There are three primary TV app stores in operation today. Here a user can browse, search and install apps for either Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV or Roku devices. With the exception of Apple, each of these app stores is accessible both on and off the device. We’ll take a quick, high level look at both versions of the app store across all three devices and how their design may affect the chances of your app being discovered.

Amazon Fire TV App Store

On the device

What’s immediately obvious when logging onto Amazon’s Fire TV is that television and video content takes precedence above all else. The app store itself is no where near as evident as it is on Apple TV and once there, you’re confronted with a wall of thumbnails and app categories that are more at home in a mobile app store than a store for TV apps. I.e. Communication.

However, the larger challenge you’ll face in the Amazon app store is competing with all things Amazon Prime — a battle you’re not likely to win. Moving on to Option 2.

In the browser

This is where Amazon outperforms the competition, even if the app you’re looking for is a little difficult to find. This is primarily due to the fact that Amazon operates one app store for all devices. As such, a search result will often wield multiple versions of the same app. It’s then up to you to figure out which app is for Kindle, Amazon Fire Phone or Fire TV.

Even if the web-based store doesn’t sound that great at this point, once you’ve found the app you like, adding it to your device is as simple as hitting the Deliver button. This functionality is not unique to Amazon, although given how familiar most of us are with visiting Amazon and that we very rarely need to log in when we do, it makes the whole process much faster than on other platforms.

Apple TV App Store

On the device

Unlike Amazon Fire TV, the Apple TV app store is front and center on the device. The Featured section of the app store is as coveted as it is in the mobile app store as it’s the starting point when entering the actual app store.

Browsing Apple’s TV apps is a little easier than on Amazon due to a more simplified structure. However, with respect to apps, it’s search functionality is lacking. According to Siri, I don’t see an app called ‘Airbnb’, yet the text search results tell me something very different. Not great.

In the browser

This is where I would write something if Apple actually had an in-browser version of their Apple TV app store. Unfortunately, they do not and as such, the only way in which your app will be discovered on Apple TV is if someone comes across it by browsing the categories or searching for it via text search, using their remote. As a result, instead of a site linking to a location where the user can download the app, instructional guides have taken their place.

Roku App Store

On the device

Like Amazon, third party apps are not given priority on the service. Instead, what’s promoted is a second rate video rental offering called M-GO. Nevertheless, by way of the Streaming Channels option you’ll find all of Roku’s available apps. While I don’t have a voice-enabled Roku 4, the search results will return an app, and not just a movie or TV show, based on the input, unlike Apple.

In the browser

Like Amazon, I can visit the Roku website and trigger an app install on my Roku device. The site is a little buggy and like the device itself, you won’t be able to lean too heavily on organic downloads based on a user browsing the apps.

There’s obviously a lot of commonalities cross all three platforms and no one app store is head and shoulders above the others. What’s clear is that if you’re building TV apps, you cannot simply rely on the store itself to put your app in front of potential users. In a future post, I’ll give you some strategies we’ve had success with to drive TV app installs.

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In 2014, each of the 32 NFL teams received a payment of $226.4MM; an equal share of the $7.2b generated by the NFL, with the majority of those funds coming from the sale of that year’s television broadcast rights. The purchasers of said rights, CBS, Fox and NBC, along with DirecTV and ESPN, relied on a combination of advertising, licensing and subscriber revenue to recoup their investment and will continue to do so throughout the length of the current agreement that expires in 2022. Unfortunately for them, each of these revenue streams is under attack from every possible direction. Digital media ad sales will surpass that of television for the first time this year, viewers are abandoning their cable subscription at an ever increasing rate, and over the last two years, Disney’s crown jewel, ESPN, has lost 7MM subscribers. Despite all this, each of these companies is on the hook for their share of roughly $3.1b every year, for the next six years — and that’s only the NFL rights. When you take into account the rights agreements held by these companies across multiple sporting leagues, the numbers soar.

Despite each team receiving an equal share of whatever broadcast fees are secured, the broadcast value of each individual game varies greatly as it’s determined by the size of the audience an advertiser can reach. While the collective purchase approach benefits those teams that play in a smaller market such as the San Diego Chargers, the larger market teams including the Giants and the Bears are arguably receiving less than they should, relative to the value generated by broadcasting their games. Fortunately for the Chargers, the networks do not have the option to align themselves with specific teams; yet. Come 2022, when a new set of broadcast agreements are being negotiated, the NFL will be hoping to improve upon the price previously paid. What’s less known is whether the broadcasters will accept such a high price, or even be in a position to entertain the idea.

Spanish soccer clubs previously negotiated their television rights individually and the market priced their games accordingly. Heading into the 2015–16 season, Barcelona FC sold their television broadcast rights for $150MM. Contrast that to the $19MM received by the league’s smaller teams and you can begin to understand why major metropolitan-based clubs like Barcelona FC and Real Madrid dominate the league. The Spanish league has since agreed to negotiate their television broadcast rights collectively in order to increase the league’s competitiveness and ensure that all teams have the necessary funds to attract top talent. As an outcome, Barcelona FC is expecting to receive significantly less television money going forward, and they’re actively working to make up for the shortfall.

