Piracy, Regulatory Regimes and the Evolution of Business Models Dominate the Agenda for the Asian Video Industry

The theme of partnerships cut across many of the discussions and sessions, especially when it came to the issue of piracy. Henry Tan, CEO of Astro emphasized that in order to prevent pirates from stealing our lunch, a collaborative approach between industry and regulators is needed in addition to consumer awareness. Dr R.S. Sharma, Chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), who was given the responsibility of regulating Asia’s most dynamic and vibrant video marketplace, shared that India’s recent conversion to digital was a phenomenal achievement. Consumers should be given the choice to pay for what they wish to watch. Empowering the customer with choice as well as digitization has helped India to reduce piracy tremendously.

Today, VOD streaming services are grappling with the burning question of monetisation with no clear consensus on what the best model is. Netflix continue with a pure subscription model while Janice Lee, MD of PCCW Media Group said Viu revenues were today evenly split between advertising and subscription in their freemium model, but she believed subscription would be the more important of the two in the future. Mark Britt, Co-Founder and Group CEO of iflix took a very bearish position on subscription in South East Asia and insisted that advertising was the key to unlocking consumer growth and loyalty in the region.The other prominent discussion centred around how innovation in the world of online streaming video for curated content can be damaged by unwise regulation. The very rapid development of new and innovative services in Asia was underlined in a discussion between Elaine Uy, Head of OTT for ABS-CBN, Gidon Freeman, VP, Government and Regulatory Affairs for NBCUniversal International, Sulyna Abdullah, Director of Public Policy South East Asia for Netflix and Deepak Jacob , the Chief Regional Counsel India, South East Asia & Middle East for The Walt Disney Company. However, the consensus was that proposals for greater regulation – some quite extreme – are also circulating in the region, and that there was a great risk of over regulation. Curated video platforms  posed  few  if any real  problems for  Asian societies  and governments compared to other internet content, and Gidon Freeman emphatically made the point that over regulation of curated content services placed them at a huge competitive disadvantage vis-à-vis piracy services and social media services like Facebook and YouTube, which had much more dangerous problems with the content they hosted – and were sucking up all the ad revenues, risking killing newer innovative curated offerings.

In the newly launched Tech Innovation Stream at the summit, the themes on flexibility, enhancing the video experience for viewers and user engagement were reiterated in multiple discussions. Organisations are recognising the importance of delivering an experience that makes them stand out from their competition. Better understanding of viewers’ behaviour, localisation and customisation of content were required. Equally it was felt that integration of technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud, voice search, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) amongst others are required to accelerate the video industry’s transformation.

The Asia Video Summit is the defining conference for the video industry and ecosystem across the Asia Pacific region. The aim is to understand the state of the video industry in 2019 - the opportunities and the challenges faced by different sectors of the industry and how together we can grow and forge a successful future. Attended by over 180 companies, it brings together some of the biggest industry names to discuss the most pertinent issues of today. With advancements in technology, evolving business models and everchanging consumer behaviour, the Asia Video Summit brings you the best insights, debates and discussions that define the state of the video industry today.

AVIA is the trade association for the video industry and ecosystem in Asia-Pacific. It serves to make the video industry stronger and healthier through promoting the common interests of its members. AVIA is the interlocutor for the industry with governments across the region, leads the fight against video piracy and provides insight into the video industry to support a vibrant industry ecosystem. AVIA evolved from CASBAA in 2018.