THE CEO’s POV - Growing your sport and your brand through OTT
In the world of OTT, rights holders and brands need to position themselves as media companies to maximise the opportunity that the direct-to-consumer model presents.
Joymo was founded on the belief that people should be able to connect, watch and engage with the sport they are passionate about anywhere, anytime. This is the very essence of over-the-top (OTT) direct-to-fan services - removing the barriers and connecting people directly to the content they love.
The benefits for fans are clear and well-documented: bigger variety of content, cheaper points of entry and greater flexibility on how and where content is consumed.
But OTT also offers significant benefits to rights holders by providing a cost-effective way to build brand equity, unlock more profitable relationships with fans, and future proof through access to valuable first party data.
For rights holders, OTT should be viewed as a marketing channel that can meet a wide variety of sales initiatives, thanks to growing capabilities in scaling, measuring, and data-driven targeting.
One of the most obvious ways for Joymo partners to increase revenues, aside from subscriptions, is to collaborate with advertisers who are increasingly looking at OTT as a vehicle for their marketing activities.
A recent study in the US found that even though on average the OTT sector represents only 3% of total digital spend per month, the ad industry is growing considerably and was worth nearly $1.3 billion in 2021.
When compared to older adults, US research shows 18-to-24-year-olds are more likely to stream video content. 44% of young adults stream 3+ hours video content each day and these viewers are more receptive to advertisements, with FreeWheel finding that OTT viewers finish up to 98% of advertisements.
Essentially this means that OTT provides advertisers with an abundance of viewers that are both more willing to consume, and more receptive to their advertisements. When this is combined with the benefits for brands advertising on Joymo, it’s a powerful combination.
Joymo helps deliver:
- Precise targeting and matching advertising content with audience
- Enhanced ad relevance leading to increased engagement
- Greater accuracy in measuring calls-to-action and conversion rates for different ads
Branded content is a prime example of these benefits, allowing rights holders and advertisers the opportunity to create bespoke content to meet specific business objectives whilst appealing to the audience's expectations and requirements.
With OTT, brands can be seamlessly integrated across programming and product reaching these highly engaged viewers in a meaningful way.
Fundamentally, OTT allows brands and advertisers the ability to gather data that can be applied to an omnichannel marketing approach. This provides far deeper knowledge of customer habits - via click-through rates, view rate and actual conversions - than traditional TV, for example.
This data can open the conversation between advertisers and rights holders to truly define the optimum customer journey and experience that can be tracked at all stages.
Indeed, brands and rights holders thinking about OTT strategy must start to think not only as product or service providers, but also as media companies themselves. In this new model, authentic, high quality content and experiences are key.