Decision Makers Series: Marrying technology and business key to online broadcasting: CTV VP

Canadian broadcaster CTV Inc. must be doing something right. Its web content portal, CTV.ca, racked up 6.15 million video feeds and 575,000 unique visitors in June, according to comScore. And the broadcaster recently expanded its online programming choices. We caught up with CTV’s VP, digital media Stephan Argent to find out what’s really working for this company – and where its challenges lie. Argent certainly knows this business. At CTV, he’s in charge of 110 web, mobile and iTunes offerings. Prior to CTV, he led CHUM’s digital team, and over the years he has held positions in various industries providing advertising and business development expertise. What follows are excerpts from our Sept. 8 conversation. You’ll find the full transcript here. TMR: Certainly your career has spanned many organizations and roles. What’s the biggest change you’ve noticed in the media, comparing the industry today to the way it was when you started? Argent: I think probably the better question is what hasn’t changed. I have a long background in the ad business. When I started, the industry didn’t encompass online activities. Now you’re unlikely to see a plan that doesn’t include online as a key component of the strategy. I wouldn’t want to date myself too much but there was no accessible e-mail and no access to the web.... My point is that everything has changed. TMR: What is the next big thing for CTV in digital media? Argent: It’s not necessarily about the next big thing. It’s really about the audience and responding to their needs. It’s also recognizing that media consumption habits continue to change and evolve. The important thing for us as a broadcaster is to ensure we’re able to provide content on the audience’s terms. That means giving it to them where they want it and when they want it.... We’re on track to stream about three quarter of billion videos this calendar year. That gives you a sense of scale. The strategy we’re following at the moment is one of catch up. If you see something on broadcast, and you want to catch up with a previous episode, it gives you an opportunity to catch up. But equally it gives you an opportunity to uncover more content that you may not have even considered previously. That gives us an opportunity to drive people back to broadcast. I don’t think it’s a choice between one or the other. Is this the next big thing? Would you solely look at this on mobile? Would you solely look at this online? Perhaps. I’m sure there are those that do. But it’s really an opportunity to provide content on the audience’s terms. Pinning your hopes on one medium on its own isn’t necessarily the route to go at this point. TMR: The retro content announced this last month – shortened episodes of ‘70s and ‘80s shows including Diff’rent Strokes, TJ Hooker and Charlie’s Angels – seems geared to people aged 30 to 45. Is this an attempt to capture this age group? Argent: I think that’s one opportunity. It’s an acknowledgment that we have audiences from all demographics. It was an opportunity for us to provide value-added content. That reflects in the cut-down nature of the episodes as well. You have four or five or six minutes of content to really allow that nostalgia to come through.... It’s a good nostalgia fix. TMR: CTV seems to be doing well online, judging from recent comScore measurements indicating that the company had three times as many video streams as competitor Global TV (6.15 million versus 1.9 million) and more than three times as many unique viewers (575,000 versus 154,000) in June. What do you think the company is doing right? Argent: We started with the platform, and we wanted to make sure we had a stable viewing experience that was really high quality.... No matter how good your content is, if it doesn’t play well, or the experience isn’t there, you’re going to lose people at the first hurdle. The second piece is we’ve followed a successful broadcast model in providing that content. It’s not, “OK, let’s take everything we’ve got, throw it online and see what sticks.” That’s not reflective of how the business model needs to work. The business model involves a third piece: responsibly experimenting to make sure the content is what audiences want, and then advertisers follow. As advertisers follow, audiences grow, and so on. It’s been a measured strategy to gradually increase the content we have online as our audiences are built. It’s the combination of those things with an overall market that’s beginning to really embrace online and online advertising, to allow those things to come together. TMR: What challenges does CTV face? Argent: I don’t necessarily think it’s unique to us, but I can think of three areas that are probably the most challenging for us.... One of the biggest challenges we have to growing content is finding the right business model. Demand has been growing at a phenomenal rate, but there’s obviously a lag between the audience growth and the time that the market really figures out how to tap those audiences. We’re now starting to see the fruits of those labours, but it’s a balancing act between investing in the business in a responsible way and seeing the outcome. The second piece is technology. In order to be successful, you have to maintain an outstanding experience.... We think we’ve done that with our own video player, as an example.... If you go to the player now, there’s a video library, a line-up, social bookmarking features, enhanced search – a whole bunch of things that go with that. Those things didn’t exist originally because we’ve been gradually adding those pieces in as time evolved. And we’ll continue to evolve that experience as we move forward, to make it better. It’s an investment in people, an investment in time, an investment in technology. You constantly have to feed the beast, so to speak, to make sure you’re meeting the audience needs. I think the final piece is measurement – an accurate measurement of viewership and online traffic is and has been an ongoing challenge for all of us. I don’t think it will come as a surprise, but there have been continued significant discrepancies between our own internal data and the panel-based data that you’re looking at, the comScore data. That’s an ongoing challenge for the industry as a whole. And as an industry, certainly in Canada, we have to wrap our heads around this problem to figure out how to get more insight into who’s watching what and really come to terms with how we’re going to measure this in the long term. TMR: CTV seems to be the first Canadian broadcaster to offer HD online viewing. Why did the company decide to invest in that technology, and how popular is it compared to traditional online broadcasts? Argent: We did implement an HD test online.... We’re still analyzing the results. What I can tell you is that compared to standard definition video, we’ve found viewers are more engaged with HD. But that said, we’re still learning, we’re still experimenting. And we still have a lot to learn in terms of how we implement workflow and how we get this to run effectively and efficiently. It comes back to the responsible experimentation message. It’s one of the things you have to try. It’s not as easy as saying, “Everything will be HD online.” That simply wouldn’t be practical. But the second component of the answer is that all of CTV’s content for the 2010 Olympic Games will be HD, and that will give us an even greater opportunity to gain insight into HD capabilities, workflow and those components.... That test is still up. (http://hdbeta.ctv.ca) TMR: It seems to me that regulation of Internet broadcasting is inevitable. Wouldn’t it be easier to begin that process now, rather than wait until the industry is better established? Argent: I’m not sure I would necessarily agree with that. I don’t know that regulating the online space is inevitable. With respect to the commission, I agree that thus far exempting this type of activity from regulation is the right thing to do. We see it as complementary to and not directly competing with broadcast. There may be increasing pressure to look at regulating online activity with things like privacy concerns, consumer protection and so on. But I really don’t see this falling into the area of broadcast regulation. TMR: How does CTV see platforms like YouTube – should third-party sites be embraced, or shunned? Argent: I don’t know if it’s necessarily a question of embracing or shunning. I think the model for YouTube is still evolving. They have huge market share as I understand it, but they have very little revenue. And I imagine that they have huge costs to go with that market share. Sure, it has audience numbers, but that is predominantly short form and user-generated content – what we call ‘snackable’ content – whereas we’re providing more comprehensive content, full-episode content, as well as behind the scenes footage and online extras that provide added value. It’ll be interesting to see how the YouTube model shakes out, because it certainly hasn’t shaken out yet. I think they have a long way to go before they start making real money from that – if indeed they’re able to. Stefan Dubowski is a freelance writer in Ottawa. You can reach him via sdubowski@rogers.com.

Decision Makers Series: Marrying technology and business key to online broadcasting: CTV VP

Broadcast | September 14, 2009

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