For an innovation to really take off, it needs two things: the enabler ― the technology platform that underpins it ― and the demand from the target market. These came together in FAST.
The enabler is high-quality video streaming over ubiquitous broadband. Those with video to share could deliver it direct to consumers, and all the big producers, syndicators and aggregators were developing strategies around it.
Demand was triggered by the covid pandemic. Consumers could not spend money on going to the movies, or eating out, or travelling. They were forced to stay at home ― and watch television. Getting your content in front of consumers was suddenly a big opportunity, but there was a need to move quickly. A long list of back-burner or field-trial projects got quickly moved to the front of the line.
If you have a substantial catalogue of content, what is the fastest, cheapest way of making it available to all these people who are now desperate for entertainment? The answer is FAST.
FAST channels are as simple as a broadcast operation can be. There are no live events or interventions: they are pre-planned playlists with some simple branding graphics. They are ideal for cloud implementation, which means you could stand up multiple channels very quickly. If you already own the content, then you need very little capital investment: it is all OpEx, which you can tie to your income.
The nature of the channels is often very niche. On my Roku box at home in Colorado there is a channel that is 24/7 reruns of The Carol Burnett Show. Another is wall-to-wall Rockford Files. It may well be that there are hours in the day when the audience for these channels is zero, but they cost so little to run that provided there are some to view the commercials at other times of the day, it is all worth it.
The key take-home message of FAST is that it proves there is still an incredible demand for content that is free to view. Whether we are talking legacy linear channels, streaming services or even on-demand, people like free.
Free television gives the consumer the opportunity to explore, to try new programming. If you buy an SVOD service, you are limited to what that service offers. Increasingly, consumer behavior sees subscriptions taken out to see the show everyone is talking about ― Stranger Things on Netflix, for example ― with the subscription cancelled when the series comes to an end.
And as you will not have failed to notice, the world is facing some pretty tough economic times. During the pandemic, when you were not eating out or putting fuel in your cars, you had money to spend on subscriptions. Now money is going to be in short supply, so those subscriptions are harder to justify.
FAST is advertising supported, but by being direct to the consumer, you cut out some of the middlemen in the advertising chain. Start-ups can implement ad tech that relies heavily on automation to sell and place spots and integrates dynamic ad insertion in the common workflow.
That will allow inventory to be sold in different ways. Big brands will want affinity with the programmes ― they want to be in NFL broadcasts or Chicago Med ― and will want to buy spots. Others will simply be shopping for impressions. This is going to lead our industry to the next major evolution of FAST, where ad buying and selling will begin to support rules around brand protection and placement to deliver the broadcast premium experience across FAST and AVOD services. The next generation of FAST and AVOD platforms is going to allow publishers to deliver the same quality of advertising and experience that brands and consumers are accustomed to on linear channels, while still providing digital-style targeted advertising.
Which brings me to one more set of initials: CTV, as in “converged television.” FAST is CTV and offers the best of both worlds: whether you want to micromanage your campaign or hand it all over to automation, you want to be able to buy and sell through the same, automated portal. The next big thing in CTV ― which we’re calling CTV 2.0 ― is going to be the fusion of the “quick-to-market” content we saw with the initial launches of FAST and AVOD and the more profitable and sustainable advertising quality that is the hallmark of linear TV.
What FAST means for the industry is a new business model: direct to consumer, direct to advertiser, with the minimum of intervention and the maximum of automation. It requires multiplatform selling tools and ad servers that can support DAI with broadcast-quality placement rules. But these, too, are now available as cloud services, wrapping it all up into a package that is, well, fast to implement.
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