MIPTV 2023 runs today its last day, keeping quite half and half opposite opinions: a refreshed market vs. an again weakened one. But everybody agrees that the new big energizing trend is AVOD/FAST channels. Yesterday was a very dedicated journey to the segment, with FAST & Global Summit, which was crowded with participants its four hours. Is FAST the future of content? It is a direct response to critical challenges of the digital era, above all.

FAST means ‘Free ad-supported TV’. AVOD means ‘Advertisement Video on Demand’. The difference would be that the former is oriented to channels and the latter to a VOD platform, but today many tips are mixed. Basically, the content digital era has two big challenges: to work deeper/better the products and monetization. AVOD/FAST provide new spaces to allocate all the catalogues and incomes by advertisement, that the partners get in revenue sharing models. The key steps are: content generation, tech platform, digital distribution, visibility, incomes.

At ‘the State of FAST’, Dave Barnath, head of strategic partnerships at Wurl (USA), said: ‘We’ve made a research with key executives and they say that the main challenge is to gain visibility, more than the tech platform or to get sponsors. The priorities are of course, to get high levels of advertisers, strong CPN and later, strong tech partners. And they consider with the same commercial potential, to launch linear streaming channels and AVOD proposals. If you are visible, everything moves forward’.

At ‘FAST monetization’, Valerio Motti, VP FAST channels, Fremantle (UK), expressed: ‘The key tip is not volume of hours, is volume of viewed hours, to get ads. And then, the monetization models are complicated, many hide charges, so often though good demand, the content owner gains cents. Good partners and good advisors are needed’.

Carlyn Staudt, head of commissioning at BlueAnt (Canada): ‘A good strategy to set up better monetization deals, is to negotiate together among many players. As it is difficult to get data from the ad revenue platforms, we prefer to control more our content and just to launch the strongest brands. But others prefer to launch as more volume as they can, to get more incomes’.

AVOD/FAST testimonials? Eddy Arias, VP international acquisitions & partnerships Paramount’s Pluto TV: ‘Many AVOD platforms are betting more and more on volume of products, so they are as ‘aggregators’. We prefer to be ‘curators’, to select product for our audience. If not, you can suffer the ‘Paradox of choice’: if you have 20 options to choose, you can get shocked and stopped. If you have just 3-4 good options, perhaps you buy two of them’.

Steven Hodge, CEO at Ottera: ‘To have a good FAST experience, you must take good decisions at every step progressively: good content, good tech platform, and especially good delivery network and monetization deals. So, choose well your partners, tending to an overall solution. The segment is not a bubble, it is already generating very good figures and it is just starting’.

Nicolás Smirnoff, Francisco Ferreyra, Mariano Gutiérrez Alarcón

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