Prior to Parks Associates’ 1st-annual Future of Video: OTT, Pay TV, and Digital Media conference, Mrugesh Desai, Head of Solutions Engineering, Accedo shared insights with the analyst team to discuss wthe challeges facing the video industry and how the industry will drive growth in video entertainment over the next few years.

Mrugesh will be participating on the Evolution of the Consumer Experience panel on Wednesday, December 12, at 1:30 PM. Panelists joining him on this session include:

Lisa Aussieker, VP of Sales, AT&T, MediaKind
Alex Drosin, Chief Commercial Officer, Massive
Glen Sakata, Product Evangelist, Ooyala

What is the greatest challenge facing the video industry over the next three years?
The greatest challenge is the evolution of the consumer experience. Consumers are interacting with content in different ways and expecting a much more cohesive experience across multiple devices and services. As this continues to evolve, video providers need to make the consumer experience a seamless experience. This will likely include voice control, but may also be about aggregating different services so that consumers only need to sign in once to access multiple subscriptions. This becomes both a technical challenge and a commercial one, with different video providers needing to be grouped together with competitors. Fragmentation of tech stacks and devices will remain a core challenge. Whether it’s traditional mobile, tablet, 10ft experiences, web, or new video consumption devices through VR, AR and voice enabled devices, there will not be a single UX architecture that scales seamlessly across all the devices that consumers will be using.

What is driving growth in video entertainment today? How does that change over the next few years?
Growth is being driven by a couple of things:
1. Content – this remains important with consumers looking for new and fresh content and signing up to multiple video services to satisfy that.
2. User Experience - consumers are after better experiences and as those are improving, they are engaging more. Take voice interaction, for example, which is making it easier than ever for consumers to get straight to the content they want to watch.
3. New devices – AR and VR have been much talked about but haven’t had much mainstream traction as yet. However, VR is becoming more achievable for consumers thanks to new device launches at lower price points.

Over the next few years, User Experience will become even more important in growing and retaining subscribers. AR and VR will likely begin to take off in a more meaningful way, but only for certain types of content – sport is likely to be the key driver here.
Compelling content packages at attractive price points and more a la carte offerings will lead to further growth of OTT subscribers.

What technology will have the biggest impact on your business in the next 18 months and why?
There is still a large, untapped market for content availability on the typical consumer devices (mobile, tablet 10 foot, and web) especially in the emerging markets and we expect this will still drive significant growth for our business. However, premium content providers are starting to make aggressive investments is AR, VR, and voice enabled solutions which will also provide us with growth opportunities. We continue to innovate on scalable UX solutions that will allow for operational friendly deployment and management across all of these devices.

What is the top growth opportunity for content producers over the next few years? What about for cable networks?
Consumers still want content across any device available at any time, and that is easy to access. Most content providers will need to provide that so the differentiator will come down to the type of content. There is a huge opportunity for niche content providers as well as premium services offering the latest blockbusters, but there remains an opportunity for everyone in between thanks to the appetite for multiple subscriptions.

What is one thing that the pay-TV ecosystem needs to learn from the online giants in video (Google, Netflix, Facebook, and Amazon)?
The main lesson is about the User Experience. All of the online giants have really easy-to-navigate and intuitive User Interfaces and they also serve recommendations based on user preferences and habits. This is something the pay-TV providers are only just starting to do but when it comes to attracting users, it is arguably the most important factor to consider. Data driven UX will be a very important factor in determining success of OTT offerings.

What will pay TV services look like in five years?
Pay TV services will become an aggregation of linear and OTT content with consumers able to switch between them, almost without realizing they are doing it. Traditional pay TV features like the EPG and DVR will still be a requirement from consumers but these experiences will need to be innovated on and reimagined for newer devices in the video market (AR, VR, voice-enabled devices).  

For more information on the Future of Video, visit: www.fov2018.com.