By Christian Knaebel; If by any chance one would select the buzz word of the global TV industry in the 2022, it would certainly be FAST TV. The concept of Free Ad-supported Streaming TV (FASTTV) has taken the US market by storm over the past couple of years and is now starting to show some traction internationally. Everyone seems to be looking at it and trying to understand how it can be applied to her business or his region. There is still a bit of mystery around how to best launch a FAST TV service in local markets; and more though, why it should be relevant and a strategy to follow.
Hence, I want to give you a list of reasons, why you should consider launching a FAST TV service. You will quickly learn, that it is more than just tapping into a potential revenue stream. Launching a FAST TV can provide significant strategic value to your business – if you do it right.
I am sure you will discover in this list a few aspects of FAST TV, that you have not thought about previously.
Be warned though: the following list might make you so excited about FAST TV, that you want to jump right into it. Yet, while launching a FAST TV service is rather simple and affordable from an infrastructure and resources perspective, you still require some careful consideration and planning beforehand – and this is where my team of experts and I can help (that was the brief sales pitch, that I had to sneak in).
My list starts with focus on the customer and ends with the customer at centre of the considerations. Because it is for them, that FAST provides the most value and why it is so important to take a closer look at it.
- Customer Retention: Customers are concerned about their personal budget and will need you to offer more value for the money to keep them. FAST TV Channels can be that extra benefit to avoid churn.
- Replacing Pay TV: in same context subscribers will cancel pay TV services to save on cost. You can continue to make your subs happy by replacing low performing PayTV channels with their FAST TV counterparts. You will be surprised how many of them already exist.
- New Content Offers: add thematic, niche or local content to your offer to subscribers. Now you can have more diverse, unique content and ideally it monetises itself. You please your audiences by bringing them content, that they do not find anywhere else.
- Provide a Lean Back Experience: people around the world enjoy good content; and more: they enjoy being programmed to – because people are lazy. They do not want to search for content forever, they do not like to scroll through endless catalogues. They want to sit back and relax – and are very pleased, when you provide them well-curated, well-programmed TV channels. (This relates closely to No.13 below: ”Lean Back Curation/ Discovery” makes you the best friend of your audience).
- It’s about the data: FASTTV offers you a unique opportunity to learn more about your customers and service them even better: because of the data that you can collect via their viewing behaviour and advertising consumption.
- New Revenue Stream: this is the obvious one. You can access new revenue via ad sales, rev share agreements and carriage fees.
- Create Your Ad Sales Business: Go a step further and create your own ad sales arm. You cannot sell FASTTV only but other adverting opportunities. Because why? You have a lot of other touch points and advertising opportunities around your customers like no-one else does. And you know your customers well for very targeted advertising – remember it is about the data.
- Tap into new Ad Markets: the FAST TV model with its targeted ads allows for more niche, local or demographically fine-tuned advertising. This will enable now smaller or local businesses to run a TV advertising campaign with small budgets and focused on their specific target market. You can access a completely new market segment.
- Extra Ad Inventory: there are those lucky ones out there, who are able to sell most of their ad inventory on their traditional offers (usually linear TV channels) and would like to have more inventory to satisfy demand from advertisers. Adding a few FAST TV channels is likely doing the trick and provides your a valuable extension of your inventory.
- A Learned Ad Model: FASTTV is build on two advertising models that are now fairly common practice for advertisers: TV advertising and programmatic advertising. You do not need to educate your ad clients on the model itself; only on the place it is being used.
- Own the Community: With thematic or local targeted FAST TV channels you can service very specific communities that might not have a TV offer as their linchpin element. You can create that, build a sustainable advertising around it.
- Hard to Reach Audiences: FAST TV is typically used by audiences that are not the traditional user of Linear TV services; they come from streaming and places like YouTube. They now discover FASTTV and you can target them like you would have not been able otherwise.
- Content Curation & Discovery: because you know your customers and viewing behaviour, you can be THE central hub for all their content needs. Your FASTTV offer is the main referral point for them to discover new content and is easily accessible. It acts what used to be barker channels (and even monetise itself).
- Build a Super Funnel: some experience with FASTTV shows that it can act as a brilliant funnel for your business to bring audiences into other services; via FASTTV you can promote your brands, you can allure people into your premium, pay tv / subscription offers and you can channel them into your walled-garden service.
- Occupy Shelf Space: The FAST TV market globally is now on the verge of tremendeous growth. As so often, in new developing market segment, the first-mover advantage is on your side (see Pluto TV). If you want to play a major role – specifically in your local region – in this segment, you have to go in there now to occupy top shelf space for your brand, content and service.
- Stronger Customer Relationship: It’s all about fostering and deepening the customer relationship. Something you deeply care about in your business, don’t you. FASTTV is more than just another TV product; it can become the central element in a successful product strategy around your TV offer.
What a comprehensive and convincing list, isn’t it?
So, you still have questions how this fits into your business or how you can launch a FAST TV service: Contact us now. We can go through each of the items and see how it relates to your business and market. And we can guide you to launch the service in a very short period of time.
FOLLOW Christian on Linkedin, if you want to have more frequent insights and musings on the developments, trends, disruption and transformation of the global TV, Broadcast and Media Industry.
Photo by Braden Collum on Unsplash
