Marketing Efforts 

The competition is fierce, so has to be your marketing strategies. Extensive advertising that doesn’t outright look like marketing should be instilled at the right time to drive good traffic to your OTT platform. 

The sooner the better and it is from day 1 that your plan to entice potential visitors to paying subscribers should pay off for a rewarding revenue stream. It is also vital to note that marketing activities are crucial both pre-launch and post-launch to sustain in the market.

Take your OTT promotions further by

i) Creating a buzz on social forums and communities well before the launch day

ii) Building an official web page for your app

iii) Reaching out to influencers to promote your niche platform to close-knit communities

iv) Running paid ad campaigns

v)  Optimizing anchor text, metadata for keywords to rank high in terms of SEO

vi) Including a site map, rich snippets, and catchy thumbnails

— Analyze Your Contenders

Identifying competitors who might look like potential threats to your business is a crucial part of your strategy and should be taken into serious consideration. Best video streaming services that overlap with your niche, target audience, or region of content distribution might turn out to be your contenders after your launch.

Keep an eye on their every move and plan accordingly to outbeat their strategy and eventually step up your OTT fortune.

Similarly, it is advised to perform a SWOT analysis on each competitor profile to get detailed knowledge of its strengths and weaknesses. This will help you turn the tide in your favor.

— Monetize Wisely

Looking at the soaring growth of over-the-top content, people are willing to pay for more than one streaming service at a time. In fact, OTT penetration rate is all set to surpass 48% households and hence choosing the right revenue model for your video streaming business can help you gain profound profits over a continued period of time. 

i) Choose between SVOD (Subscription Video on Demand), AVOD (Advertising Video on Demand), and TVOD (Transactional Video on Demand) based on content style, niche, target region, and business goals.

ii) Use flexible plans, coupons, and promotions to attract customers to subscribe/ pay for your service.

iii) Integrate a secure payment gateway and offer a seamless transaction experience supported by multiple payment options & currencies. 

— Diversify Your Content Repository

The fact that content is the king might sound monotonous, but still holds great value to generate colossal revenue over time. Content variety is in fact the ultimate driving force and compelling attribute for the success of OTT platforms. 

In short, the richer your content, the higher the success rate of your launch. 

“62.9% audience opt for a streaming service to consume original content that is exclusive to the platform”

Some of the key pointers when it comes to winning audience via your video inventory are to: 

• Keep your content unique, fresh and engaging
• Craft videos specific to your niche audience
• Continue producing/ acquiring a variety of content for both regional and international audiences
• Offer an integrated mix of on-demand and live streams
• Incorporate an machine learning-powered recommendation system to analyze audience’s likes & interests

— Ensure Streaming Compatibility Across Devices

How compatible should my platform be? – This remains the prime question for any new entrant who is keen on making it big in the OTT landscape. Well, where does one start? 

It is the age of mobile and smart TV apps, and over 60% videos are consumed in either of these two devices with the rest of the masses opting for laptops, tablets, and gaming consoles for the same. 

However, the bottomline here is that a platform that is compatible with a number of devices paves the way for viewer convenience and is highly likely to be accessed by a variety of audiences on a global scale. 

On the other hand, streaming devices such as Chromecast, Amazon Firestick, etc, are gaining unprecedented popularity with Roku topping the list, becoming 2021’s most used device for video streaming platform. 

Besides being an all-device compatible platform, it is also important to analyze your niche, audience, geography, and their style of content consumption before diving into decisions. 

Here is an easy breakdown of popular device usage for each industry. 

— Span a Global Landscape

The best part about distributing content on OTT is that it is a rather larger landscape with limitless opportunities. 

Urbanization and increased Internet penetration, and the rollout of 5G have made audiences swap conventional cable TV packages with streaming subscriptions VOD and hence the time is better than ever for businesses to target viewers beyond language and geographic barriers. 

Targeting wide sectors of audiences before the launch is a great attempt in itself and widens your revenue generating capabilities. 

Hence, expanding your market well before your launch is the foundation to a successful streaming debut. 

— Nurture & Reap Profits

To garner an impressive revenue from your best video streaming platforms is easier said than done. But, with the right move both pre-launch and post-launch, profit-making wouldn’t be a concern. 

However, some of the common challenges like viewer acquisition costs should be tackled in entirety from day 1 to streamline your business model for higher ROIs.

To wind up,

Launching an OTT platform demands a number of prerequisites in place and is closely linked to your success as a business. 

Hence, with oodles of content from different online video platform providers out in the market, a winning stroke requires a robust video monetizable platform, right strategies, an appropriate revenue model, targeted marketing campaigns, and detailed analysis of your audiences to sustain and secure yourself a global presence.