6 Tips for How to Optimize your OTT Platform Strategy (2023)

Building an OTT platform is not sufficient. It is critical to keep upgrading it in order to match market demands and stand out from the competitors. In this post, we will discuss a few ideas (and trends) to keep in mind when optimising and updating your platform’s OTT content strategy in 2023.

Tip #1: Consider the User Experience

Certainly, content is an essential component of your OTT strategy, but if no one can find it, it’s meaningless, and you’ll experience churn. A great UI/UX assists clients in finding exactly what they are looking for – a highly engaging OTT experience.

OTT service providers face fierce competition in global marketplaces. They are all aiming for greater’stickiness,’ or potential user involvement. Even Netflix is not immune to subpar service at times.

OTT streaming user experience is influenced by a variety of things. The term “OTT optimization” relates to:

Speed of ‘Launching’ the OTT service
Locating content quickly through browsing
Great search function
Browsing content easily
The smooth running of playing content
Low-quality OTT streaming
High-demand of users

To absorb a large user demand, elasticity, high availability, and flexibility are required. Your OTT streaming platform should be able to give the same response speed and quality to the first thousand users as well as the hundreds of thousands that a specific content or situation may create during peak hours.

Tip #2: Determine How You Will Scale

You intend to succeed, correct? Then again, who doesn’t? Including this suggestion in your OTT business plan.

IPTV and VOD streaming services have grown in popularity in recent years, particularly in recent months. This has been a challenge for many MSO/ISP service providers and telecom operators, who must maintain the same level of quality and reliance on the service regardless of the number of customers connected at the same time.

This has taxed the capacity of existing OTT streaming platforms and brought to light new problems in terms of the elasticity of OTT system architectures to accommodate new users while maintaining the same levels of quality and availability.

Tip #3: Get Rid of the Legacy System

Several ‘top-tier’ OTT streaming providers rely on obsolete legacy systems that date back 10-15 years or more. These historical systems, although frequently reliable, are hard to maintain and adapt to the new cloud-oriented technologies and architectures, such as microservices and Kubernetes.

Legacy systems, while appealing at first because they appear to do so much, can be quite expensive in the long run. Furthermore, many legacy systems are made up of several parts of software that are glued together, making it difficult to adapt and alter to the needs of their consumers. Perhaps this is what prevents you from becoming the finest OTT solution.

OTTFast, by the way, has always been adding new features and capabilities, and our software may be tailored to your specific requirements.

Tip #4: Follow these OTT Trends

There are six significant OTT trends to consider in 2023 to improve your OTT strategy. Let’s get started:

Internet: 5G Internet technology is becoming more mainstream, and as expected, it will forever disrupt the OTT environment and the way people consume video. Due to its dependability and speed, which can be blindingly fast, it is quickly becoming a new norm. Live streaming is made possible via 5G. The technology not only reduces latencies but also provides the high-quality subs that customers demand. AR and VR have a significant impact.

User participation: Immersive experiences are another advantage of 5G. 5G technology allows for true Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. Also, some OTT platform owners are already integrating video games with streaming services. Finding what you want to watch can also be considered user involvement.

User Interface: As previously noted, UI is the experience that subscribers enjoy when visiting your service’s interface. Subs can locate your OTT content if your UI is simple to use, which means you have a better UX. People choose services with easy-to-use and extremely intuitive interfaces, therefore UI is equally vital for OTT marketing strategy. In this case, “appearance” is important.

Niche Content: Content that is specialised, Shudder and Crunchyroll are examples of OTT niche providers. Niche content, by definition, targets a smaller target audience, but that audience is extremely loyal, which lowers churn. Defining target groups explicitly increases the likelihood of reaching people who are interested in a certain piece of information. Potentially, it increases revenue.

Localized Content: Not as big of an issue in nations like the United States, but in countries like India, there are different languages and subcultures, so generating “stuff for everyone” does not necessarily work. Localization, by definition, enhances engagement among target audiences, which minimises attrition.

Microservices: One of the OTT trends is the migration from on-premise hardware to a more sophisticated native cloud architecture. Microservice design is intended to solve the challenges, failures, and breakdowns of larger applications, increasing the modularity and elasticity of your solution. New features can be implemented considerably more easily. The added ‘container’ concept of Kubernetes offers third-party access to the infrastructure in a way that better shares the resource across many use cases. Microservices delivered with Kubernetes containers allow multi-tenant isolation and container resource quotas, which are critical for businesses who want to provide the service to numerous different ISPs from a single source of content.

What does all that jargon mean? Stability.

Do you want a hint on how to track OTT trends? Google Alerts can be quite beneficial! Simply enter a phrase to receive daily or weekly alerts.

Tip #5: Target All of the Appropriate OTT Devices, Including Smartphones, Tablets, and SmartTV's

Which devices are people using to see your video content?

Are you aiming for the proper devices?
Is the content they’re watching long or short?
Is the content geared towards younger viewers (mobile or web) or older audiences (SmartTV)?
How can you stay up with platform fragmentation, the introduction of new VOD streaming platforms, and updates in Android, iOS, Samsung, and LG?
How do you intend to monetize based on new OTT business model objectives such as AVOD or/and SVOD?

Your chosen OTT platform should be adaptable enough to meet all of these requirements.

Tip #6: In-Cloud or On-Premise?

In-Cloud is often the market trend. Yet, OTT streaming service providers still face a conundrum with this option:

Choose for a more controlled on-premise environment, or
Utilize the very scalable in-cloud deployment.

As previously noted, scaling is a major challenge. Yet, for the most part, why invest in an on-premises solution where you have to acquire more and more expensive equipment and services as you scale? Because in-cloud installations do not require any equipment, they are less expensive (both upfront and over time) as you scale.

Governments may have limits on how you set up your in-cloud infrastructure or may not allow in-cloud at all.

So, how do you decide? Unless you are constrained, in-cloud over-the-top solutions are the way to go. They can be scaled on demand, set up in a day, and are just as secure as on-premise solutions.

Operators who implement IPTV and OTT concurrently (a hybrid model) typically profit the most from in-cloud.

Of course, migration is a possibility. The OTT streaming service can begin with a small number of customers on a more restricted on-premise platform before transitioning to a more powerful in-cloud system. However, the OTT service provider may be inclined to begin with an in-cloud platform for a small number of customers inside an OPEX model, ultimately evolving into a less OPEX demanding on-premise platform. OTTFast, by the way, can assist you with your migration – we’ll take care of the headaches.

Conclusion

Because of the epidemic, the rapid acceptance of OTT video services has given new relevance to all issues involved in maximising your OTT content strategy. The platform’s high availability has become a requirement, as has ensuring that the service is constantly up and running at peak capacity.

It has also become critical for OTT streaming service providers to achieve the flexibility and elasticity that such services necessitate by implementing new platforms based on microservices and container architectures with powerful and intuitive middleware to support constantly changing business environments.