Key executives from streaming platforms like Roku, OTTera and Globoplay shared during LAVS’s VS Next their impressions about the current moment that the digital players are going through within the American market.
The session, part of the “Latin Summit” section organized by PRENSARIO and NATPE for LA Screenings, featured Ana Carolina Lima, head of content, Globoplay (Brazil), Jordan Warkol, Senior Director, Business Development, OTTera (USA) and Jennifer Vaux, Senior Director, Content Acquisition, The Roku Channel, Roku Inc. (USA), and was moderated by Fabricio Ferrara, International Business Director at Prensario.
Based in Los Angeles, OTTera offers services for media companies entering the streaming market. Last year, the company stood up to the Latin American market, where it decided to increase its presence: ‘Last year we undertook the task of leading a team in markets such as Brazil and Mexico. And we have welcomed the growth in the region, where we have developed more than 40 channels that are distributed in different business models’, said Warkol.
‘We have seen great advances in the field of AVOD and FAST in the USA and we also welcome their progress in Latin America, with names like Samsung, who are really committed to resuming traditional family TV consumption but based on AVOD’, he remarked.
As for Roku, Vaux referred to the success with The Roku Channel in the US, where it is one of the ‘top five channels on its platform’ offering more than 70,000 titles for free with a solid audience base of 18 -49 years and the expansion plan towards Latin America, where it has launched Espacio Latino with Spanish-speaking programming plus 50 FAST channels. ‘The success of our company, I think, is based on the return of TV as before, but above all on the curation of our content’, she underlined.
She also mentioned the strategic distribution alliances and bundles within their product offerings: ‘We have been successful with our joint offers, where by subscribing to a particular channel, you can access Premium content. These are possible thanks to our first-hand alliances with our content providers’. Likewise, she took advantage of the instance to announce that she will bet for the first time on original Roku Original content to attract audiences and advertising revenue, where she assured that they have already signed alliances with studios such as Lionsgate or personalities such as Martha Stewart.
Lima added that Globoplay’s leadership in the Brazilian market, for its content exclusives, catch up strategies and global productions. ‘Our differentiator is our stories, which have a distinctive stamp with respect to other services. This is basically because every time we see that we acquire an IP, or content, we think about the scalability of this content beyond a single screen and how it can impact our audience, both because of its relevance and because of the talent behind it’.
The executive highlighted that it has embarked on a dedicated alliance strategy to be relevant in the Brazilian market and lay the foundations for the market abroad. ‘We recently announced an alliance with Starzplay, and since you are signing up for more, both to strengthen our content line up, and to expand and offer facilities when acquiring our service’, concluded Lima.
