Orange’s Chem Assayag navigates the challenges facing modern broadcasters and how to develop a service proposition that captures customers in an increasingly crowded and competitive marketplace.
Who owns the customer? “No one really owns,” says Chem Assayag, Senior VP Home Services Innovation, Orange. “We are at a time where the customer has tremendous choice in terms of what they can consume with more players battling to get their attention and for a share of the household wallet.”
Assayag’s IBC2024 Fireside Chat is titled ‘Who owns the customer? Winning the battle for control of the TV experience’ and the Orange executive emphasises that the battle for broadcasters is not lost.
“I grew up watching TV from a handful of channels and if we wanted to watch we had to be in front of our single TV set,” he says. “Today with so many ways to access content this freedom of choice has changed the balance of power between viewers and content providers.”
“The situation is kaleidoscopic and the configuration of those relationships is not always simple” Chem Assayag, Orange
Assayag reminisces on how the landscape changed over three decades as more players entered the game. The arrival of multichannel cable and satellite networks such as Canal+ and Sky introduced competition to broadcasters “but were still very much TV-related content companies.”
Then in the early 2000s, telcos like Orange entered the market with IPTV services. Netflix followed a decade later ushering in SVOD streamers.
“Now we are seeing the increasing role of TV manufacturers like Samsung with connected TV (CTV) offerings. Tech companies like Google also muddy the waters by being both a technology supplier underpinning some operator’s services and a content provider. As a result, the market is highly complex with lots of players competing and cooperating.”
Orange, for instance, offers Netflix as part of its service at the same time as competing with the SVOD.
“The situation is kaleidoscopic and the configuration of those relationships is not always simple,” Assayag says. “For us as service providers and for the consumer.”
Content discovery
“All pay TV operators have a common challenge, which is to improve the quality of experience around search and recommendation” Chem Assayag, Orange
Assayag has strong experience in the world of digital services and digital TV, working for companies such as OpenTV, NDS (now Synamedia) and Qualcomm. Prior to joining Orange, he was the EVP of Marketing & Sales for Viaccess Orca, driving the company’s expansion for six years.
He says even the word ‘TV’ might be misleading. Are we talking about general video consumption or viewing solely on the large set in the living room?
“The two are related. People are consuming video on many more devices and in many more ways. They can pause, rewind, watch on-demand, catch up.
“There is still room for the main TV set in the living room as a device that allows people to gather around and create moments to share,” he insists. “If you wanted to watch a movie at home with your kids you would most likely do so on the big TV.
“The issue is how we make this movie available. It has to be easy to find. You have to enable restart and pause and all other consumption modes. You have to take into account the pricing framework.
“In that respect, all pay TV operators have a common challenge, which is to improve the quality of experience around search and recommendation. Despite everyone’s best efforts search is still a pain for viewers. With more and more content, the ability to find content relevant to you has not been solved. We still have a lot of people complaining about it.”
Watch now AI - Episode 2: Importance of personalisation in media
Orange’s own recent ethnographic research which sought to understand consumer behaviour through detailed diaries over several weeks revealed just how frustrating it was to find content.
“It was taking 15 minutes at least to find content they wanted to watch and despite the huge amount available they would end up watching an episode of a series they enjoyed for the third time because it offered no risk. As an industry, we need to solve this problem.”
User interface
AI might help, for example, in providing more sophisticated natural language interactions with the systems embedded in a TV set or set-top box (STB).
In May 2024, Orange France launched the STB 6. This device integrates a far-field microphone, paving the way for a more immersive experience through natural voice commands enabled by a partnership with Amazon Alexa.
“It offers a friendly interface even without a remote control and marks a shift towards more interactive user experiences,” says Assayag. “In turn, this makes access to content easier which goes back to search and recommendation and quality of experience.”
Another trend Orange spotted is that younger generations either don’t know or don’t care where their favourite TV show or film is from, they just want access to it.
“Ten years ago, people would associate a show with a particular network, channel or broadcaster but now if they want to find the next episode, that show is no longer attached to the channel brand in their mind. If the channel is no longer relevant you need to take that into account when designing the search and recommendation engine.”
Orange in France sees itself as an aggregator able to help consumers navigate their way around content choice.
“There’s an expectation among customers that we aggregate the best content meaning all the regular TV channels, the key SVODs and the main pay TV channels, and that we allow them to consume on all devices using all video consumption modes,” he says.
“Our role as an aggregator is to negotiate the commercial deals in order to have this content line up and also ensure the technical integration end-to-end is smooth for quality of experience.”
He says the appeal of live content watched on TV is in decline but remains of great importance. “Consumption of live is declining but much slower than what we expected. There is still an appetite for live sport and also for 24/7 news programming, particularly in France over the last few years.”
FAST channels haven’t taken off in quite the same way in France as in other territories because of the history of free-to-air services.
“The French market already has a lot of free thematic channels and we include many in our packages. Certainly, there is appeal for very targeted niche FAST channels such as those rolling episodes of the same series. We are monitoring FAST but it’s currently not a huge area of business for us.”
Smart homes
“Two decades ago if your service was poor the customer had little choice but to stick. Now, they have so many options” Chem Assayag, Orange
Large telcos like Orange have sought to diversify their product portfolio to capture revenue from the wider ‘smart home’ but Assayag calls business to date disappointing.
“I would say there’s a general disappointment about what smart home has delivered in terms of business for all market players including Big Tech with their voice assistants. One reason is that the market is fragmented among different technologies. We hope that standardisation of the sector through smart home protocols like Thread will make interoperability between devices easier and more attractive to customers.”
That said, Orange has identified home surveillance as an area of growth. It has rolled out Maison Protégée, a home surveillance service with dedicated hardware and support.
Back to the question, ‘Who owns the customer’ and the answer, for Assayag, is that there is potential for growth provided you get a few things right.
“Understand that you are not going to have the customer forever if your service does not keep performing well,” he says. “Two decades ago if your service was poor the customer had little choice but to stick. Now, they have so many options so you have to be very agile to make sure you keep them.
“For us, that means ensuring you have the right content, onboarding new content providers with commercial agreements and technical integration, and you also have to make it attractive from a pricing standpoint.
“There is a huge sensitivity to price now as a result of the standard of living crisis and price is a very significant factor for customers. You have to find pricing schemes which are appealing and you have to deliver extremely good QoS which includes making it easy to consume content on different devices. If you do that, then you can retain their business.”
Chem Assayag will present ‘Who owns the customer? Winning the battle for control of the TV experience’ at 14:45 on 13 September, IBC2024.
Read more IBC Conference: How Virgin is “reimagining the traditional TV format”
No comments yet