London, 23 July 2013 – As OTT video revenues are predicted to reach US$37 billion by 2017*, the multiplatform entertainment industry is undoubtedly poised for future technological developments and growth. This provides the setting for this year’s OTTtv World Summit (19-22 November), which has grown in size, and will incorporate the IP Cable World Summit and a Social TV World Summit, to reflect the evolving marketplace.
Now in its seventh year, the four day conference and exhibition, which has already attracted support from official partners – Google and Liberty Global, will focus on the key challenges and opportunities within Cloud TV, original content development, Social TV and the growing importance of MAM platforms and transcoding for OTT. These themes are echoed by a stellar speaker line-up that will give visitors and delegates exclusive insight into understanding the evolving ecosystem, while providing the opportunity to discuss and shape the future of the multiplatform entertainment industry.
Speakers already confirmed on the agenda include Daniel Danker, Chief Product Officer, Shazam Entertainment; Denise Parkinson, Entertainment Partnerships Director, UK and Global, Yahoo!; Pascal De Mul, Global Head of Platform Partnerships, Spotify; Nic Jones, Senior Vice President, International, Vevo; Christopher Fetner, Director of Content Partner Operations, Netflix; Ben McOwen Wilson, Director Film and TV, EMEA, YouTube; and Spencer Stephens, EVP and CTO, Sony Pictures Entertainment.
Visitors will be able to experience a pre-conference focus day at the event’s co-located summit, IP Cable World Summit, which will analyse the opportunities available to leading cable companies through multiscreen content evolution. Here, leading global players will explore how combining the bandwidth of cable with the flexibility of IP can deliver compelling multiplatform services.
Jan van Ottele, co-founder of ZappoTV, who will speak at the IP Cable World focus day, comments on the future of the industry: “I think that eventually all TV services will be OTT. However, this is a process that will take (depending on geography) around 10 to 15 years. We need a lot more bandwidth and some mechanisms for managing quality of service for OTT. So eventually DVB-C/T/S and IPTV will cease to exist because of lack of people watching mainstream linear TV. So in the next 10 to 15 years, it will be very interesting to see how the industry is changing!”
Brand new for 2013, is the Social TV World Summit which will take place on 22 November. This will provide an understanding of the next stage of multiscreen engagement, covering areas such as the development of sustainable transmedia broadcast strategies, driving multiplatform content across different channels, localising global content, the relationships between Apps and TV, and how to create an attractive UI in the post linear age.
The Social TV World Summit will see digital guru and Head of Global Sales at Red Bull Media, Bernhard Hafenscher, discuss the evolution of OTT video in the US and Europe, the consolidation still to come and the challenges posed by varying technical standards. He says: “At present there is a large gap between Europe and the US. European broadcasters have embraced OTT in a much more integrated way, kind of experimenting and playing with it. The time that European viewers devote to watching TV is still on the rise, and even some channels with typically older audiences have managed to address younger people quite effectively through their OTT offerings. So in certain cases, perhaps it’s less of a disruption than a shift; we’ll see.”
*Figures from Informa Telecoms & Media
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