SINGAPORE: In this session at BroadcastAsia 2013, Ericsson, sr. director, innovation and business development, content and enabler Jon M Sonsteby focused on how best to monetise from over the top services.

He began his session with a very sleekly executed pre-roll advertisement and at the end he exclaimed, “Pre-roll is great, but let’s think outside the pre-roll ad. How can we best monetise from the OTT platform?”

According to the Consumerlab Annual Research, which Sonsteby used during his presentation, Social TV is really exploding - as more than 60 per cent people use social forums while watching TV - these numbers reveal the results of 100,000 respondents, and reflects the views of nearly 1.1 billion consumers from more than 40 countries globally.

Referring to the Ericsson ConsumerLab TV Video Consumer trends 2012, Sonsteby stressed on the fact that consumers are not canceling their traditional TV subscriptions on a larger scale, though the traction for OTT is growing.

He further went on to explain the trend of scheduled broadcast TV falling from 92 per cent to 87 per cent between 2010 and 2012; the drastic fall in the trend of recorded broadcast TV from 61 per cent in 2010 to a mere 45 per cent in 2012. Whereas, DVD/Blue-ray witnessed a minor fall from 48 per cent to 45 per cent between 2010 and 2012 and PPV a rise by a per cent from 19 per cent to 20 per cent between 2010 and 2012.

In terms of on-demand habits, the consumer’s TV/video consumption on a weekly basis or more has witnessed a rise in short video clips e.g. YouTube from 58 to 62 per cent between 2010 and 2012; even streamed or downloaded movies or TV shows witnessed a rise from 54 per cent to 59 per cent from 2010 to 2012.

Sonsteby also mentioned how basic broadcast viewing has slowly migrated from internet based on-demand to multi-screen experience. He further dwelled into the change in social TV habits, where the maximum hike was witnessed during browsing the internet while watching television from 64 per cent in 2011 to 83 per cent in 2012 and the use of social media (Facebook, Twitter, blogs) rising from 44 per cent in 2011 to 62 per cent in 2012.

“The important features that consumers are on the lookout for include: excellent video quality, simple user interface, A la cart TV/video service, ad free telecasts, a diverse availability of content and theatrical releases that come on TV too,” Sonsteby explained.

 Finally, coming to monetising from OTT, he said, “There are two possibilities to monetise from OTT, one being use of portal ads that include banner, text or rich media and the second being non-portal ads, which include in-stream ads (pre-roll, mid-roll or post-roll) and out-stream ads also called overlay ads.”

Summing up his session, Sonsteby mentioned that consumers want content anytime, anywhere and access across any device or platform. He also mentioned that social media is the go to place in the future and broadcasters or content owners want to continue building brand loyalty and look at newer revenue streams to receive from consumers directly.