By Howard Homonoff
A flurry of news from the over-the-top (OTT) video world in the last 10 days has presented a mixed message of what OTT will mean for traditional media powers, for marketers and for content creators. The only sure thing in this brave new world looks like ... there's no sure thing.
For some helpful OTT market context, I'd strongly recommend "The State of Video" report released last week by WPP's GroupM. The good news for traditional media companies is that there is still a ton of television watching, despite the mind boggling set of consumer video choices. On the other hand, those 45 billion person-viewing hours per month of TV viewing in the U.S. alone are increasingly dominated by live sports, which accounted for 88 of the top 100 rated TV programs in the U.S. in
2016. Great for the sports leagues and teams that hold these broadcast rights, not quite as fabulous for the television networks themselves (even ESPN forks over massive dollars to those rights holders) and the ecosystem of studios, producers and other creative talent living off scripted programming.