In July the club launched FCB Gamepass, a video-on-demand service that includes all of Barcelona FC’s 2015–16 games, archive footage, player interviews, behind-the-scenes coverage and more, all for a one-time payment of roughly $40. Given its recent launch, it’s difficult to determine how successful the offering might be. Fortunately for us, Barcelona FC is not the first club to produce its own content. English Premier League team Manchester United has been producing it’s own video-based content for the last 18 years. MUTV is the team’s own television channel that includes every one of their matches, player interviews, a number of talk shows and analysis segments for the equivalent of $10 per month. The two services differ in one key way. FCB Gamepass is IP-delivered and available on any device. MUTV is only available via a cable subscription, and not currently available in many of the world’s largest markets, including the US. So how has MUTV performed? In 2013 the club announced it had reached a staggering 8.5MM subscribers. If that number’s not large enough for you, what’s even more startling is that paid subscribers cannot view live games, on either service, as that would infringe upon the existing television broadcast agreements. Let me state that another way:

A single English Premier League football club, generates more than $1b in annual subscriber revenue by producing club-specific video content and they do not need to show their games live to do so.

Due to the reliance on the cable companies that distribute MUTV, the full $1b is obviously not finding its way back to Manchester United. This is where Barcelona FC’s strategy differs. Television broadcasters and cable networks used to have a monopoly on market reach. The internet has changed that and content creators can now reach their audience wherever they are in the world, without having to give away 90% of the revenue they’re able to attract, to do so.

I’ve said before that we’ll see multiple sporting teams launch their own television channel and that it will be distributed via a TV app. The success of MUTV and the investment Barcelona FC is making are extremely strong indicators that doing so can have a significant impact on a team’s bottom line. And to do so does not require the extensive leg work to negotiate broadcast rights with cable operators, the world over. Nowadays content can be made instantly available regardless of where the viewer may be.

And while this approach could add another one hundred million dollars to the bottom line of any NFL team, without infringing on their broadcast agreements, it’s also a hedging strategy. Broadcasters are feeling the squeeze. Ad revenues haven’t been what they once were and cable networks are paying close attention to their costs. It may not happen in two years or the next five, but broadcast rights purchase prices are not sustainable and they will come down. If that were to happen, almost every NFL team will very quickly find themselves in trouble. The teams that have built up their own paid audience will be the ones that can weather this shift. They’ll also be the teams that have the greatest international exposure and, if it makes financial sense, will be in prime position to broadcast their own games directly to those paying fans, live. If and when this future arrives, the team that has invested the time and effort to grow it’s own paid subscriber base by producing engaging and in-demand content will, without question, be the most valuable team in the NFL.

And what if this future does not eventuate and the broadcast rights are sold in 2022 for more than the current contract value? Based upon the performance of MUTV and the investments being made by Barcelona FC, sporting fans are willing to pay for content beyond just live games. This leaves very few reasons as to why an NFL team wouldn’t want to discover just how much revenue that content might command.

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If 33M sounds like a big number, that’s because it is. If you were to combine the total number of YouTube subscribers to channels from ABC News, CNN, Al Jazeera, The New York Times, The WSJ, Sky News, CBS News, The Guardian, Fox News, Reuters, NBC News & The Washington Post, you’d still be short by about 27M.

The reason for the sizable difference in subscriber count is simply that YouTube promotes these channels ahead of all others.

This can be seen during the sign up process, when browsing new channels to subscribe to, and from their regular appearance in the recommended channel list. This is not because YouTube knows nothing about you on arrival to the site. If they chose to, YouTube could recommend to me the CNBC channel based upon my reading an article on their site a few days ago. Instead, YouTube encourages me to subscribe to its own #News channel.

The role of an aggregator is simply to surface relevant content for the viewer. In an ideal world, the aggregator will reserve some semblance of quality across the content being surfaced. This may be determined by the reputation of the publisher or the popularity of the content, for example. YouTube’s hashtag channels take a slightly different approach. According to the support page:

You don’t need to do anything except follow the normal best practices for discovery of a video: Have a really good title and description.

Remember to focus on quality of tags rather than the quantity.

Title and tags. That’s it. Not a single mention of the actual content that people are there to watch. The result of this approach is that content from a reputable publisher such as the Washington Post will frequently appear alongside lessor know publishers like slow911.

Why then is YouTube claiming subscribers for itself and devaluing top media brands by placing them alongside the latest upload from anyone with an iPhone? It’s not due to the popularity of the video or the time at which it was uploaded. The truth is that it all comes down to the way in which ads are purchased online.

