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Optimizing OTT QoE in the Era of Personalization

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Read the complete transcript of this clip:

Marc Maycas: I would say that we're living the era of personalization. And we see this many times when we see articles about Netflix saying that they are changing the thumbnails for the end users in order to be able to help them look for their content better and so on. So the problem that brought us here is, nowadays we have a lot of services and subscription models in order to replace all the customers and we have all those services living together. We have subscription-based services that now are going to NPAW ads.

So another technical problem that we are facing as well nowadays is we have those AVOD freemium services living together and also we still have some pay-per-view services where you rent a movie for a weekend and you watch it. I don't know if that's very popular here in the States, but when I come from, Barcelona, services are doing this nowadays. Users are more demanding on watching content on-the-go as well. So Wi-Fi, the data consumption, the tech challenges--users are not at home anymore.

This has an impact on the devices. So you need to know which devices you want to tailor that specific experience to the users. So you need to know what they're using more, how they're using it, and help them find the content that they want. Because if you do not engage them then you'll lose them.

Also, we have to take into account that QoE is taken for granted. I still remember when I started 10 years ago that the quality of experience was, "Oh please, I don't want to have another buffer in the next two minutes." And now it's, "I want a TV-like experience. I want something that goes flawlessly with digital television broadcasting quality." And even better, even with 4K and everything that we are seeing nowadays in the encoding space as well. So, QoE is taken for granted, even if I'm watching everything in my phone, and that's actually something that we need to tackle.

There is also competition. So the market is rapidly changing. Some markets are concentrating ... I mean, for example, we are seeing that in France or in Spain, there are broadcasters that actually, in order to fight against Netflix, they have all grouped together in hybrid HDTV applications that they just share all their content for their end users so they don't lose that engagement. We even have some IPTV resellers or some some telcos in this case that inside their separate boxes, they put Netflix and HBO and their competition inside of it. And why are you doing this? If that's actually vaporizing your content, that sounds weird.

Talking to these people, they told me, "I prefer people using my box and being able to stay engaged there so I don't lose them forever. And maybe they like Netflix. So they log in and they just go to Netflix, some application that I don't have any kind of control. But then when I come back I just watch that series that cost me like 10 million to produce or that comedy show that is so popular that I made along with other producers in the space."

For example, in Spain, we have LOVEStv--it's kind of a a naming joke. Like it's LOVEStv because we love TV, but in Spanish "lo ves" means "you see"--so that kind of thing.

And also content is very important in the industry. Actually it's the main driver of what brings us to there. It's true that as I'm saying-- and I know that I'm not focusing too much on QoE right now-- but the idea is I'm going to find the content that I want, but if the content doesn't work, then I don't care. I won't go to other places. I want to download the content without anyone noticing it. And that's actually money that I'm losing. And that they're making me lose money against other users that are watching this content without having the permission to watch it.

So here we have a saying-- they say, "content is king." A few years ago I updated it or I liked to update it to say that "content is king but quality is queen." And now I would say that what I love to say-- and I like to push this and maybe you can help me out when you go out there and you just talk about that--I would say that "data is king," because with data you know what content you want. You don't know what quality you have without data. So you need these data and well-formatted data and meaningful data so you can succeed.

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