The VoD market is expanding. The film industry is following the music industry with a trend of vertical integration of the value chain. In the battle of getting the consumers’ attention, content suppliers are seeking possibilities to supply directly to the consumer.
Even though there is little knowledge about the desires and demands of audiovisual heritage, the material seems to be extremely suitable for reaching a specific group of film lovers. For successful results it is essential to distinguish between high-quality additional services concerning the content. Furthermore, research will have to demonstrate which business model is most suitable for the specific character of audiovisual heritage. This model could differ from the model for new material.
An outline of the most important conclusions and recommendations:
- The VoD-market is a growth market due to high broadband penetration and to the amount of players on the market.
- A multitude of parties (cable networks, telcos, game consoles, p2p networks, producers and aggregators (iTunes)) are fighting for the viewer’s attention.
- VoD ensures vertical integration in the chain. Producers will offer material to end-users themselves.
- DVD (Blu Ray) will play an important role for a few more years, but will be surpassed by VoD after 2010.
- Holland has a good starting position due to high penetration broadband (46%). With 24 initiatives it belongs to the top 4 countries in Europe.
- In this experimental phase, flexibility is a must: content must be offered non-exclusively on various platforms with various business models.
- p2p networking with bit torrent technology is currently being used mostly for illegal downloading, but these networks will also be used for legal traffic in the future (as is already being done by 20th Century Fox).
- Currently the most frequently used business models are the pay-per-download and streaming models (advertisement-driven)
- Because users are often reluctant to pay for cultural heritage (Dialogic 2008), research on the advertisement model as well as on the “top up” model – with payment for additional services - is recommendable.
- Further research on expectations of the target group, on business models and on copyright is necessary.
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