NATPE 2021: IS AVOD THE FUTURE OF STREAMING?

As part of NATPE Virtual Miami’s “The BIG Opening: Big Deals and Big Dealmakers” session, Danny Fisher, CEO of FilmRise, and Adam Lewinson, Chief Content Officer of Tubi, talked about the AVOD business model, agreeing that it is the future of the streaming industry.

“The ad-supported universe is a democratic ecosystem, in which the user decides what is shown. Netflix, HBO Max or Disney+ decide what are they going to show, but we show what the users want to see. And a lot of the content we have is not on those SVOD platforms,”  Fisher commented.

Then, he emphasized in the importance of using data to get to know the audience. “We discovered that there is so much content that people want to see but it is outside of the radar of the industry,”  the CEO of FilmRise indicated.

“We share a driven by data approach of this business,”  Lewinson said. “There are major issues with streaming, and one of them is content discovery. Viewership is fractionalized, everyone is in different screens. You need data to understand the audience, so they ultimately receive the content that they want. There is ton of competition, but there is also ton of content to cover the demand,”  he said.

In that sense, Fisher believes there are many audiences around and there is enough content for everybody. “All the different platforms are not competition, but a win-win for audiences. The SVOD space provides choice for the user, as they can see what they want, when they want,”  he noted.

Regarding the future, they both agreed that eventually all players will go to an ad-supported model. “Ultimately, the business model is going to propel them to AVOD. Subscription fatigue is a thing. If you are paying too much for SVOD models, you may decide to cut a few, and there is when AVOD comes into play, because it offers good content in exchange for free. In many ways, AVOD is absorbing the space of basic cable in the entertainment side,”  Lewinson observed.

“You cannot underestimate the economic side. You may like Netflix, Amazon, HBO Max and Disney+, but many people in the United States cannot afford to have so many SVOD services. In the AVOD side, you can watch great content for free and rotate between the platforms. That is why I believe AVOD is the future,”  Fisher concluded.