Tom was always known to have a funny bone in his body. He was inspired by the Charlie Chaplin-esque type of comedy. His first ever stage performance in college left everyone in a fit of laughter. He vividly remembers the words his theatre teacher told him — “You need to show this to the world.” Little did he know that wasn’t just a compliment.
For the next 10 years, Tom kept making videos of his style of performance. Today he has a decent following on his social media profiles. But something is amiss. As Tom’s points of view turned non-conformist through his journey in life, it became increasingly cumbersome to host his content over social media & video hosting platforms. This is when he began wondering about the newest digital revolution for content creators — OTT.
In simple words, the OTT app space adopts the same engineering algorithms that make for a video streaming platform but the biggest difference is, it is meant for independent content creators, influencers and media houses. Anyone can easily create this ecosystem and upload their content as they please. There are many like Tom who make similar content for the web. Irrespective of the kind of content they make, when it comes to social media, it has its own fair share of drawbacks which OTT can smoothly counter:
Attention span
A scroll through Facebook will tell anyone that it is designed to overwhelm you with many pieces of content in one screen view. That diminishes the amount of time a viewer spends on your content piece and the attention span, when they do notice, is fleeting. In an OTT environment, everything is designed to showcase and promote only your content. You can customize and categorize your content based on the types of videos you have created.
Risk of hosting the content — Sure, YouTube would be a fitting platform but with its parent company constantly facing backlash on uploader restrictions and the anti-trust lawsuits it faces over its monopoly on user content, would that be the safest place for your original work? Probably not. Youtube has a free hand in taking your content down as and when it may deem fit. If that were to happen you will lose all so many years’ worth of views your content generated. OTT has no such risk. You are free to make your content which is true to you and your art and upload it without any restrictions.
Monetization — A platform like Youtube does indeed provide monetary gains to its users. But the platform takes a good chunk of the monetary benefit for itself and leaves the content uploader with little. But since you control your OTT ecosystem, all the earnings will be 100% yours. With a simple subscription-based monetary system in place, when a viewer pays for your exclusive content, the amount is yours to keep.
Once you have your content uploaded, you can proudly brag about having your own personal OTT platform which portrays you as a serious professional. That is by itself a big win for you as your work will gain further respect. You can always cross promote on social media, leaving interesting snippets for the audience and link them to more of your content on the OTT.
Tom realized its value. He spared no second and got all his content published in his OTT ecosystem that was customized to his style. This is what he always wanted but never knew how to get there. He is happy.
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