5Qs: Tubi Content Chief Talks the Year of AVOD

摘要

Research firm Ampere Analysis kicked off 2020 by declaring it the year of AVOD, even as major players introducecompelling SVOD products. In recent weeks, Comcast has snatched up AVOD Xumo, and Fox Corp has reportedlykicked the tires on Tubi. In a recent interview with CFX, Tubi chief content officer Adam Lewinson didn’t get specificabout acquisitions, but offered up some insight on all this AVOD buzz. An edited excerpt follows. Do you stand withthose that believe 2020 is the year of AVOD? I certainly wish I had a crystal ball on the year of AVOD. If you look backat the previous decade, at the 2010s, that’s where really basic cable was dominant until the disruption of SVOD and theconversation has been primarily about SVOD… what we’re really seeing now is just a shift back to historically how TVconsumption has been monetized, which has been predominantly free with ads and a smaller subset of pay. In manyrespects, the SVOD model is just the evolution of pay from linear into digital and in many ways AVOD is just a naturalevolution from basic cable with the caveat that this is a generational shift based on viewership. At Tubi, we have oneof the youngest median ages in streaming and certainly young when compared to any basic cable network, whichjust tells you a lot about the basic trends of where viewership is heading. Are people out looking for free services toround out their streaming portfolio? There are several factors, one is subscription fatigue. Viewers are hopping aroundbetween SVOD services based on what original services they need to watch, and churn between SVOD services isyet another factor. AVOD is just a very different business that in many ways is very compatible to SVOD. The way welook at it is viewers are going to SVOD to look at what we refer to as the 1% of content. After that, viewership reallysplinters into interests. With us, our differentiation is our massive library of well over 20K titles with our content personalizationengine. We’re going to get you to what you really want to watch. Is Latin America a major area of opportunityfor streamers? With Mexico in particular, you have a very young population, very tech-savvy and very mobile-forward.There’s a lot of mobile consumption, more so than OTT living room consumption that we see here in the US and nota lot of options for free streaming. We know that viewers around the globe are motivated by being cost conscious, sothe AVOD model is really compelling. There’s a tremendous amount of white space in Mexico, and viewers there areinterested in Netflix, of course, but since they’re cost conscious, they’re really motivated by the free price point. What are your goals for expanding distribution in 2020? We have really terrific relationships in the territories where we’re livewith our device partners. Specific to the US, we certainly have some deals that have yet to be announced. The realkey there is we’re following the audience. In the previous 12 months, we’d been very focused on the traditional MVPDs,the set-top boxes. With Comcast and Cox as our early movers for us with MVPDs, it has really been a very natural fitbecause younger viewers who still have cable are migrating away and moving into the app-based experience. That hasbeen a very positive shift in both of our businesses in terms of consumption. AVOD services are being bought left andright—will Tubi be next? It is a very exciting time in our industry and there’s been a lot of consolidation and movement. Ican speak for myself, but really all of Tubi… we just get up every day to make the best service that we can and we seewhere that leads us. We’re very pleased to be building really what is the only independent AVOD service at this point.That independence has given us tremendous flexibility to work with everybody without any corporate restrictions.