Ushering in an era of OTT content with the power of Cloud

Of all the new-normals we are witnessing this year, 2020  also brings an important milestone in the history of Indian cinema. For the first time ever, mainstream Bollywood movies are being released on popular OTT content platforms like Amazon Prime Video and Disney Hotstar, instead of in theaters. The list includes big-budget movies such as Gulabo Sitabo, Shakuntala Devi, Dil Bechara etc., This development isn’t entirely surprising if we look at the growing popularity of online content in India, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting nationwide lockdown. A KPMG report on the impact of COVID-19 on the media and entertainment industry found that in recent weeks, OTT consumption in India has risen both in terms of consumption duration but also in terms of demographics and devices used.

However, the growth of Over-the-Top (OTT) content is not just a result of COVID-19, although the pandemic has certainly given it a major flip. Even back in 2018, a report by The Boston Consulting Group titled ‘Entertainment Goes Online’ had predicted that factors such as rising affluence, increased data penetration in rural markets, and adoption across newer demographic segments would push the Indian OTT market to reach $5 billion in size by 2023. Interestingly, contrary to popular perception, rural areas account for about 65 percent of online video consumption in India. Already, there are about 40 providers of Over–the–Top media services (OTT) in India. As the popularity of OTT content booms, this number is set to go up significantly.

Several drivers have contributed to the growth of online entertainment. If we look at the evolution of video entertainment in India, broadcast TV was monopolized by the government for almost 30 years until cable TV brought the first phase of the content revolution. When OTT content first came into the picture, one major reason for its growing popularity (aside from convenience) was that these online channels fell outside the ambit of rigid censorship protocols followed by regulators for traditional cable TV. In turn, this enabled them to push creative boundaries to provide more open and relatable content to young viewers.

Pivotal Role of Underlying Cloud Technology

For OTT video content distribution to flourish, it is impossible to overstate the role of underlying technologies that allow them to provide such services in an efficient, secure, and reliable manner. Cloud technology is one of the biggest enablers, helping OTT service providers scale up faster and further grow their services.

The media industry is one of the largest consumers of cloud technologies catering to storage (content stores and archives), compute (transcoding, machine-learning, graphics rendering) and network (serving video to end-users). Given that visual media today is all about digital bits and bytes, the software-driven processing for on-demand computation on the cloud is driving just-in-time processing as content arrives or when viewership scales.

Viewers also increasingly prefer a multiscreen environment that allows them to choose the device as well as switch between devices to consume both linear and Video-on-Demand (VOD) content. Traditional broadcast infrastructure is not designed to meet such requirements.  In comparison, the cloud allows content owners and video service providers a digital-first approach that gives them the flexibility to launch new channels aided by attractive business models such as a pay-as-you-go Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) model. Additionally, it opens new avenues for targeted advertising offering enhanced segmentation, audience profiling, reach, and campaign flexibility. This enables content owners to optimize their ad inventory and monetize their content effectively.

Be it evolving as an alternative platform to the theatrical release of movies or offering linear TV content and programming, OTT is slowly redefining the media, entertainment, and advertising industry landscape. To help sustain this change, scale it, and make it viable from the point of view of content storage, distribution, and monetization, cloud technology has a big role to play.

By Baskar Subramanian, Co-Founder, Amagi