Accelerating Content viewership in OTT Apps
With the second wave of COVID-19 hitting the entire country, almost all states are in lock down mode. For those who can connect to the net and work from home, they are able to continue with their day to day work. But this is just a miniscule of the large 1.38 billion people. I am not sure what is the viewership base of the OTT viewing population. It is only the younger population that is adapting to the likes of Prime Video, Netflix kind of applications. A large number of people who despite mobile savvy with data connectivity still rely on the traditional TV watching mechanism using an STB, which itself is a recent entrant into the drawing rooms. So what could the OTT service providers possibly do to drive more traffic to watch content from their offering?
As far as I see, content discovery is the major hassle for the not so tech savvy people while using an OTT App when compared to a traditional device like a TV or STB. For e.g. if my mother wants to watch live program like Sun TV, using a mobile or Fire stick, she needs to open the Sunnxt App, navigate through several menus before discovering the tile that is marked “Live TV”. Where as in an STB it is just a few key strokes away. She either remembers the channel number or it is part of the favourites.
So how do we handle this situation? There should be a mechanism to ‘pin’ live channel contents or favourite shows onto the home screen, instead of burying them under several layers inside the app. Users when clicking on this pinned shortcut shall be taken directly to the content, instead of making them tread through layered sub-menus. Wish Android / iOS offer a mechanism on enabling playback of contents instead of making the user to open the App. Trust me, when I tell my mom to switch from hotstar to sunnxt to watch a context, she is just furious, because the mechanism in a STB / DVR (digital video recorder) is ridiculously easy.
Second, the not so tech savvy people rely a lot on the feedback from their network of friends and families to watch a content. They could take a review from a friend, rather than an 8.5 recommendation from IMDB. This calls out for integration of social media with the OTT Apps. If I like a content, there shall be an option to like it and provide some feedback, which would get listed in facebook or twitter page and bingo when my friends clicks on this, he gets to watch it (of course if he has the right credentials and credit). If there is a mechanism to share the content info directly via whatsapp, all the more better.
Well, there is still a fraternity that could argue about privacy rights with the above mechanism, and we submit our watching pattern to the social media giants. But why not use it for some good reasons? If several people watch a content due to my liking in social media, I could even get a discount from the OTT App provider. Why not monetize binge watching?
