Different ways of offering video on demand through OTT

What AVOD, SVOD, and TVOD mean in OTT

Some terms you may have heard in the world of OTT are AVOD, SVOD and TVOD. AVOD is Advertising Video On Demand, the model used by YouTube (usually) and 40D. Your customers watch for free, and the money comes from advertisers. This is not likely to get you as much money as the other models.

SVOD is Subscription Video On Demand. This is the Netflix model. You pay a certain amount every month and watch as much or as little as you like. The one downside — from your point of view — is that there’s no contract. Your subscribers can leave any time they like, and probably will if they feel like there’s nothing new that interests them and they see no prospect of anything new and interesting in the future.

TVOD is Transactional Video On Demand. This is the model favoured by Amazon, and YouTube uses it for movies and TV episodes. Your customers use this to buy or rent your content on an individual basis. This works better if you have a few relatively popular videos than if you’re trying to establish yourself as a brand.

Services of a good OTT provider

Look for an OTT that offers an extendable software development kit, bitrate-adaptive CDN delivery, instant transcoding, optimization of all media for all platforms, and apps custom-branded to your content with no development costs. All this is meant to minimize the amount of work you have to do outside your own area of expertise. Other features to look for are a short time to market, a consistent user experience and branding across all platforms, on-demand archives and live streams fully integrated with the rest of the content, and a user-friendly way to market your content on social media.