Over-the-top streaming has grown immensely in 2021. While we will get to know about the exact growth of the platform only in 2022, it’s a safe (and conservative) bet to make that it grew in double digits during the year. According to an article by reelnreel.com, subscription-based OTT services will overtake cable television in the US in 2022.
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Better connectivity
In 2022 video streaming will make up 82% of all the internet traffic. Add to this that 5G internet is touted to become standardized in 2022 which will only make video harder to resist because of its lightning speeds. And with the 5G speeds, also comes better connectivity in the form of smartphones, which has also seen a major growth in sales during the last couple of years, which will continue into the next year.
More advertisers
In 2020, as the pandemic broke out we saw a staggering growth of OTT which also saw advertising budgets shifting to the platform. That trend hasn’t reversed even though people seem to be learning to live with the pandemic and leaning towards a normal life. Cord-cutting seems to be continuing too, with a report by Statista stating that over 46 million US households will end their cable TV subscriptions by the end of 2024. But cord-cutting doesn’t mean content-cutting is happening. It’s just that there is a shift from cable TV to OTT.
As more users start consuming OTT, there will be more players looking to enter the lucrative market. With more players entering the space, there are going to be more viewers. With more eyeballs on the medium, advertisers will be looking to the medium to help them reach out to potential consumers. This means, all content creators on these platforms earn more moolah!
More bundled packages
74% of Americans have subscribed to at least one OTT service. 44% of Americans have two or more OTT subscription services. With the number of OTT platforms to increase and with more takers for them, we are expecting these providers to look at bundled packages (two or more OTT services) at a price which could be lesser than subscribing to these packages individually.
Live events
On-ground live events lost 74.4% of their revenue in 2020. While many countries including the USA and the UK have resumed these events, we’re still not seeing fans travel from different parts of the world to watch these events. But the creators need to reach out to these fans. While many of the big sporting events are televised globally, we are now seeing live music shows or even other cultural events being live streamed to a global audience. This is opening up a completely new revenue stream for creators as they look to utilize the pay-per-view model to attract a viewer for a particular event.
More original series
OTTs either buy the licensing to shows/films or create their own content. We feel, moving into the future, OTT players will be looking to create more of their own content rather than buying the licensing to shows. The rationale for this is simple – with the advent of OTT, creators don’t need to bet on creating a show and then selling the rights. Now, they can produce their own shows with the help of platforms like Netflix etc, like Laurie Nunn did for Sex Education.
More regional/niche content
While OTT allows one to serve their content to everyone in the world, we are seeing the rise of niche content brackets. Creators can look to serve customised content to different viewers in different parts of the world. Using the analytics tools platforms like Enveu provide, OTT creators can look at which part of the world their traffic is coming from and then create custom content for that particular market.
With more parts of the world now getting access to the internet, this means that there’s a high chance that it’s not only an English-speaking market that’s viewing your content. Going forward we believe this trend will only increase and creators will need to either produce multi-lingual content or content outside of English to attract those audiences.
These are just a few trends we believe we’ll be seeing in 2022. If they sound interesting and have lured you into creating your own OTT channel, get in touch with us at Enveu right away so that we can get the ball rolling.
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