Tuesday, October 10, 2023

Replacing Lost Ad Revenue is the Key Video Streaming Business Model Issue

One might argue there is almost no problem the video streaming business model has that could not be fixed if advertising revenues are boosted or somehow replaced by other new sources. 


Most of the other revenue and cost elements for linear and streaming models are comparable. Streaming does impose new costs in the areas of on-demand support, but has the same marketing and technology costs as does linear delivery. 


And though original content production is generally deemed to be more important for streaming, and often means higher costs, overall content licensing content costs can be lower, in many cases.


Element

Video streaming (%)

Linear video (%)

Revenue



Subscription fees

50-60

10-20

Advertising

20-30

70-80

TVOD (episode sales)

5-10

0

PPV (live event sales)

0-5

0

Merchandising

0-5

0

Cost



Content licensing

30-40

40-50

Production

10-20

0-10

Marketing

10-20

10-20

Technology

10-20

10-20


Still, the big difference in the revenue part of the business model really is the shift from ad support to subscriptions. 


On the cost side of the model, the need for original programming to drive streaming service take rates and retention is the biggest difference. The acquisition of library content arguably is less an issue, compared to linear services. 


On the other hand, the immediate practical problems for streaming services seem always to revolve around subscription issues. On a day-to-day basis, customer acquisition, churn and market share account for as much as 80 percent of results, since subscriptions are the major revenue source. 


Issue

Percentage importance

Customer acquisition

30%

Churn

30%

Account scale

20%

General lack of advertising revenues

10%

Need to invest in original content

10%


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