CTV Festival Recap

The media and entertainment business is expected to reach revenues of $1.07 trillion this year, Omdia projects, with much of that coming from video. But those rushing to tap into the connected TV gold rush are eyeing a much bigger pie: online consumer expenditure.

This year, online consumer expenditure will be $4.4 trillion, according to Maria Rua Aguete, leader of the media and entertainment team at Omdia, who delivered a data-packed presentation on where the money is in the CTV space at the inaugural Connected TV Festival last week. That number, per Rua Aguete, “is four times what we spend in media and entertainment. So, the opportunities in online consumer expenditure are massive.” Indeed, Omdia projects online consumer spending will reach $6.6 trillion in 2029, with media and entertainment revenues at $1.3 trillion.

Exploring what the CTV trend means for various stakeholders in the content business—from AVOD platforms and multiplatform broadcasters to technology companies and producer-distributors—was our guiding principle in devising the agenda for the CTV Festival, which you can view on-demand here.

Broadcaster evolution came up in several sessions, including our keynote with Henrik Pabst, the head of content at ProSiebenSat.1 Media and CEO of Seven.One Studios, who discussed the importance of having all content decisions under one unit and the emergence of Joyn as a super-streamer.

“We are transforming from a multi-broadcaster to a super streamer,” Pabst said. “This journey requires central steering.” By that, Pabst refers to a structure at the company that centralized all content decisions, regardless of platform. “If your goal is maximum reach that you can monetize with your sales department, you need to oversee all platforms and not concentrate on a single one. You need to be platform agnostic. This is how you can ensure that you reach all your demos. This central steering is a unified structure that allows you strategic objectives and guardrails. You can tell exactly how much content volume you need of a certain type. You can be very clear on your release plans across all platforms, when you play what and in what order. This structure supports your journey from a linear broadcast organization with more streamer-friendly content going forward.”

RTL Group has similarly doubled down on streaming, tapping into technology from sister company Bedrock to serve its needs. Part of the broader Bertelsmann organization, Bedrock powers Videoland in the Netherlands and recently partnered with M6 Group on the rollout of M6+. At the virtual conference last week, we heard from Jonas Engwall, Bedrock CEO.

“The whole basis for Bedrock is scale,” Engwall said. “We need scale to compete with the global giants. The user’s expectations are set by global giants, even if you’re a small player in one country. To be able to play in that league, you need scale. We can create a platform that is way better than they can do at a lower cost than they would spend doing it themselves. It’s a good setup—better product and lower price, what’s not to like?”

Channel 4 has been clear about its future-forward approach, embracing YouTube, tackling misinformation and having a well-tuned approach to branded entertainment. We put the broadcaster’s successful brand-funded content efforts in the spotlight with our session featuring Rupinder Downie, content solutions leader, and Joe Churchill, digital commissioning editor.

“We have set ourselves an ambition that we should put digital first, at the heart of everything we do,” Downie explained. “Our ambition is to move 50 percent of our revenues to digital by 2030. We also ensure we’re at the forefront of how viewers want to access our content. And we’ve had a larger focus on working with brands in the branded-entertainment space, increasingly in social.”

“We don’t see branded entertainment as a place where we compromise our values and remit as a public-service broadcaster,” Churchill explained. “Instead, it’s just a new way of making different kinds of content and making more content than we might be able to if we were just working with our originals budget.”

Branded entertainment has also been a focus for tech giant Roku. It has a commanding share of the TV operating system market, while The Roku Channel is a top-ten service. Brian Toombs, head of the Roku Brand Studio, told CTV Festival viewers that there are lots of ways Roku can bring clients into the mix, from shoppable TV opportunities to branded entertainment.

“The Roku Brand Studio is a group in the content organization dedicated to building partnerships with brands,” Toombs said. “We are a link between our ad sales and content groups. We are divided into two main categories or verticals. One is products we make in partnership with our brand partners—everything from custom content to full-on series to integrating them into our Roku originals to building bespoke content solutions for them. And then we’re a service organization. So, not only do we create, develop and help our ad sales team sell these content partnerships, we also execute them and work with our clients on taking them from paper development through launch.”

At the IAB NewFronts this week, Samsung Ads revealed the launch of its own branded-entertainment studio as it continues to scale offerings for clients on Samsung TV Plus. At the CTV Festival, we heard from Bérangère Degni-Rezé, head of TV Plus for Europe at Samsung Ads, about how the platform is being positioned to clients across its 19-country regional footprint.

“It is such a fragmented landscape,” Degni-Rezé said. “For us at Samsung, users are always at the forefront. When we talk about premium, we’re here to ensure that we provide our users the best possible environment and content selection, which results in a brand-safe environment for our advertisers. It’s that virtuous circle when it comes to ensuring a variety of content, both from those big international studios and the local brands that are very important in Europe. We are across 19 countries with very different cultures, so it’s very important when we talk about premium to ensure that the content offering is catering to an audience and resulting in a context for brands that they feel comfortable with—that it’s like-for-like TV. They even have more control because they have transparency in which content they can advertise next to and control the contextual space for themselves. Premium is very important when a brand is choosing to go into the CTV space.”

Tubi is also touting its premium inventory as it looks to drive scale in the British market. We heard from ITVX alum Ross Appleton, VP and general manager for the U.K. at Tubi, about how the AVOD platform is cementing itself as a destination for free entertainment.

“The free USP that works so well in the U.S. doesn’t resonate in quite the same way in the U.K.,” Appleton explained. “In the U.K., there’s a very strong free streaming offering, particularly from the BVOD services. Our take at Tubi is that streaming in the U.K. and most other markets is clustered around what we term the monoculture—they super-serve the median viewer with programming that’s designed to deliver mass audiences to single titles. These streamers do a great job of that. We see the U.K. as a melting pot of different cultures and diverse audiences that we believe are missing out on the deeper content discovery that Tubi can offer them. We very much put the U.K. viewers first. We offer them a diverse set of content that allows them to delve into whatever fandoms or rabbit holes they want to.”

The FAST channel landscape that allows audiences to take a deep dive into the shows they love is one that many distributors have targeted as an additional revenue stream.

“The FAST channel universe is fulfilling an additional need of the consumer,” said Linette Zaulich, who heads up the B2C division at ZDF Studios, in her keynote address. “If they don’t find anything to watch, they’ll find the single IP they know and like. And no matter the episode that’s running, they’ll watch. This is a whole new way of distributing the content. We have so many long-running and successful series we can put in a FAST channel and reach more people with them.”

ZDF Studios has also not shied away from using YouTube, a platform that content owners and distributors are using in various ways. In our Channel Surfing session, we heard from three pioneering CTV companies that are each taking a different approach to the world’s biggest video–sharing platform.

Mark Ashbridge, CEO of VA Media, discussed the curation of the company’s suite of successful YouTube channels. Brian C. Janes, VP of distribution operations and IT at pocket.watch, weighed in on turning creator economy hits into multiplatform franchises. Soma Sengupta, head of partner relationships at Future Today, revealed how the company is bringing digital-first content alongside top-quality studio fare to its successful apps HappyKids and Fawesome.

The festival wrapped with a spotlight on Kedoo Entertainment’s thriving digital-first production business. “YouTube is a direct-to-consumer line to test different formats, subjects and content types,” said Batyr Aidarkhan, business development director. “So, for us, it was an ideal scenario to develop five or six concepts and test them on YouTube. It’s most important to track the performance and audience perception.”