Following are the five greatest hazards which threaten to derail content companies that are investing heavily in video and audio content distribution:

1. Not Thinking Cross-Platform: Companies that are not thinking “cross-platform” (i.e., building-out a single content infrastructure for broadband, IPTV and mobile) will not realize the full potential of the market, but will spend millions trying.

2. Inferior Content Protection: Security breaches, password trading, and lack of control of video assets by not having a centralized view of content protection is costing distributors real money in terms of bandwidth charges and lost revenue.

3. Fear of Losing Market Share: Companies are rushing to market based upon the fear of losing immediate market share, at the expense of building a long-term content distribution strategy that can accommodate a variety of business models.

4. Not Anticipating Emerging Standards: Technologies and standards continue to emerge. If a company’s existing deployment does not accommodate for these changes, today’s digital content will become the “8-Track” tapes of the modern era.

5. Market Inflexibility: Jumping into a subscription model, for example, without a view towards testing pay-per-view and/or an advertising model is fraught with dangers.  Content distributors must be able to test and change pricing, promotional offers and business models in response to their learning curve.

Not Thinking Cross-Platform
The technology and protocols involved in distributing content over broadband do not need to be completely different from that of IPTV or even wireless devices. Many companies today are making the mistake of investing in content distribution programs with their eyes solely fixed on broadband initiatives when alternative opportunities for the same content loom just as large.

Distributors must have a view towards centralizing and integrating their distribution across these new platforms to take advantage of people and technology cost-savings, and also to increase the likelihood of an improved customer experience and improved customer insights. By not doing this, they will find it tremendously difficult and costly to integrate separate broadband, IPTV and wireless businesses in the future and once wireless technologies become more pervasive, their content distribution program will go from state-of-the-art to ‘legacy’ overnight, requiring a major overhaul and financial reinvestment.

 

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