Curation is nothing new to modern-day entertainment consumers. From Spotify to Hulu and everything in between, the entertainment market is saturated with options that collect existing content and offer it in a neat, tidy package. From playlists to recommendation engines, these popular offerings take the work away from viewers, many of whom are plopping in front of the TV to unwind and avoid making more decisions.
Could curation be the thing that breaks through the highly-competitive TV market?
The over-the-top (OTT) TV market — which indicates content is being delivered over the internet, without a multisystem operator like a cable company — includes Hulu, Roku, Pluto TV, Chromecast, Apple TV, and more. It’s disrupted the cable and satellite markets, resulting in more than 22 million viewers dropping their providers by 2017’s end. The first quarter of 2018 didn’t get better: Charter reported it lost 122,000 subscribers, outpacing analyst predictions of 43,000 — and other providers experienced similar losses.
But diluting the cable and satellite shares of the viewing pie has left each OTT provider scrambling for a bigger chunk as they compete against brands with similar outlooks on where consumers are headed. Determining how they can outpace other disruptive brands has made a competitive marketplace even more so.
The Paradox of Choice
As Barry Schwartz’s insights on the paradox of choice have taught us, too many choices can be a bad thing. With so many outlets available and more brands taking on content creation themselves, the number of viewing options has taken on overwhelming proportions. In fact, a Hub Entertainment Research survey found in 2017 that nearly half of all respondents thought there were too many shows on TV.
Curation can lend focus to a staggering number of options. “Curation, not unlike radio once did, allows people to feel as though the content they are viewing has been vetted and determined by people who have expertise to be high-quality, relevant, and worthy,” says Ilya Pozin, the co-founder and chief growth officer of Pluto TV, a free live TV streaming service that curates content from across the internet. “It also allows them to easily tap into a theme that matches a mood or a feeling they are trying to capture. It’s all about having someone else do the heavy lifting.”
Serving the Second Audience
Curation can also make it easier to serve the other TV audience: advertisers and content providers. Just like cable relies on ad revenue, several OTT options are supported by advertising. Though ad blocker usage is up, companies that invest in human understanding of human tastes — not bots’ understanding — are more likely to anticipate what will be received well. Brands that are willing to invest in vetting and curating their ad content, just like they vet and curate their viewing content, can earn trust from both consumers and advertisers.
This curation is smart math for advertisers: When studios make deals to acquire content libraries, a few titles within those libraries tend to stand out. Those titles are accessed frequently, while their lesser-known siblings are often buried within the sites. Pozin explains that curation executed with themes, including cultural and social relevance, creates more opportunities for obscure titles to earn premium placements and fanfare. These platforms fuel discovery, keeping eyeballs glued longer.
While cable channels airing live TV have a limited number of hours in a day and, therefore, a limited number of programs they can provide, ad-supported OTT options automatically earn a leg up (as the market has shown). But the OTT platforms that can surface content that’s relevant to a specific viewer will gain an even bigger advantage.
OTT platforms that develop — or acquire — machine learning technologies will be poised to take the lead. The algorithms backing these technologies constantly absorb data about user habits and adapt to anticipate what a user will want next, continuously optimizing a platform’s content to keep a viewer, well, viewing. And capitalizing on stronger discovery tools can, in turn, maximize ad revenue, keeping all parties engaged in the process.
“That’s what they’re trying to figure out, so when we talk analytics and video, it’s in real time, it’s algorithms, and it’s getting discovery and content recommendation,” said Steve Davis of Ooyala, a digital video platform technology company, at the LDV Vision Summit, “so in an ad-based world you get that consumer to click one more video and those are all the pennies, dimes that add up for our consumers. In a SVOD world you’re trying to reduce churn; how do you keep those subscribers on your system?”
When it comes to consumers and advertisers, the answer just may be curation. By consolidating choices and feeding viewers what they want — without asking them to do the hard work of sifting, researching, and making decisions — OTT platforms can earn long-term customers. And by capturing customers, they’ll attract more ad dollars. Companies that rely on a bevy of choices, rather than curation, will be pressured to show viewers the same effort — or wither away.
