Can OTT Businesses Keep Growing without Breaking the Bank?

While the global OTT market possesses huge growth potential, projected to reach $215 billion in revenue by 2029 - the reality is that many companies are now grappling with the challenge of maintaining profitability in an increasingly saturated environment. With more players entering the field and content expectations rising, OTT businesses across regions are facing the same fundamental question: how can they continue to scale without inflating their costs?

To find the answers to the dilemma, we sat down with Steven Kopec, Accedo's Head of Operations & Information Security, who is also the go-to expert for operational strategy at the company with his many years of experience working with our clients all over the world. In the Q&A below, he shares real-world insights from his extensive work, tackling the operational hurdles OTT businesses face - from delivering a seamless user experience to managing rising tech costs. 

‍

What common operational challenges do you see most frequently, and what strategies have you found most effective in addressing them?

One of the biggest challenges I've encountered in my time working with global clients has been the ability to scale effectively and reliably. Scalability and reliability are critical, especially when dealing with diverse systems and services, each with its own strengths and weaknesses.

As a typical example of this, we had a customer in India streaming a highly popular cricket competition. During peak season, their concurrent users could jump from 10,000 to 15-20 million within just three to five minutes. To handle this massive surge, we investigated their infrastructure and services, leveraging our video expertise to rebuild components of their infrastructure and middleware. As a result, we were able to increase the number of users their infrastructure could support by a factor of 64.

The key strategies would be to focus on standardization, automation, and leveraging strong technical and strategic expertise across the entire service stack. In this case, by standardizing their infrastructure components, we enabled faster startups and more efficient troubleshooting, ensuring the system could handle rapid scaling demands. Automation, including autoscaling solutions, also played a crucial role in managing unexpected spikes in user numbers, whether we anticipated 10 million users or suddenly faced 15 million, the system could scale accordingly without compromising performance.

‍

Failing to deliver the exceptional user experience that the market demands is one of the fastest ways your OTT businesses will go down. How can companies adapt their operations to today's user expectations while keeping costs in check, even through peak video consumption times or constrained video delivery networks?

One of the best ways to tackle this is by closely examining your overall infrastructure costs. Companies should also use tools like A/B testing to figure out what design features work best for their audience. Efficiency in operations is surely the key.

In my experience, I've seen broadcast operations for example evolve from one person managing four screens to handling over 20. This is to show how the workload and complexity of these tasks have grown significantly over time. AI-driven automation is a valuable solution for such growth. By automating routine monitoring and quality checks, companies can handle these demands more effectively, reducing the strain on personnel and keeping operational costs in check.

That being said, managing this increased complexity in-house can be incredibly challenging. That’s why sometimes, the smartest move is partnering with a provider who really knows the entire OTT ecosystem. They can bring in top-notch technologies and strategic expertise to help you manage costs while staying ahead of the curve.

‍

Growth and business expansion require significant investment and it needs to be carefully evaluated. What are the best practices for OTT businesses to ensure sustainable growth without disproportionately increasing operational expenses? 

Be strategic about the expansion from the get-go. Companies need to clearly identify the markets, offerings, business models, and potential challenges in advance. Then you can make smarter decisions and investments that enable growth without the need to invest heavily in every single market or segment you want to enter. This is where data, observability, and insights from the research play a critical role.

One client we worked with was looking to expand their platform globally, and we helped them design a strategy that kept everything consistent, no matter the country. They standardized content licensing, which meant they didn’t have to manage different catalogs for each region. But more importantly, the data from their observability and monitoring tools was used to guide their decisions on where to launch next. For instance, when the data revealed a significant number of users accessing their content from a country outside their initial market, it became clear that this was a strong candidate for expansion.

In essence, the two key strategies are leveraging data to identify the most promising new markets and building your platform with scalability in mind from the start. Observability and data-driven insights are invaluable in making these decisions, ensuring that expansion is both efficient and cost-effective.

‍

From a business perspective, what strategy would you recommend for monitoring and controlling costs as you scale, ensuring they stay within budget?

I’d say one of the best moves is to consolidate your tools and expertise. If you can get everything—like your infrastructure, apps, and performance metrics—under one roof, it really helps. This way, you’re not dealing with a bunch of different teams or tools that might miss the bigger picture. You’ll spot issues faster, fix them quicker, and keep costs in check without having to throw more resources at every problem that pops up.

‍

You have mentioned earlier how emerging technologies like AI and automation can be leveraged to cut operational costs and enhance efficiency in streaming services. So how do we realistically start introducing these in the short-term to reduce costs, and what strategies should we plan for in the long-term?

In the short term, a lot of the observability and monitoring tools you’re probably already using have some AI built in. These can help you troubleshoot and fix issues automatically, which means your team can jump on problems faster and get them sorted without a ton of manual work. 

In the long term, you can take it a step further with AI that not only finds the issues but also handles the fixes on its own. That way, your team can focus on the bigger stuff—like scaling, improving availability, and tightening up security.

‍

What strategy would you recommend for a company that has outgrown its current platform, is facing rising tech costs, and is looking to streamline operations? 

When a company reaches a point where its current tech setup isn’t keeping pace with growth or is becoming too costly, it’s time to rethink both the technological and operational approach. A smart move is partnering with a reliable platform and service provider that can handle everything from setup to support. This streamlines operations, reduces complexity, and often lowers costs compared to managing everything in-house. It also allows your internal teams to focus on their core strengths—whether that’s creating content or expanding the subscriber base—without getting bogged down by tech headaches.

At the IBC show this year, we saw significant interest in E2E services. Many clients are drawn to the idea of working with a single vendor who can handle everything from setup to support, streamlining both the contractual and operational aspects of their business. This trend speaks to the efficiency and simplicity that we offer with Managed Services, and it’s resonating with organizations that want a more hands-off approach.

Our team at Accedo recognizes the importance of this shift, and to support it, we have refined our offerings and ensure that we’re fully prepared to deliver the kind of seamless, end-to-end solutions that our clients are asking for. That said, E2E Managed Services aren’t for everyone. Some clients still prefer the flexibility of a more traditional Professional Services model. But even here, our Managed Services approach is pushing us to find new efficiencies and improvements across the board, which ultimately benefits all our clients—whether they choose Managed or Professional Services.