How To Manage A VOD Archive To Keep Viewers Watching - NMA Jan 10
by Alex Street, NMA - Jan 28th, 2010
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4OD’s latest TV ad depicts VOD as a being like a retail experience. It reminded me of some research that tested consumer decision making in a supermarket. Shoppers offered a large selection of jams were less likely to buy than those presented with a smaller number. This is often referred to as the ‘tyranny of choice’ and it got me thinking about the size of VOD archives and whether scheduling of these libraries would improve the user experience.
In order to address this question I tracked channels in Virgin’s archive, which is branded ‘TV Choice’ on demand, over the course of a year. It became apparent that there are a number of different approaches to archive size and scheduling. Some channels simply dumped content in there and left it unchanged for long periods, while others appeared to have developed churning strategies. It’s worth noting at this point that while catch up typically means last 7 days, this simple timeframe doesn’t exist for the archive. This presents us with a number of challenges when it comes to determining how to build a VOD archive. So what does archive scheduling look like; is there an optimum size for a channels archive offering and how often should this offering be refreshed?
First of all I looked at how many hours each channel made available in Virgin’s TV Choice on demand and then compared how this changed each quarter. Year on year, with the exception of ITV Net Player, which launched part way through 2009, the two biggest increases in supply from December 2008 to December 2009 were HBO and Warner TV. HBO increased the number of hours it supplied by 64, or 176% (table 1). Warner TV climbed 74 hours, or 71% over this period. IInterestingly, neither of these channels have a linear counterpart in the
Secondly I looked at the biggest declines in supply over the same period. Year-on-year, the BBC had declined by 170 hours while 4OD had declined 140 hours (graph 1). On the surface it may appear as if the BBC and 4OD are pursuing similar archive strategies, however the reverse is true. Between June and December 2008 the BBC left its archive offering virtually unchanged (graph 2). By contrast, graph 2 reveals how 4OD has been one of the most active and innovative in this space. 4OD opted to reduce the number of hours it made available and instead increase the rate of churn. For example, in March of 2009, Virgin customers could find an unwieldy 380 hours of 4OD content in Virgin’s TV Choice. By the summer this had halved to 190 hours. The intention, it seemed, was to start scheduling VOD to keep content fresh rather than it being static and going stale. Interestingly, this followed the example of HBO and Warner who have been churning virtually their entire VOD archive each quarter (graph 2). HBO and Warner are certainly the most active in the archive space and their approach is an increasingly popular one. When you drill down to the episodic level of churn it’s evident that HBO and Warner are using the trend of box-set viewing as a way to inform their approach to scheduling. One of the factors determining the approach to scheduling is obviously then determined by the kind of content you have and the viewing behaviour associated with it.
So what conclusions can we draw? Well, there are a number of external factors affecting the scheduling approach channels take that aren’t evident in the baseline numbers. What the figures do tell us however is that a number of channels have begun churning content regularly to keep it fresh rather than leaving it static. The alternative approach where everything is available all of the time anticipates ‘long tail’ type viewing behaviour. However, as our jam example illustrates, too much choice can actually reduce the likelihood of the consumer making a selection. Archive scheduling and effective editorialising of the VOD space then is fundamental to negating this tyranny of choice, and 4OD’s ad which depicts the ‘retailing of on demand content’, is a great way to conceptualise this challenge.
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