Superaggregation: The inventive fusion of many technologies
Our relationship with media has been irrevocably transformed by streaming. The move away from traditional Pay-TV bundles and toward mobile-first packages encapsulates the "anytime, anywhere" mentality that the majority of audiences now embrace. In one of the most intense media industry competitions in recent memory, technological behemoths are pouring billions of dollars into brand-new services and content in an effort to grow their digital audiences.
Operators who include streaming into their entertainment offerings reap a number of advantages, not the least of which is a greater consumer offering and possible revenue growth. However, operators must adopt new technology, collaborate with bigger competitors, and create new value propositions if they want to thrive in a world of giants and keep the sales engine running.
The development of aggregators
Since operators have such a close contact with their clients, they are given first priority when establishing collaborations and creating new media services. In order to connect people with mobile services, connect households with broadband connectivity, and provide a centralized bill at the end of each month, it is essential that mobile business units build efficient and unified billing systems.
Operators have embraced the role of service aggregators as a result of the provisioning of additional services under a single utility bill. The inclusion of well-known streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and ESPN+ in MVPD packages has been warmly received by operators. With little effort or extra expense, it gives its clients on-demand access to well-known OTT content. The option to pay with only one bill, as straightforward as it may appear, is the other essential value addition for the customer.
The transition of operators into the position of super aggregators is the following stage. They are in a great position to offer a sophisticated commerce engine that aggregates mobile, video, and wider entertainment offerings thanks to their measurement of audience consumption patterns and provision of unique billing. The mix of TV, video, and gaming platforms offers operators the chance to position themselves as the orchestrator of entertainment services while facilitating access to next immersive formats like 360-degree video and virtual reality services.
Change is sparked by innovation
In a world where most media is consumed via mobile devices and the cloud, operators have largely changed. They either developed their own cloud services or collaborated with bigger players like Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure to achieve this. They have also actively contributed to this change by establishing cloud infrastructures and initiating the global 5G rollout.
In the present, broadcasters, operators, and service providers are creatively combining their respective technological platforms. Any media service may now be delivered on any device thanks to improvements in cloud-based rendering, more powerful computing capability, 5G, and mobile video streaming. Operators must consider the entire media ecosystem and use cloud-first technology in order to fully realize the potential of their services.
Consumer behaviors are altering as a result of the transition to a streaming-first world. Our daily connections to social, employment, and educational services now rely heavily on operators. We can also see how technological advancements streamline conventional value chains and change how broadcasters, content owners, and consumers interact. Operators may now orchestrate well-liked entertainment services thanks to direct-to-consumer (D2C) propositions, which creates opportunities for open, transparent conversations between businesses and customers. I think operators' reach and coverage will be increasingly important to the vast majority of service providers. The impact of the pay-TV provider TIM, which, according to Digital TV Europe, paid almost 40% of DAZN's new rights fee to carry DAZN's linear channels and its new Serie A soccer content in Italy, is one recent example.
We at MediaKind have always held the view that innovation is the real force behind change. With the support of our end-to-end solution portfolio, operators can get the most out of their media services. This includes streamlining the distribution process, recommending the ideal user interface, and ensuring that the MVPD products' latency and image quality are always adjusted.
The Dawn of Super Aggregation
The media landscape has effectively integrated the aggregation of streaming services. But as of right now, the aggregators we use to get media only include the top five or six streaming apps. The difficulties with content licensing and streaming services' desire to maintain exclusive access to audience insights are the main causes of this. It will take time to develop into a true super aggregator, and to live up to user expectations, consistent channel and app aggregation is required.
Delivering an aggregated service at scale necessitates the use of universal search and discovery, which is both difficult and essential. The user experience is distorted and inconsistent if one service provider or one app is isolated among multiple other apps. Any program that offers results must be proposed in a truly aggregated search function.
The process of acquiring, delivering, and experiencing content has undergone a significant transformation as a result of the switch from hardware to software in the media processing domain, even though this may still be a few years away. A wide range of fresh experiences for consumers as well as innovative business models for operators, broadcasters, and operators have been made possible by the change. The focus of the following chapter will be on cloud-native media processes and media components. The transformation will be led by operators who are primed and ready.