With the launch of Peacock last year, the further rollout of HBO Max this spring, and Paramount+ coming soon to the UK, D2Cs (direct-to-consumer OTT services) are massively in vogue. At the same time, aggregators seem to be falling out of favour. NBCUniversal, for example, has pulled streaming rights for its current-season TV shows from Hulu, BritBox UK is being amalgamated into the new ITVX, and Salto in France has reportedly only hit around 50% of target in its aim to sign up 1m subscribers.
Is this just a cyclical thing? Will aggregators, which simplify viewer choice and bring so much diverse content together under one roof, come fighting back? And, indeed, is the “vs” in our title redundant because surely there’s space (and a need) for both D2Cs and aggregators in the market? That was the topic of this week’s OTT Question Time (Thursday 14th April).
Together with Ramy Nasser, SVP Corporate Development & Partnerships at ScreenHits TV, Berkin Ecevit, Senior Director of Business Development & Sales at SPI International, expert industry analyst, Ben Keen, and Bernd Wendeln, COO of Your Family Entertainment, we discussed:
- The different flavours of aggregators
- The different flavours of D2Cs
- The pros, cons and business models of both
- Whether content will always go to where the eyeballs are
- And what the future holds for D2Cs and aggregators
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ABOUT KAUSER KANJI
Kauser Kanji has been working in online video for 19 years, formerly at Virgin Media, ITN and NBC Universal, and founded VOD Professional in 2011. He has since completed major OTT projects for, amongst others, A+E Networks, the BBC, BBC Studios, Channel 4, DR (Denmark), Liberty Global, Netflix, Sony Pictures, the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation and UKTV. He now writes industry analyses, hosts an online debate show, OTT Question Time, as well as its in-person sister event, OTT Question Time Live.