Video: How Do Content Owners Prioritize OTT Platforms to Target?
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Read the complete transcript of this clip:
Kimberly Hicks: With Disney Now, we targeted our largest platforms first. So we launched on Roku, IOS devices, Apple TV, and Android. Then, we’re targeting Android TV, Fire TV, and web later in the year. It was, really, we didn't have enough engineering to do everything at once, so we really had to prioritize what we wanted to do to get a great experience.
It goes back to what you were just saying that we want to have a very good experience, an immersive experience. But I think it goes back to early days when new devices started coming out, there was a point where, I think, everyone felt like they had to be on everything and some devices didn't work out. I did a sprint to get on Google TV but that didn't go anywhere. I think companies started being a lot more selective of, "Where do I invest my money?" I feel like media, in general, is a little bit more cautious now--"Is this going to be a thing or is it not going to be a thing?" I think smart TVs are a little bit late in getting a lot of these apps because it's just more difficult to develop for them and they're always trying to figure out if they're going to be a true thing, if people are going to use them or keep using connected devices. From our perspective, we want to be everywhere our kids are, so we'll keep growing our platforms as well.
Karina Kogan: Our priorities this year have really just been about being everywhere. We're now close to achieving that goal with the addition of smart TVs later this year. We are on all the major platforms.
From here for us it's much more about looking at the data and seeing where we're getting adoption. It's also about acquiring user data and being able to leverage that data for monetization, for improved services, for personalization. Wherever we have partners that allow us to capture data and wherever we're able to use that data effectively, is where we make choices.
Roku has actually been a great example of a partner where in less than four months, we had a million downloads on Roku, and that's largely because Roku worked really well with us to help us get there. We're seeing much longer session times on Roku. We're going to continue, for example, to invest Roku, because the data's telling us that our consumer really likes to find us there. It's a little bit of an iterative process for us.
Next year, I think, a big part of it is going to be about enhancing the video experience itself. Right now, we're a very linear product, so we're great for watching linear TV in an app, but we don't toggle elegantly between linear content and short-form digital content, so that's something that we're looking to next year to make our products more sticky.
We want lots of different types of content, so not just being able to deliver a television experience, but to deliver a video viewing experience to a particular customer. Knowing about that customer is where our priority lies.
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