Video Strengthens Strategy Amid OTT Business Growth Momentum

Platform over the top (OTT) is gaining the best growth momentum. Social restrictions due to the pandemic have encouraged people to look for alternative entertainment when they are at home. Video applications have become one of the most popular choices -- at least some surveys have proven that, including one that was recently conducted The Trade Desk and Kantar.

Obviously, industry players do not waste this opportunity, and local players are no exception. Vidio, an OTT platform under the auspices of Emtek, has become a hot topic in recent times. In addition to their impressive performance, by always ranking at the top of the rankings for apps in the entertainment/video category, they are also rumored to have planned some strategic actions.

It was rumored that the giant video on-demand Netflix is ​​interested in investing in Vidio. But when we confirmed, the company replied that so far the information is market speculation. Meanwhile, company executives, in several interviews with the media, said that at this time Vidio was indeed open to obtaining external funding [beyond the injection of the parent conglomerate group].

Business growth

Vice President of Marketing Vidio Rezki Yanuar said, growth in terms of revenue in Q1 2020 increased 3-4x compared to the previous year period. This is one of them driven by the number of users who are attracting a lot. The exponential traffic spike occurred around April 2020, when it was one of the Video's strategy One of the ways to make free shows for users is to facilitate changes in consumer behavior in the first PSBB phase.

Growth is also supported by the applied business model. There are two approaches, the first is free access to certain content [movies, series, streaming TV] with advertisements. Then the second is premium, for access to exclusive content such as football match shows. The first model is considered to be a good bridge to convert new audiences, especially from those who were previously unfamiliar with OTT services or [free] TV connoisseurs.

"OTT is like a service E-commerce before. At first, people were not familiar with the fact that shopping must be subject to postage, but now they are getting used to it. It's the same with OTT, when people have got value or benefits from the shows that are presented, they can understand when they have to pay to watch certain shows," said Rezki.

To date, Vidio already has more than 1,5 million paid subscribers. In addition to sports broadcasts, his party said that original content was the most popular. For this reason, this year they are quite aggressive in producing, so far there are about 7 series that are ready to be aired. The aggressiveness of local content is also seen as a way for Vidio to reach more filmmakers from Indonesia.

Indonesian OTT Market

It is undeniable that OTT industry also very competitive. The still green Indonesian market makes foreign players flock to enter. For local players like Vidio, unique selling point becomes a crucial thing to be formed in order to bring more value to its users.

Responding to market competition, the Vidio team is quite confident that with their knowledge of the local content industry they believe they can better understand the entertainment needs of the Indonesian people. Moreover, Vidio has the support of one of the oldest media companies in Indonesia.

"The most significant OTT competition is content. Marketing and good products are useless without content that can meet user needs. For that we have three pillars related to content, namely live streaming, sports, and original series/films," added Rezki.

Understanding of culture in Indonesia is also used as a strong capital for companies to compete. This includes the old habit of consuming pirated content. Vidio has an anticipatory step by having a special team that works with other digital platform providers such as Google or Facebook.

Cooperation with telco

Another strategy taken to expand the scope of content is to collaborate with other content producers. There are several cooperation agendas, but the Vidio team has not been able to reveal them to the public. Fox Sports is an example of a company that Vidio is partnering with to enter its content ecosystem. Sports shows such as F1 racing or MotoGP are considered to have a fairly good level of demand in Indonesia.

Cooperation is also carried out to launch a monetization strategy. Vidio collaborates with a number of telecommunications companies and broadband as a service distribution channel. Admittedly, the conversion of premium users from this partnership is quite large. The form, Video access is made add-on to telecommunications/data services that are peddled to customers. Also, the option of paying for a Vidio subscription with a credit cut mechanism. Regarding this payment, it was also conveyed that the portion was very large compared to others.

Business plan

Despite the rumors circulating about the fundraising plan, Vidio is indeed trying to become a stronger and independent business entity. He admitted that he had started aggressively escalating business since last year. OTT market is very sexy , the company group also provides support so that Vidio is more serious about working on its potential.

"Emtek as a group is well aware that even the future of the entertainment business is digitalization. This is a strong reason to push Vidio to go further," said Rezki.

In general, there are several aspects that will be boosted as a strategy to grow the business. The first is content expansion. Second, product innovation -- including supporting activities live streaming, interactive quizzes for complementary events, and other gamification features. And thirdly, Vidio seeks to increase marketing and distribution channels, not only to the platform smartphone but also start to Smart TV.