FASTs Confound Investors Yet Again
VIZIO’s Platform Performs
One of the more curious aspects of my job is the number of calls I have with people in the investment community who can’t seem to wrap their heads around why people who make the hardware necessary to watch TV also want to create additional revenue streams around programming and advertising.
It started with Roku several years back and now includes the big three US TV OEMs (Samsung, LG and VIZIO) and seems to truly baffle them. Only Amazon seems to get a pass, given that revenue from television constitutes such a small part of their overall haul.
That said, the wisdom of creating these alternate revenue streams was proven out once again this week as VIZIO reported a net profit of $4.7 million, largely on the back of its booming platform business which posted some impressive numbers: gross profit was up 23%, while revenue was up 30%, aided by a 25% increase in ad revenue.
So why do these plays still seem to baffle Wall Street?
Search and Discovery Remain An Issue
Talk to any NIRP (Non-Industry Regular Person) about streaming and chances are the difficulty of finding the shows they want to watch will come up.
Not finding what to watch as in recommendations— though that can be an issue too— but rather, finding the shows they are pretty sure they have access to or (worse still) have actually started watching but can’t seem to find again.
The reasons for this are legion, ranging from poorly designed app interfaces to streaming services not wanting to provide a direct (deep) link to their shows that bypasses their main interface.
Its continued presence as a key consumer issue was at the top of our 2023 Fearless Predictions list, and so it was heartening to see an actual study from TiVo that confirmed this was indeed the case.
I mean who doesn’t like to be proven right?
READ THE FULL WEEK IN REVIEW ON TVREV
Featured Report:
FASTs Are The New Cable, Part 2: Advertising
A long awaited follow up to our primer on free ad-supported streaming TV services (FASTs)
Part 2: Advertising goes deep into the ins and outs of advertising on the FASTs. In this report you will learn:
- Why FASTs are on track to surpass broadcast and cable for ad spend and when it will happen
- Why contextual advertising might be the solution for many of the issues that streaming advertising is facing, and much more...
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