For legacy media companies, streaming is transforming longstanding business practices and relationships throughout the media value chain. As some providers struggle with the economics of the streaming business and how to capture a bigger share of wallet, these changes require transforming the way content is valued and monetized, as well as rethinking the metrics that producers measure and report. Metrics around growth, progress, and churn need to be defined (and continually refined) in an evolving operational environment.
This puts new demands on the finance function in the streaming ecosystem, and providers must adapt from a traditional mindset on licensing deals with third parties to optimizing data-driven reporting and analytics of weekly, daily, and hourly subscriber trends as well as understanding the profitability of content, promotional offers, geographic regions, and individual customers.
To compete successfully, these historically business-to-business (B2B) media companies need to build and scale a business-to-consumer (B2C) operating model. The rapid move to streaming resonates throughout the content ecosystem, but under a different business paradigm. Media companies launching streaming services need a full awareness of their operating costs under a streaming model before they engage with consumers.
In this paper, we examine the new demands on the finance function in the streaming ecosystem.
