Interactive TV Monetisation: The Big Picture

With traditional pay TV growth leveling off and consumers becoming less willing than previously to spend additional subscription revenue year-on-year for their existing service offerings, pay TV operators are seeking new ways of making money, primarily from digital activities. However, many offerings launched in recent years that fall under the broad category of ‘interactive services’ have been provided for free and there is a large question mark over whether digital can ever compensate for the slow attrition of traditional service revenues or even provide a meaningful path to growth.

How to make money from interactive services – and which services have the potential to deliver a decent return on investment – are key questions facing service providers as they seek to cater to their subscribers’ demands for more flexible ways of consuming video. With the traditional mainstay of pay TV operators – the linear channel – facing a number of longer-term challenges, it is crucial to make the right choices now.

DTVE recently surveyed over 100 interactive video industry players from 42 countries, of whom 7.7% identified themselves as cable operators, 11.5% as triple or quad-play operators, 6.7% as IPTV service providers, 2.9% as DTH operators, 17.3% as OTT service providers, 2.9% as pay TV channel operators and 14.4% as free-to-air broadcasters.

The resulting report, produced by Digital TV Europe in conjunction with Zenterio, is now available to download, free of charge.