1/n An interesting metric in the OTT space is "cost/first stream".

Essentially, cost = marketing + production expenses. This when divided by the total number of people who watched the show/movie after signing up gives the metric.

Meaning: The lower the number the better.

2/n The usual approach to keeping the number low has been to buy/license content that has a lot of audience/viewership - popular TV shows (Friends)/live sports (IPL).

While this strategy works really well in acquiring customers, this also possesses a small challenge.

3/n You can only have so many popular titles for several reasons, their expense being one.

But since the model is recurring, you'd need to provide incentive to the users to keep viewing your platform.

@netflix did something really cool here.

4/n It used the mass-market, popular titles like Friends and The Office to build an audience, collected data intelligently based on the user behavior on the platform & then used that to launch their own Originals on top of it.

A true data-driven company.

5/n This is what it did:

1) The popular titles, with some marketing & pricing tweaks, still acted as a lure for newer users. (1 or 2 shows with ~100+ mn following)

2) The niche originals catered to specific chunks of audience - think 10 shows with 10+ mn following each.

6/n This meant: the existing users were happy, new users had enough incentive to join & the accrued data was enough to create shows like House of Cards.

This is how you solve for a global, albeit premium, audience.

@DisneyPlusHS seems to have studied this pretty well.

7/n Earlier this week, Hotstar announced Multiplex with an interesting 7 Movie Bundle.

If you carefully analyze it, you'd find 3 potential mass-market entertainers, one movie of Late Sushant S Rajput that'd be streamed for free & 3 targeted niche movies. https://twitter.com/tell_pc/status/1277629901361692672?s=20

8/n This bundle is available for all of the VIP users @ 399/year. If you come to think of it, a single INOX experience would've cost more.

The pricing is interesting as Hotstar believes VIP has a potential audience of 50-60 mn in India. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/expert-view/our-target-is-to-get-300-million-plus-viewers-on-hotstar-sidharth-shakdher/articleshow/69042052.cms

9/n Now the bundle is bound to bring in a lot of new users & at an affordable price-point, you're also going to get a lot of Hindi/vernacular content + unlimited Live Sports for the whole year.

Meaning: Enough incentive for new users to join & keep watching.

n/n Interestingly, it also tells us about the target audience for Hotstar - India 2/India 3.

With a wide range of vernacular content, live sports, tiered pricing tailored for user personas, Hotstar seems to have cracked quite a few codes in the fast-growing Indian OTT market.