How Live Streaming Helps Broadcasters Increase Audience Engagement & Reach New Audiences
Streaming offers a lower barrier to entry than traditional cable/satellite TV distribution while allowing content owners to reach a global market. There’s less risk in setting up a live channel, but the rewards are potentially greater than with TV because you’re not limited by geographical area.
Live streaming is one of the top ways broadcasters have found to engage with their audiences. With creative and regularly programmed live streams (even as 24/7 broadcasts), it’s possible to reach both existing subscribers already interested in other existing content as well as new audiences.
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Benefits of niche live streaming
With the low barrier to entry, broadcasters can create more niche and localized content via live streams with ease. One way, in particular, to create niche content for live streaming is to regionalize live content.
One of the reasons live streaming will continue to eat into the traditional live TV market share (and even overtake it), is that it offers cost effective ways of regionalizing live content by:
- Allowing the same content to reach more audiences in a more targeted way.
- Being a cost effective way to stream niche content, because broadcasters can use live streams to test the waters and build up new audiences.
- Using AI to insert automated multi-language subtitles.
For niche content, both 24/7 live streaming and repurposing obscure VOD content into linear channels are easy-to-implement solutions that can:
- Drive viewer acquisition and engagement around exclusive, timely content such as breaking news, live sports events, or concerts.
- Act as a passive-viewing destination for those looking for entertainment, but not wanting to select a program from a library.
Repurposing live content for continued use
Live content can also be repurposed with the help of features like live-clipping. In a June 2021 survey of JW Player customers, 63.8% of publishers & broadcasters reported the ability to share clips in real-time to social media as a top need for live streaming platforms—a quick solution to increase engagement in real-time.
As the demand for live streaming continues to grow rapidly, scalability is key—both in terms of adding large numbers of new channels with a quick time-to-market, and in terms of streaming platforms comfortably handling large audience peaks.
CASE STUDY: How ITV increases engagement with niche live streams
ITV, a leading media and entertainment company and the largest commercial television network in the UK, reaches over 40 million viewers every week broadcasting some of the biggest programs in news, drama, factual, and entertainment. The broadcaster needed a video solution to drive incremental views and provide increased exposure for their more niche events.
The broadcasting giant selected VUALTO (a JW Player company) to deliver the necessary infrastructure to enable the spinning up of pop-up channels for the streaming of live events via its ITV Hub. The VUALTO CONTROL HUB provides ITV with dynamic event orchestration , allowing for the scaling up of resources for a live streaming event immediately before it begins and ability to scale down once it is over, enabling the broadcaster to save on cloud-hosting costs that would otherwise be accrued from having the service continuously running.
Following a successful first test with ITV via its ITV Hub platform for the British Touring Car Championship, VUALTO will deliver further support for a calendar of live event streams, including more niche sporting events.
Today, ITV Hub+ has 500,000+ subscribers and reaches 90% of connected TVs sold in the UK. Download the full case study to see how ITV uses niche live streams to increase their engagement.
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Broadcast Live – JW Player’s Video Broadcast Solution
JW Player’s live solution for broadcasters of all sizes and from any media industry, Broadcast Live, offers the opportunity to reach and engage with audiences at scale. Broadcast Live allows broadcasters around the world to deliver 24/7 live channels in the highest quality broadcasts to global audiences at scale. Broadcast Live offers flexible video delivery and orchestration for premium live programming on any device and a number of premium video solutions:
- Continuous archive of live event for instant live-to-VOD content
- Linear live 24/7 channels to turn VOD into live content
- DVR: pause and rewind of live streams
- Frame accurate clipping and stitching
- Easily switch DRM protection on/off
- Enables your monetization goals with SSAI
- 24/7 in-house support, 365 days out of the year
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For more information on 24/7 Live Streaming, download our newest playbook, Video Industry Insights for Digital Broadcasters: Reach New Audiences on New Screens.
