The OTT (Over-the-top) services market is booming with entertainment conglomerates jumping in to carve out their share of the pie.
The OTT market is growing by the billions at a CAGR of 16% and may be worth $257.37 billion by 2025.
Having their own OTT video platforms affords these companies more control over revenue generation besides greater flexibility to cater to audience preferences.
Launching one’s own OTT streaming platform can be a great hassle as there are several parameters and requirements to follow from high-security standards to super-fast user experience capabilities. It can be quite difficult to find access to the right infrastructure to develop such websites/apps.
Fortunately, using a white label OTT solution simplifies matters a great deal.
How Is OTT Content Delivered?
The most common devices used by viewers to access OTT content are mentioned below. OTT software is designed to operate seamlessly across the following devices:
- Mobile devices
These devices have been the key to OTT apps’ success as most Smartphone and tablet users love the portability. With data prices dropping, mobile users will rise.
- Personal computers
OTT websites on browsers and desktop-based apps continue to remain popular among PC users.
- Smart TVs
The popularity of OTT services is exactly what has been driving smart TV sales globally. As smart TV Apps combine live TV and OTT capabilities, viewers will prefer them in the coming years.
- Digital media players
Gaming consoles like Xbox and PS4’s support OTT streaming making them another popular device for content streaming.
Things to Consider Before Launching an OTT Platform
When you want to start an OTT video platform, there are some prerequisites for maximizing the chances of success.
- Define Your Target Audience
The first thing to do is to figure out who your target audience is, who your market is, and their preferences. Netflix and Amazon Prime try to reach the widest possible audience and offer a large mix of genres and languages but TV channel sites and apps cater to their existing, sometimes regional audiences
- Content Licensing and Acquisition
If the plan is to create content, then you have to find out how to get the best team at the most optimal budget. If you want to license shows and movies or buy exclusive rights, then you need the budget to beat the competing bids. This has to be done with the target audience’s tastes in mind.
- Building a Platform to Meet Market Requirements
You’ll have to think about the features needed, the resources that will go into maintaining the website or app, hosting, performance optimization, customer service, etc. An OTT app builder allows you to build your OTT app on top of its solution.
- Pricing the Content
Your prices have to cover the costs of running your OTT video business while also being reasonable to consumers. The content will have to justify your pricing especially due to the heavy competition leaving users with plenty of economical options.
What You Will Need to Launch an OTT Video Platform?
Once you have the basics from the previous section in place, you can go the DIY route or the white-label OTT software route. Your choice depends on your budget and expansion plans.
- Building from Scratch
- Product Team
- Engineering Team
- UI/ UX Team
- Development Team
- Security Professionals
- Maintenance staff
You can focus most of your efforts on corporate functions, marketing and publicity, and content creation and acquisition if you go by the second route.
Technical Requirements to Develop OTT Software
- App and website development
You have to build the website to ensure the best user experience and also with SEO-friendly features. Similarly, your app needs to be smooth and seamless for the viewer experience as well as app-store optimized. Building an OTT platform with white-label solutions to simplifies this aspect.
- On Cloud/ Premises Hosting
You must choose where to locate the servers for streaming. Do you want to store your content on your premises or cloud servers?
- Privacy and Encryption standards
The video content has to be protected with encryption and you should also make sure that geographic IP restrictions are in place. Ensure content delivery through secured protocols like HTTPS, use a trusted security certificate, and make use of DRM for your videos.
- Customization
Decide on your logo, watermark, content architecture, and add features that set you apart from the competition. Autoplay, download, and resume watching are essential features that OTT builders also have. You may use JavaScript, server-side rendering to modify the dynamic behavior of your platform.
- Video CMS
As your collection of content grows, you will need an efficient content management system that allows appropriate access rights to creators, editors, publishers, viewers, managers, etc. of the video content. It stores and distributes the videos on demand to the viewer as per the device specs.
- HTML5 Video Player
The videos have to be embedded on the website or app. An HTML5 Video Player is the simplest way to get a customizable player with fast playback.
- Transcoding
This allows your website or app to stream video content in the desired format across devices. Different devices and browsers offer varied compatibility for codecs. You need to ensure the use of standard codecs to ensure compatibility with user’s devices.
- Security
To prevent piracy, you have to prevent unauthorized copies of OTT content through Digital Rights Management. You must abide by data protection and privacy laws.
Generating Revenue from Your Content
There are a few options for revenue generation after OTT platform development. You can choose plan pricing accordingly.
- Advertising-based video on demand (AVOD)
Here the consumers can stream videos for free but have to watch some ads. The advertisers pay for the views they get. This works if you can generate a very large number of views for your site or app. Hotstar, an Indian OTT platform uses the AVOD model to stream its live TV shows.
- Subscription video on demand (SVOD)
The most common model of revenue generation, SVOD is what Netflix and Hulu use. For a certain price paid per month, viewers get to access the full catalog of TV shows and movies. You need a large enough catalog to attract enough visitors for this to be profitable as royalties have to be paid for licensed content.
- Transactional video on demand (TVOD)
This is exemplified by pay-per-view. Here viewers pay for the specific TV show or movie as a rental or purchase the rights to view. This is less popular compared to SVOD.
Conclusion
White label OTT platform providers take care of the technical requirements for you so that you can focus resources on building the content library. This allows you to do content authoring/acquisition. The videos you curate will be the make or break in standing against the heavy competition. As the streaming segment will only grow further from here, now is a good time for entry.
