The NSC company, Channel One and the SPB TV company (the technology developer) announce the commercial launch of a universal technology solution.
The NSC company, Channel One and the SPB TV company (the technology developer) announce the commercial launch of a universal technology solution that will allow the market players to legally broadcast TV channels live on their platforms in the Internet, with due consideration of the channels' legal and commercial interests.
According to the assessment of the NSC analytical center, only the exclusive (not overlapping with TV) Internet audience, interested in television viewing, is currently 7.4 million people. At the same time, there is an increase in the number of viewers who prefer watching TV via OTT resources (without abandoning the traditional viewing of on-air programs). According to the data obtained in 2016, 37% of the total TV signal reception accounted for OTT TV, "digital cable" and satellite TV. The NSC analytical center forecasts an up to 50 % increase in this share by the year of 2020.
However, the contradictions between TV channels-broadcasters and independent OTT services (online cinemas) still remain one of the obstacles to the development of legitimate on-line video market in Russia.
In an effort to increase their audience, OTT services used to purchase licenses issued by cable operators and carry out the broadcasting of terrestrial versions of the 1st and 2nd multiplex channels on their Internet platforms: on websites, mobile devices, Smart TV apps and via set-top-box.
TV channels have repeatedly pointed out that the existing legislation, in their opinion, does not give online cinemas any right to broadcast the terrestrial versions on the Internet. The fact that independent operators broadcast terrestrial versions in the OTT environment gave them a competitive advantage compared to TV channels that (in accordance with the restrictions imposed on them by copyright holders) do not always have the possibility to broadcast terrestrial content on their own Internet resources. Besides, the broadcasters were granted no access to data about the TV viewing on third-party OTT platforms, and thus were deprived of the opportunity to monetize their growing online audience there.
The representatives of several major OTT services agreed with the broadcasters' arguments and expressed willingness to switch to broadcasting the legal online versions provided by the TV channels (and some of them have already done it). Moreover, they indicated that the prompt and efficient implementation of all requirements put forward by broadcasters (including the requirement to integrate advertising possibilities) can be feasible only in case there is a unified technology solution available to all of them.
Following the recommendation of the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media, the NSC company, Channel One and the SPB TV company jointly developed (and launched into commercial operation) a technology system solution that makes it possible to:
- Supply OTT operators with free versions of the signals provided by TV channels (including the Full HD format) for further broadcasting on the Internet by the "one-stop-shop" principle.
- Provide TV channels with the access to data on their audiences (on OTT platforms).
- Allow TV channels to control the distribution of content, and to reduce its illegal distribution;
- Ensure TV channels make use of their advertising opportunities (monetization) when broadcasting on the Internet without any technical delays or extra traffic.
Currently, our platform includes Channel One, MUZTV, Russia 1, Russia 24, and Channel Five. The integration of Mir TV channels package is currently under completion. The solution was also implemented on the MTS TV platform (owned by the Russian mobile operator MTS). OTT platforms are in the process of joining the project. In particular, SPB TV, Persik.by, ProximaTV, MTS TV, BonusTV (Synterra), Rostelecom, NTV + (multi-screen) are broadcasting the Channel One content via the NSC platform.
NSC comments:
“The obvious changes in the environment of professional content distribution could not remain unnoticed by TV channels, and their willingness to register - and monetize - the TV content consumption across all media is by all means justified.
Over the past year, we managed to create a technology platform that encompasses all necessary features existing in the online environment:
- Getting any kind of TV channel content aggregated in a single point;
- Getting TV channel audience aggregated online;
- Working with any incoming data streams;
- Developing ad products based on online tools, data and content;
In our work, we managed to consider not only the interests of TV channels, but also the needs and capabilities of the operators that deliver content to subscribers. We can say that the proposed solution is becoming a digital industry standard,” says Anton V. Petukhov, Technologies Director at NSC.
SPB TV comments:
"The SPB TV company has been working on a solution to replace video ads since 2011. We used all our best practices for this project and, as a result, were able to "seamlessly" replace the already existing (within a video stream) TV ads with the individual ads that are target-oriented (according to a number of parameters) and supplied by individual advertisers. The solution allows to avoid the losses of ad traffic that currently occur at the ad-blocker level, making it possible to watch TV over the Internet without any buffering or restarting a stream. This technology has an international patent," says Kirill Philippov, CEO of SPB TV.
Channel One comments:
Previously, Channel One did not block the pirated distribution of its air signal in OTT-environments in the interests of its viewers, as the technology for replacing the pirated signal into a legal one and the integration procedures were not debugged.