We are pleased to announce our panel on “Platform Wars - The De-aggregation and Re-aggregation of content” on Friday 13th September at 16:00 on the IABM stage in the Future Zone (near Hall 8)We will be hearing from -

•    Colin Dixon, nScreenMedia

•    Brian Paxton, Kingsmead Security

•    Colin Phillips, BT TV

•    Chris Ambrozic, TiVo

•    Moderated by Justin Lebbon.


We will hear from the experts on Friday, but in the meantime, here are my thoughts on the subject.


In the beginning it was simple. A “TV Channel” was a certain chunk of radio spectrum and terrestrial technology only allowed a handful of “Channels” in each territory. Aggregation was done by the channel schedulers. The idea of TV Channels survived through cable, satellite and digital switch-over. It took a turn for a worse with the arrival of PVRs and with OTT it’s looking quite ill.


We are now in a world where there are multiple intermediaries in the content chain. For arguments sake, let’s call them –

•    Content Producer (or studio). An organisation who made the show.

•    Aggregator. An organisation who plays or advertises the content.

•    Content Provider. An organisation who has the rights to play the content in a territory. A content provider might also be a aggregator of their own and other content. They may also be the content producer.

•    Delivery Platform such as a smart TV, STB or HDMI dongle. For my purposes, this is the default UI for any given household. Smart speakers are intruding in this space.


Who can be an aggregator? In the past, aggregators had to own the physical means of delivery to the consumer and until the end of the last decade this meant that only “traditional” TV operators such as Liberty, Comcast, Sky, etc could be aggregators. Now that OTT is a mature technology, this limitation is removed. In principle, anyone can be an aggregator. Amazon Channels is an interesting case. They are an aggregator of aggregators, but may themselves be aggregated on a user device. The world wide web threw up content aggregators such as Yahoo, Google and Facebook. In the case of the WWW, the aggregation initially occurred for ease of navigation. (Metadata in TV speak!)


However, there are other factors at play when streaming video and TV. Firstly, the user experience is different and expected to be different. “Lean back vs. lean forward.” Users expect a user interface, running on their TV or large screen, that “just works”.  Who controls this interface has a good chance of being the default aggregator. (“the channel one” or “HDMI 1” effect.) To consolidate this position, the UI provider needs to have good metadata, a good search and recommendation system, a compelling UX and good content (or links to good content.)


If this was the only consideration, the Smart TV vendors should clean up as they now own the default interface. However, it seems that the culture and incentivisation of these organisations is about building hardware and so they have ceded this real estate to others, who perhaps understand the “soft” side of the TV consumer business better. Of course, devices such as STBs and HDMI dongles can take over the UI to make a new default, although we are told every year that the STB is dying!


Other factors at play is content  rights and content security. The presenting player needs the rights to sell the content in the relevant territory. The consumer device that is used to physically play the content must be secure, especially for premium content such as live sport and new movies. This is when “aggregator of aggregator” becomes significant. If, for example, Netflix or Disney, have the rights they can still play the content on a smart TV or third-party STB or stick. Almost all TV platforms (Sky, Xfinity, Amazon) have or are planning to have the major content brands represented on their platforms.


On the aggregator of aggregator platform, good metadata integration will be important to give the user an easy journey to the content they want. This is sounds reasonably straight forward if the user just searches for an exact title. Even in this simple case, it’s often possible that more than one aggregator or content provider has the title. Which to show? The cheapest one? The one who gives the platform owner the best cut? Taking this to the next level and thinking about how to rank and structure recommendations is quite a challenge. Providing meaningful recommendations requires the capture and analysis of user data. This means that aggregators need access to these data, either capturing them directly or negotiating access with downstream aggregators and platforms. In our John Logie Baird Lecture earlier this year, we heard about how TV platforms and aggregator use user data and it’s clear that this is a very significant part of the new TV eco-system.


Branding is now one of the key drivers. If a content owner has enough brand visibility, they can use it to become an aggregator or demand their own space within aggregators and delivery platform UIs.


Last, but not least, an aggregator will often be the organisation owning the billing relationship to the customer. Setting this up and maintaining it in secure, low friction way is an important hygiene factor needed to attract and keep customers.


For more discussion on this subject, come and listen to our panel on Friday!

Image courtesy of Matthew Paul Argall