Innovation-primed streaming industry set to face economic challenges
Details
Editor
| 13 December 2022
Despite pursuing AV1, multi-platform support and FAST as the future of their industry, video developers have found controlling costs as the biggest challenge with video technology according to the sixth annual Video Developer Report from Bitmovin.
Bitmovin Innovators Network 6 Sep 2022
The survey was conducted between July and August 2022 taking opinions from 424 video developers and industry experts from over 80 countries. Participation by region was led by EMEA with 43% of our participants, followed by North America at 34%, the Asia Pacific region at 14% and Latin America with 8% of total responses.

Fundamentally, the survey found that the video developer community was continuing to strive for innovation even in the face of ongoing economic uncertainty, whilst also reflecting the most significant recent change in entertainment streaming - advertising-supported business models. Crucially, over the last 12 months, many new media and media & entertainment companies experienced a slowdown in growth and profits due to macroeconomic headwinds.

Controlling costs was revealed in the survey as the clear leading challenge video developers were experiencing with video technology, cited by a third of the sample. This was closely followed by delivering live low latency (30%), and ad insertion (28%).

Despite cost control, the video streaming and the resilient video developer community was seen to be continuing to see great opportunity for innovation in similar areas to 2021. Video developers identified live streaming at scale (33%), low latency streaming (32%), enhanced colour (29%) and advertising functionality (25%) as the areas with the greatest opportunity for innovation. Similarly, in 2021 live streaming at scale (33%) and low latency streaming (43%) were identified as two areas with the greatest potential for innovation. Furthermore, advertising broke into the top 4 in 2022 - in line with streaming services’ shift towards hybrid and advertising-supported business models.

The 2021 report found 25% of participants claim they would implement H.265/HEVC in the next 12 months, however, the 2022 report revealed H.264/AVC was once again the video codec of choice. Ambitions to implement H.265/HEVC in the next 24 months are still strong (43% for live, 48% for VOD), and AV1 also experienced a significant uptick in planned adoption and is the second codec developers plan to implement in the near future (34% for live, 42% for VOD.)

One in four (25%) Americans also cited the ability to use a streaming service across all devices as one of the top three reasons to keep a subscription. The 2022 survey found a clear increase in Smart TV support across all brands. Support for gaming consoles has also increased. Looking to the future, the report reveals developers are planning to support devices in each category (browser, connected TV, gaming console, mobile and smart TV).

In the 2022 survey, the performance metric of buffering/re-buffering rates climbed to the top the list of key performance metrics, comfortably overshadowing all other performance metrics by three times. With almost half of Americans (47%) claiming to have unsubscribed from a streaming service due to buffering issues.

These findings said Bitmovin showed that video developers are still seeking to create and adopt pioneering codec technology and the strong connection between video developers and the consumer experience.

“The consumer world is demanding high-quality live streaming of the largest events around the globe. The video developer community still understands consumer demands and is endeavouring to innovate live streaming services at scale,” noted Bitmovin CEO and co-founder Stefan Lederer.

“The report also shows just how rapidly the areas for innovation can change in the streaming industry - you only have to look at how important ad-insertion innovation has become to understand this. Video development teams are committing significant time to introducing and maintaining support for playback across a range of devices in 2023. With the focus on new device support and buffering as a key performance metric, it demonstrates the awareness that video developers have of the viewing experience - becoming increasingly attuned with the behaviours and needs of the consumer.