Asia Tech x Singapore Report: What Does the Future Hold for OTT & IPTV?

Earlier this month, Setplex attended the Asia Tech x Singapore conference, Asia’s flagship event for the digital economy. The conference hosted governments, global enterprises, and consumer communities, showcasing the latest technologies and discussing the role of technology in our shared digital future.

Here are a few of the hottest topics and trends that our team observed while in Singapore:

1. AI meets OTT & IPTV

You cannot start a discussion about technology these days without talking about AI. While many are debating how AI will impact the future of their respective industries, when it comes to video streaming tech, AI-like functionality is already in place and creating value for consumers. Consider recommendation engines – the core concept behind them involves using viewers’ watching habits and ratings as a data set to generate predictive models of similar viewers’ behaviors. This approach is in line with how companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Google are using large language models to generate human-like answers to questions. The truth is, AI is already here, and already having an impact. The question is, who is doing it well and how are these technologies being received by the end-user? If AI-like recommendation engines are creating differentiated value for consumers, businesses will search for which solutions providers are doing it best.

2.  Bundles of Subscriptions

At the height of the cable era, bundling was de rigueur. A standard subscription to a cable provider would come with sports, entertainment, music, and news channels, regardless of whether an individual subscriber was interested in all of them. For a few years, ISPs have offered discounted (or sometimes even free) OTT services as part of an ISP subscription. For instance, in the US, Verizon offers a plan that includes discounted access to Disney+, ESPN+, and Hulu. 

Bundling of OTT subscriptions is growing, especially internationally. In India, several companies are offering bundles of the major OTT services. Even as OTT investors’ interests pivot from subscriber growth to profits (more on that later), we expect world-class OTT platforms will use bundling opportunities to keep their subscription numbers up.

3. ARPU Is the New Black

As mentioned above, OTT investors are increasingly looking for profitability, not just subscriber growth. The common way to measure that is ARPU (Average Revenue Per User). AVOD and paid content is prevalent across markets, however, technology as providers search for ways to increase revenue, expect to hear ARPU as a metric of choice. A few examples include:

• Dynamic product placements: Already a revenue stream in the gaming industry, selling in-game ad-space that can be customized for highly targeted audiences is highly desirable to advertisers. Future AI technology might similarly insert new creative on a billboard that a viewer sees in a movie or TV program.
• Video commerce: An evolution of dynamic product placements, audiences will soon be able to shop within platform while watching a program. Imagine being able to buy the music that Barbie is dancing to, the watch James Bond is wearing, or even the car that Dominic Toretto is driving! The more commerce opportunities available, the more valuable those product placements become – even the smaller, less recognizable ones.
• Gamification and digital assets: The game industry uses leaderboards and achievements in a variety of ways to keep players engaged, and similarly, the stats around social media posts are a sort of gamification that encourages users to make engaging posts repeatedly. Soon, OTT and IPTV platforms may use those strategies to keep audiences engaged. For instance, a Real Madrid superfan could earn an on-screen badge showing that they have watched an entire season of games. Or Star Trek fans might be interested in buying an NFT that represents the premiere of a new series.