Supply They might look the same at first glance, but the differences between streaming your video content over Facebook or YouTube Live, and through your own managed OTT service are enormous.
Red Bee OTT enables you to create your own content hub; a branded destination for all your video content, where you can own your audience’s experience and learn from viewer data to keep on improving your service.
If you’re serious about things like brand equity, audience insight, monetizing your content, and building an asset rather than relying on a social media platform where you have very little ownership, there’s only one winner.
Here are 5 reasons why Red Bee OTT is better than social media streaming.
1. A BRANDED PRESENCE
Unlike Facebook or YouTube Live, where you stream your content through their website and app with minimal branding of your own, Red Bee OTT is a white label offering that gives you complete control over how your app and video player looks. So, wherever your audience accesses your content – web, iOS, TVOS, Android, Android TV, Chromecast and many more platforms – it will look and feel like you built it yourself (think Netflix).
Our off-the-shelf solution also gives you the opportunity to have your own branded app, which people can download from the App Store or Google Play. This does wonders for brand equity, as it creates a destination for fans to access your content, rather than sending them to a third-party service provider.
By having a standalone product where all your video content can ‘live’, you begin to own your own audience. And to grow that audience, you can then use social media for what it’s good at – driving your fans and followers to your domain.
Another thing to bear in mind with the social platforms is the recommended videos that pops up once yours has finished streaming. Who’s to say your audience isn’t going to be served a video from one of your competitors? There’s no risk of this with Red Bee OTT.
2. USER BEHAVIOUR AND STATISTICS
The better you know your audience, the more you can understand their viewing behavior and improve their experience. Over time, satisfied viewers become brand advocates who will recommend your service because of how good it is.
The granular analytics you get with Red Bee OTT tell you everything you need to know, with full visibility of who’s watching, where they’re watching from, what time they accessed your content, what device they viewed it on and more.
This opportunity to analyze viewer behavior is an invaluable feedback loop that allows you to continually improve the production of your content, which in turn, will improve viewer satisfaction.
With Facebook or YouTube Live, you only get to know the viewing figures, which is useful for gauging the popularity of one of your videos, but little else.
3. ENHANCED FEATURES
While social media streaming lets you create playlists of your videos, that’s where the control ends. Red Bee OTT allows you to package your videos so it’s like running your own TV service, with virtual channels served up any way you like – curated by you, personalized to your viewer’s preferences, or delivered at a certain time of day.
Other standout features compared with Facebook and YouTube Live include:
- Low latency – a lot less lag means a better viewing experience
- User groups – restrict age groups or set up subscribers (Basic & Premium)
- Geo-blocking – stop different markets seeing rights-restricted videos
- Bookmarks – viewers can conveniently resume watching from where they left
4. OPPORTUNITIES TO MONETIZE
While you can still offer content for free through your managed OTT service, you have the option to create different levels of membership and billable content, where people can pay to access your best content. You could do this by creating a “Premium” area, by offering Pay-Per-View content like Sky. Or you could simply put everything behind a paywall, in the same way Netflix does. Whatever way you choose to monetize, Red Bee OTT comes with a range of pre-integrated billing options (Adyen, Stripe & PayPal).
You can also monetize through adverts, with Service-Side Ad Insertion giving you more control over the types of ads you want to display with your content, so you can make ads more targeted and relevant to each viewer. Plus, we won’t put random ads next to your content, which improves the experience for your viewers.
5. HIGH QUALITY LIVE STREAMING
We mentioned low latency earlier, but live streaming is where it really becomes apparent. Red Bee OTT delivers your live content in broadcast quality, rather than with the many skips, jumps and lags that occur with social media streaming.
Your content can also be made instantly available as Video on Demand (VoD) once the live stream is over – something you’d have to do manually on YouTube.
With all these benefits, it’s clear why so many global media companies and international brands choose Red Bee OTT for streaming their content.