Where Are We Now: 2017 Edition
Most tech origin stories do not involve Iron Man; this one does. Juan Bruce of Epoxy, who recently shared his four trends that shaped online video in 2015, built a set of software tools that were originally destined for Robert Downey Jr.’s digital incubator. One race car, an exit, and a several month research project on what the entertainment space actually needed in terms of digital video publishing software later, and Epoxy was funded by a group of investors who felt that what was uncovered was a necessary tool for the video space.With this knowledge in hand, Bruce is well placed to have a good overview as to where things currently are in space. Given that he’d already addressed current conditions in the aforementioned post, we presented him with a challenge: to imagine that it was December 2016 and he was writing the same piece, but for the year that had just passed.Forecasting for 2016 is tricky business—things in 2015 changed rapidly. But Bruce was able to put together his four trends that he feels will shape online video in 2016: 1) Continued Fragmentation in the online video market. This isn’t because YouTube has not grown, but is instead because there are enough new services with advertisers willing to pay for content. Along with this, more tech companies will get into the video game. Twitter and Facebook will continue to go more and more video-centric, but music companies like Spotify and Pandora will join the video fray as they have the audience and are looking to expand on what they already offer beyond just music and music videos.2) The legacy entertainment players will get more into IP-based delivery. With their traditional businesses seeing complications, more companies will invest the time, money, and R&D into following Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon to introduce their own millennial-focused streaming service. This trend will go global as telecom giants like ProSieben, RTL, and Sky will also dip their toes into online video and make IPTV a global trend.3) We’ll see what SVOD works and what SVOD does not. Along with the IPTV experimentation, providers will experiment with AVOD and SVOD, leading to an industry wide education as to what consumers actually want and expect from their providers when it comes to on demand video. There will be some experimentation to see how this really works. And just because there’s the right content doesn’t necessarily mean that the audience will come. As with everything else, the audience will have to either be there already or be brought in the right way for the content before it can be served.4) The Internet’s knowledge will start to cross over to the traditional media world. Many MCNs operate like tech companies, with their ability to execute in a quick and tight fashion. Traditional entertainment does not work in this quick and nimble fashion. With all the acquisitions that traditional media companies have made over the past years, we’re going to start seeing traditional media companies morph. This morphing will affect not just their content, as things continue to blur with YouTube content getting longer and digital exclusives exit the realm of Late Night, it will effect how the companies actually do business. New roles will emerge that are a mix of quantitative and creative – IPTV programmers with creative vision and the experimental skills of a growth hacker.Bruce has a good idea as to where he feels the video space will be going for 2016 and beyond. Now it’s up to see what this year actually holds. Where Are We Now is an ongoing feature where the TVRev team interviews people who were there at the start of the space on their journey so far and where they see things moving in the next five years. If you’d like to participate, drop me a line at Alex@BRaVeVentures.com and we’ll set up some time to talk.
