IHS: Media management industry moving to services-based model
May 18, 2018
Insight from IHS Markit identifies how the media management industry is moving to services-based business model, focusing on faster and cheaper workflow.
Highlights of the report include:
- In the media management market, migration from selling equipment-based solutions to service-based solutions is deploying massively this year. Nearly two-thirds (62 per cent) of global revenue was service-based, growing to 63 per cent by the end of 2017 and expected to grow to 66 per cent in 2021. The overall market grew 7 per cent in 2016 and 5 percent in 2017, but this growth rate is expected to slow to 4 per cent in 2021.
- Quadrennial events are great opportunities for investment as they produce significant advertising and distribution revenues, due to a large amount of concurrent viewership. The 2018 PyeongChang Olympic Games coincided with an OTT live-streaming technology cycle, in which broadcasters were better able to exploit monetisation opportunities.
- NBC Universal’s broadcast of the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics Games reached an audience of nearly 20 million viewers and generated more than $900 million in national ad sales. Comcast’s broadcast TV revenue increased 58 per cent to $3.5 billion in the first quarter of 2018, primarily resulting from an 85 per cent increase in advertising and a 43 per cent increase in distribution revenues from the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics Games and the NFL Super Bowl
In early February 2018, NBC Universal partnered with multiple software-defined hardware and as-a-service (aaS) technology vendors in bringing live and file-based 2018 PyeongChang Olympics video content to the United States from South Korea. During the games’ period, NBC Universal live-streamed 18 consecutive days from PyeongChang to viewers across all time zones in the US. The games were available on cable television, OTT streaming and on-demand platforms.
NBC Universal selected Cisco’s IP video contribution and distribution capabilities, along with their networking and security solutions; Harmonic’s MediaGrid Shared Storage and Spectrum Playout system to store, package and deliver content from venues to multiple linear television channels along with Avid’s MediaCentral platform in providing the overall content workflow management.
With the evolution of OTT live streaming and consumers’ increasing viewership of multiscreen, streaming quality has become the key to any media company’s continued engagement with viewers. Streaming quality refers to seamless streaming experiences, low latency and high-quality video with no interruptions—a difficult challenge to meet on top of obligations to broadcast over traditional platforms.
To reduce the growing complexity of broadcasting OTT live streaming, an ecosystem has emerged allowing media companies to partner with several technology vendors to better meet the capacity, video format and distribution challenges that have become prominent with the growing importance of OTT.
In order to meet with media companies’ evolving demands, vendors are finding their solutions have to fit within a flexible framework with other technologies; having to provide flexibility and interfacing with partners’ technologies are key to offer a successful solution.
Technology vendors with a strong equipment-focused background are stepping away from offering hardware or software-defined hardware-only products, to a cloud-based service business model. Cisco started to launch its cloud-based video processing element in 2014; Harmonic took its VOS media processing capability to the cloud, offering it with a software-as-a-service (SaaS) business model in 2016; and Avid launched the MediaCentral platform in 2014 and began offering cloud-based media services in 2017.