Brightcove Explores OTT Trends in Asia

The latest edition of Brightcove’s annual Asia OTT TV market study has found that more than 50 percent of respondents want to pay $4 or less per month for access to an online content service.

The 2019 Asia OTT Research Report, conducted with YouGov, polled 9,000 participants in Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. Of those polled, 30 percent said they wanted to pay less than $1 per month for an OTT service, and 24 percent said they would pay between $1 and $4. Only 20 percent said they would pay between $5 and $9 a month.

On SVOD versus AVOD, 30 percent will use an AVOD service without subscription fees, 21 percent elected to pay a lower fee with limited ads, and 14 percent would like to pay a higher fee to be free from ads.

The report also found that 54 percent of those who had let their OTT subscription lapse would sign up again in the future.

For those subscribing to multiple services, 43 percent said they do so because they want more content options, 39 percent to satisfy the content needs for an entire family, 35 percent for access to niche content and 36 percent because the content they want isn’t available on just one OTT service. Another key driver (42 percent) is the ability to sign up for a free trial or promotion.

The features most desired by Asian consumers are offline download (42 percent), access on mobile (38 percent) and using less mobile data when streaming (33 percent).

Greg Armshaw, head of sales for Asia at Brightcove, said, “The TV industry in Asia continues to be disrupted by a variety of OTT TV services and is shifting more to online video. It’s being defined by what the viewers want, how much they are willing to pay, and what kind of user experience viewers are demanding. There is a dearth of consumer research in this area and by uncovering country-specific consumer opinions and preferences about OTT services, we aim to provide insights and guidance to our customers. New and established media companies can benefit from this data and use it to shape their OTT strategies regardless of where they are in their journey.”