Prior to Parks Associates’ 1st-annual Future of Video: OTT, Pay TV, and Digital Media conference, Tom Munro, CEO, Verimatrix shared insights with the analyst team to discuss the future of the video industry.

Tom participated on the Innovations and Gaps in Video Technologies panel on Wednesday, December 12, at 11:15 AM. The following panelists joined him on this session:

Matthew Collado, Co-Founder / Chief Content Officer, Littlstar/Ara
Dan Hurwitz, Chief Revenue Officer, Penthera

What is the greatest challenge facing the video industry over the next three years?
Content owners will launch more direct-to-consumers services, which will continue to put strain on traditional pay-TV providers’ margins. The internet – as a disintermediation engine – is making the direct-to-consumer model a viable option for entertainment brands to own the relationship with the consumer. And this is powerful. Just ask travel agents and stock brokers.

What is driving growth in video entertainment today? How does that change over the next few years?
Bottom line, more people are watching more video on more devices. This is driving fragmentation, and therefore, opportunities to help consumers find something that interests them.
What technology will have the biggest impact on your business in the next 18 months and why?
Without a doubt it will be the cloud transformation of video platforms. Maturation of the cloud is advancing new models, not just for the delivery infrastructure, but also the end-to-end marketplace. It brings the promise to transform the whole video service business, connecting content providers and video service operators much more transparently.

What is the top growth opportunity for content producers over the next few years? What about for cable networks?
For content providers – it’s the next billion households; meaning that content providers are missing out on lots of households. If we subtract households with electricity from households with pay TV, there’s a gap of 1.5 billion. They are outside the tent – and can best be reached via pay TV operators rather than direct-to-consumer.
For cable networks – it’s about reaching markets that have been closed or inefficient to access

What is one thing that the pay-TV ecosystem needs to learn from the online giants in video (Google, Netflix, Facebook, and Amazon)?
It’s that scale matters, and audiences are global.

What will pay TV services look like in five years?
Consumers will have a more “dynamic wallet,” that allows for flexible and a la carte purchasing to meet their needs. Therefore I feel advertising on video platforms are at risk. It is not clear that targeted ads will do more than delay the inevitable, as DVRs and SVOD services have taught us not to watch ads.

For more information on the Future of Video, visit: www.fov2018.com.