Moving Towards a Smarter Streaming Future

Streaming service providers and content sellers face numerous challenges today – competition for viewers, evolving technology and consumer preferences, content discovery and subscription fatigue, consumer data privacy concerns, and pressure to turn a profit are only a few.

Data is invaluable to succeed in this rapidly evolving marketplace, and the challenges are only magnified when data is held by a few key players. This results in a complicated business environment fraught with inefficiencies and conjecture. Industry executives overwhelmingly shared their hopes that the marketplace can evolve to better serve all players.

Industry Movement Towards Collaboration, Consolidation

Streaming is the predominant consumer choice for video entertainment, with 89% of US internet households using at least one service, and 29% using more than eight. Competition is fierce. As the streaming market matures, executives aspire to a more collaborate future. In the FAST environment in particular, executives feel that the high number of channels, wide range of content quality, and data gatekeeping limit the growth of the whole ecosystem, including potential advertising revenue.

Several dynamics are pushing the market to evolve towards a more cooperative - or at least less fragmented - reality:

• Data Sharing and Standardization: Some industry leaders are starting to share more data publicly and with partners. One outcome of the 2023 writers’ and actors’ strikes is a requirement that streaming platforms share more metrics with creatives (though not publicly). In December 2023, Netflix released 6 full months of viewership data by content title – a first for the industry leader. Additionally, multiple streaming platform executives shared with Parks Associates that they see their relative data transparency as a differentiator in the industry. Others shared confidentially that while they would like to provide more to their partners, reaching an internal consensus about what and how much to share is a slow organizational effort.
• Industry Alliances: New organizations are forming to serve the interests of streaming stakeholders, including the Independent Streaming Alliance (ISA) and Streaming Innovation Alliance (SIA). The ISA advocates for establishing collective measurement for platforms and brand marketers, best practices and fair business practices for distribution, and seamless advertising transactions through partnerships with SSPs, DSPs, brands, and agencies. The SIA seeks to promote “federal and state policies that build on the strong, competitive, and pro-consumer market for streaming video” through advocacy and lobbying efforts. The stated aim of such organizations is to solve industry challenges to the benefit of everyone involved, though competing interests are sure to persist on the path to a more open, collaborative industry.
• Mergers and Consolidation: Content providers continue to consolidate products, content, and resources to differentiate themselves from the competition and accelerate profitability. In 2023, HBO Max and Discovery+ merged to create Max and Paramount+ added Showtime to its highest tier. Now that Disney has acquired Comcast’s share of Hulu, analysts expect the two to eventually converge. In a crowded market, movement towards consolidation does help ease fragmentation, but streaming executives stressed the goal of preserving fairness through a diverse marketplace rather than one monopolized by a few key players.

Supplementing Data with Technology

Businesses face a lack of data, but also a lack of resources to handle that data if they had it. Most executives surveyed are utilizing internal resources to manage and analyze their data manually. This is due partially to fragmentation and partially to a lack of resources. Each distribution platform reports different metrics through different processes, forcing an inefficient approach that could easily be streamlined if there was standardization.

Structured data for content performance, revenue, advertising, non-transactional audience engagement (e.g., brand loyalty), and other metrics is crucial for proper benchmarking and intelligent business strategy.

Standardization and automation will enable businesses to gain insights faster and stay competitive in this rapidly evolving landscape.

About a third of streaming executives said that capturing and analyzing data is extremely challenging, and 42% said a consolidated data service would be valuable. The most popular uses for such a service would be to gauge performance across platforms, conduct financial forecasting, and automate reporting.

This is an excerpt from Parks Associates’ custom report “Streaming Content Performance: Executive Insights ” in collaboration with SymphonyAI Media.

This custom report shares findings from an extensive study, including in-depth surveys and interviews of senior executives from streaming service providers, networks, and content sellers.