Deloitte Digital, which describes itself as a “digital creative consultancy,” has been hiring to offer better services around streaming media/entertainment businesses.
Part of its growth over the last three years, from 1,000 people to about 7,000 today, was to staff up to accommodate new business opportunities like TV everywhere services as more TV companies go direct-to-consumer.
“Our focus is on how do you acquire and retain customers, because that’s where you make or break a service offering – through customer acquisition,” said Danny Ledger, principal and US leader for digital offerings at Deloitte Consulting, adding that Deloitte Digital as gone “all in in the video space.”
“We saw there was a ton of white space where you see a large amount of people with high broadband digital access and yet, not subscribing to traditional TV, cable or satellite services,” said Ledger. “That showed us there was opportunity here for media companies to think like retailers.”
With the run on individual satellite providers and programmers like DISH (Sling TV) and HBO (HBO Now) launching their own subscription video on-demand services, many have struggled to ramp up their subscriber counts.
From a cost perspective, some subscription VOD services struggle to manage their marketing spend. Ledger has seen some pump 10%-40% of total revenue into marketing, but the question is can you counteract that with new sign-ups.
“Our hypothesis is that technology [investment to deliver VOD services] can be managed, but if you can’t properly manage your marketing ROI, you’re not going to be successful,” he said. “The direct-to-consumer model for TV companies requires more questions around audience, retention and personalizing the service based on their content consumption.”
Ledger certainly has direct experience in this area. Prior to joining Deloitte, Ledger was the technology director for FOX Networks Group and was responsible for developing content distribution deals with streaming video providers such as Netflix and Hulu.
Now, FOX is his customer. Deloitte Digital built the companion digital experience to FOX Sports 1 (now FOX Sports 2), a 24-hour cable sports network, which included cross-screen support for the FOX livestream of Super Bowl XLVIII.
Deloitte Digital also helped extend the streaming video service Showtime Anytime from desktop delivery to iOS, Android and Roku devices.
Over the last six months, Deloitte Digital has upped its investment on consumer video engagement and developed a solution called MarketMix for Media, a “combined technology” built from components like Adobe Primetime OTT and CRM integrations to systems like Salesforce.
Deloitte Digital essentially offers a managed service to media companies creating streaming video supply chains.
