Challenges That Businesses Face While Launching an OTT Service

This is the era of live video streaming and the audiences have solely adopted the video-on-demand services. It has also been a sign for the businesses and content creators to launch their own Online video streaming platform in order to maximize the reach of their content. The scenario has transformed from utilizing OTT platform providers as just an option to having them as a mandatory advertising and broadcasting tool. This is the right time to leverage SaaS and move ahead with your own OTT video streaming platform. However, there are several challenges that businesses often tend to ignore at the initial phase, but regrets later. So, it becomes imperative to take a look at some of the most common challenges and their solutions that can be implemented before initiating your own video platform. 

Need of a Safe & Secure User Management 

The safety and security of your user is of paramount importance when it comes to sharing information digitally. Secure user management is absolutely critical to make sure that you offer a reliable broadcast service with zero vulnerabilities. No matter which platform you choose, it should give you complete control over user accessibility, user management, password management, subscription management and regular updates at all stages without failure. Your audience must be able to create a multi profile persona to share and control the content consumption access with their friends, family and relatives. 

Absence of a Durable Content Management System 

CMS is an integral part of your video platform building plan. A content management system handles content management, curation and import/export. The CMS that you get with the OTT services provider must be able to upload videos in all popular file formats and process them in a hassle-free way. It should also provide you with the capability to add, edit, modify or delete the meta tags from your video content from a simple single dashboard. 

Your CMS must also offer adaptive streaming and cater to the varying requirements of your audience. If you are planning to broadcast your video stream across the globe you must already be knowing that different ISPs offer different bandwidths to their user base. Hence, it’s obvious that one bitrate size won’t satisfy all user requirements. If your CMS can offer adaptive streaming and broadcast videos at 240p, 360p, 720p, 1080p or even 4K as per the choice of the user, then you have chosen the correct one. It is important to note that opting for higher bitrate broadcast does not necessarily mean that you’ll get a shaper reception, instead, it all depends upon the internet bandwidth you are subscribed to. 

You Need Custom Monetization Options 

This is one of the basic requirements or challenges that every business initiative faces during its initial launch period – to generate revenue. It is recommended that you choose that particular OTT platform provider who offers customized video monetization options to maximize revenues from your content. This is necessary because just in case you plan to execute an ad-based video on demand service then your platform should be able to utilize the in-built monetization system to run your campaigns. The next thing that is important, is the capability of your OTT service provider to support all desirable ad formats i.e flash video, banners, native videos and more. Furthermore, your platform must include subscription plans for corporate, individuals, bulk, trials, exclusive promotions and more. 

Detailed Analytics & Reporting 

Precise analytics and revenue reports are important to understand the performance of your live streaming and video-on-demand services and without them you can simply forget about keeping a track about your ROI. Opt for a platform that offers concise reporting for device information, subscriber count, total playback time, average playback time, audience demographics, user engagement and a detailed transaction report. A detailed report is very useful in making informed business decisions and get more specific with your content strategy and future marketing decisions. 

Absence of a Cutting Edge Transcoder 

Don’t expect quality encoding and decoding without an efficient transcoder. It’s important to understand that every device and user has a unique set of requirements and catering to all those is equally important. The requirements may differ in cases of video streaming capability, playback format, size and quality of video & audio. A transcoder simply helps in converting the video content into various formats and quality to make sure that it is consumed by every user across their devices. It maximizes the reach of your content and gets it consumed by a wider user base because streaming in just a single format would surely make you lose your users. 

After Sales Support 

This is one of the most important challenges that users or businesses often tend to overlook or miss as soon as they get their product online. This is technology and mitigation of vulnerabilities at every step is important and is a continuous process. The same applies to your OTT services provider also. You would never even think of losing your audiences due to a bug in the payment gateway, or due to any other technical snag. Moreover, OTT platform providers are liable to offer 24/7 support as the mode of communication is digital. Go for a video streaming provider who can offer round the clock troubleshooting, maintenance and upgrading. Make sure before choosing your service provider you check for real-time support for live streaming to avoid rush at the last minute.