The market of streaming It has become one of the most coveted segments by audiovisual content producers in recent years, due to its rapid growth.
Netflix’s disruptive “watch as much as you want, anytime, no ads for one monthly fee” model was a hit with consumers and paved the way for other players to emerge. Only in the last five years, the sector went from billing 421 million dollars in 2017, to 1,257 million dollars for this year, which implies a growth of 198%, according to the study Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2022–2026 Mexico chapter.
But Netflix’s formula has begun to wear thin. The economic crisis, coupled with the proliferation of streaming, has made it increasingly difficult to access all the content on the platforms. In the first half of the year, Netflix lost 1.2 million subscribers worldwide, while other platforms such as HBO Max and Disney + have recognized that their main challenge is to pay more users.
Hybrid model bears fruit
TelevisaUnivision launched a free but ad-supported version of ViX in March. Three months later the version without ads arrived for 119 pesos per month.
“We believe that (having both platforms) creates a superior economic model that will put us on the fastest path to profitability compared to any other cloud service. streaming important. We expect our transmission service to be profitable by the end of 2023”, De Angoitia said in a conference with analysts for the results of the third quarter.
Companies like Netflix and Disney will also add the advertising modality to their business model, in order to lower the price of the subscription to avoid customer disconnection and pay more. But the news has not been well received by the public, since the main brand promise of these companies was to avoid commercials.
Claudia Benassini, a specialist in restricted television and digital platforms and a researcher at La Salle University, believes that TelevisaUnivision is reaching out to an audience that the platforms forgot: people with fewer financial resources who cannot pay for content.
“It is a business model of open television, but in streaminggiving users the option to migrate to premium content to avoid advertising,” says Benassini. “So (consumers) can be from one side to another but on the same platform,” he concluded.
