This 5-step guide is to help you navigate new challenges and mitigate risks arising in this current corona-economy. We know this sudden disruption means you’re dealing with fundamental issues like re-aligning budgets, navigating your newly dispersed teams, and adjusting to an unknown period with shuttered production and live events.

Let us lighten the load for you and highlight 5 measures that can help your business continue to succeed, and how we can help:

1. Your audience is at home and watching more content than ever. Grow your user-base by scaling your Connected TV and Connected Device platforms to reach viewers on the platforms they prefer in the living room. And if you’re not on TV, now is the time to start. Nielsen’s recent Staying Put report predicts streaming will likely spike +60% because of Covid-19 isolation, and shows that remote workers watch 3 more hours of content each week than their commuting counterparts.
   
   
2. Retaining a loyal audience is key in the Corona-economy.  According to consumer-centered business strategy and research company Magid’s 2019 video entertainment Pulse Study, 43% of viewers don’t intend to stay with a streaming service for more than six months. Removing friction between viewers and the content they want to watch is key to creating a sticky audience. On average, it takes 7.4 minutes to pick a Netflix show. Aim to beat this figure as a benchmark for acceptable friction between a user and his content. 
   
   

   Promote new content and use a mix of behavioral analytics and PII (personally identifiable information) to make sure you’re surfacing the gems from  your catalog in a way that is relevant for individual users. Previous “stay put” natural disasters saw viewers turning to feature films, news and general entertainment (Nielsen), so review and optimize your metadata to create catchy, attention-getting categories that will entice viewers. 

3. Keep an agile mind about monetization. Ad dollars are already dipping as advertisers reassess COVID’s impact on their businesses. People stuck at home means fewer people out shopping, so eCommerce and social media advertising are predicted to see the most growth. Your direct sales team can highlight the premium value of in-app advertising and compel higher CPMs than web rates. Video advertising can also be priced at a premium over display ads on any format.
   
   

   Subscription fatigue has been on the rise, but as our shut-in society extends, viewers are adding more services, according to Nielsen, and may be more willing to pay for the specialty content they love. Keep your options open and test various models, including AVOD, SVOD, and AVOD + premium content. Create a plan to measure frequently and react quickly as policy updates and citizen mobility change seemingly daily.

4. In a world without live events or new production, refresh existing footage to create new and new-to-you releases. While remote production gets up to speed and the sports industry figures out a path forward, look to mine your production archives to create new content from old. Voice over, expert commentary and other audio opportunities will be easiest to record quickly and overlay in new documentaries/docudramas. Take this opportunity to improve your production tagging to optimize footage retrieval and speed new content to your viewers.

5. Be more cost-efficient than ever before. ROI is always a top KPI, but in these uncertain times, you must prioritize your dev work like never before. Allocate time and budget for known requirements (app maintenance) and expected ones (like updates to remain app store-compliant). New features and new platforms will require costs to launch, and maintain in “life after launch” so make sure you’re agreeing to an expected scope with stakeholders in advance and troubleshoot carefully to make the most of your development dollars.

People are home watching more content than before. Scaling app strategies to at-home platforms optimizing metadata and analytics, and repackaging catalog content are all immediate steps you can take toward moving your business forward in uncertain times. 

If you feel your business needs support, schedule a demo to learn how Zapp and the Applicaster team can help develop a plan for you. The Zapp platform’s unique architecture is designed to provide scalability and flexibility that speeds your app to launch, enables quick-turn updates throughout the app's lifecycle, and allows for rapid iteration from anywhere at any time. 

Additional resources:

• Nielsen’s Staying Put: Consumers Forced Indoors During Crisis Spend More Time On Media and Tech Crunch’s concise synopsis.
• Traffic surge as reported by ZDnet
• Specifics on streaming reductions from RapidTV News