The most sophisticated ad buyers, and therefore those with the largest budgets, are interested in purchasing an audience, regardless of what they may be watching at the time. To that end, YouTube is interested in a user watching a video, any video, in order to serve an ad. If a viewer is subscribed to a hashtag channel, there’s an endless number of videos available to support the placement of an ad. Alternatively, if a viewer is subscribed to a publisher’s channel, the number of ad placement opportunities is limited to the frequency in which the publisher uploads new videos. And from what it looks like, it’s a strategy that appears to be working given there are now hashtag channels for even the most niche topics.

The lesson here is that building an audience on a platform other than one that you control comes with a great deal of risk. For at anytime, the platform may choose to compete directly with you for subscribers, and even worse, leverage your very own content to do so.

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Thanks to their legacy business model, a broadcast network has the unenviable task of having to deliver content to its viewers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The diversity in viewership throughout the day has resulted in each of the major networks having a content portfolio designed to cater to anyone and everyone. The Bold and the Beautiful for the daytime crowd, NCIS for primetime viewers and the Home Shopping Network for insomniacs. The same diversity of content can be found within network TV apps. Yet despite the fact that I can watch whatever I want, whenever I want, I’m no more likely to watch The Bold and the Beautiful now, than if I could have done so at 11am on a Tuesday morning via broadcast television. It’s an approach that’s a mile wide and an inch deep, and one that has resulted in a complete ambivalence toward network broadcasters.

Content creators have proved that the value of a smaller, yet passionate following far exceeds that of a larger somewhat disinterested audience. I would argue that FOX fits within the latter category. However, at the show level, there are pockets of extremely passionate fans. This is evidenced by the more than 100,000 Simpsons subreddit subscribers, the millions of votes cast during each season of American Idol and the abundance of X-Files fan sites. Individually, each of these audiences is a community. A community that can be bought together via a dedicated app.

That’s all very well and good but how can a show that runs for 6 months of the year and airs once a week, justify its own app? The answer is far greater than just past episodes. An app represents an opportunity to consolidate all content that’s tangentially relevant to the show itself. That includes outtakes, cast interviews, audition tapes, behind the scenes content or the appearance a cast member once made on a late night talkshow. Furthermore, it’s a location to aggregate content that’s personally produced by cast members, which today is scattered across YouTube, Facebook, Periscope and others. The viewers come for the show but stay for the extras. No longer are they dependent upon a weekly airing cycle. Instead, they have a constant feed of new and interesting content; content that if delivered in this manner can rightfully justify a small, monthly subscription fee. This, I believe, is the direction in which we are heading.

Understandably, the networks are somewhat hesitant to move toward this future. Instead of competing with one another on the size of their content library, they’ll have to compete on a show-by-show-basis. Today, we’re one step removed from this future with NBC being the first to fragment its offering with the pending launch of Seeso, a $3.99 per month TV app focused exclusively on comedy. While this is a step in the right direction, I imagine it’ll be short-lived thanks to that age-old motivator; competition.

If content fans are thought of as a community, then YouTube is their rallying point. But a steady decline in ad prices, and therefore creator payouts, have forced many YouTubers to diversifying their business. Product sponsorships, paid content, book deals, podcasts, merchandise sales and cross-promotional opportunities are now common among YouTubers, and not just those with the largest followings. Yet these are activities not supported by YouTube and therefore content creators are increasingly motivated to route their viewers elsewhere. Previously, YouTube could offer content creators all that they needed to run their business — today, it’s the top of a purchase funnel for a transaction that will occur elsewhere.

Of all the monetization options available to YouTubers, only one has the potential to deliver the balanced, mutual benefit between creators and viewers that YouTube once did — premium content subscriptions. This gives rise to two questions. 1. Isn’t that what YouTube Red is? No, YouTube Red faces the same mile wide, inch deep problem broadcast networks do; and, 2. If not YouTube, where should the premium content be distributed? The answer is, within the content creator's own dedicated TV app.

It’s important to note that encouraging YouTube viewers to install a TV app that’s solely focused on a single content creator is not reflective of a belief that YouTube is no longer important. YouTube should be leveraged for what it does best — helping viewers discover you and your content. The entire site is designed to help viewers discover new content, not keep them returning to your content. This is enforced by everything from the homepage recommendations, to the navigation menu order and the choice of Up Next video. Interestingly enough, it’s the broadcast and cable networks that understand this best. SNL content is enormously popular on YouTube. Yet you cannot watch an entire SNL episode on YouTube. To do that, you’ll have to watch it elsewhere and pay for the privilege of doing so. HBO also leverages the discovery elements of YouTube to promote its show Ballers. Ballers: Inside the Episode is a YouTube series designed to generate interest in the show, and if you’re so inclined, you can head over to an HBO property to watch it. But there is one group that stands out from the rest. By employing this very strategy, the WWE Network has managed to build a subscriber base of 1.2 million fans, each paying roughly $10 per month and viewing the content on any one of the company’s TV apps. Likewise, Crunchyroll, a content company focused on Japanese anime, recently announced that they surpassed 750,000 paid subscribers, the bulk of whom subscribe to their content via, you guessed it, a TV app.

So what’s preventing YouTubers from making their content available via paid subscription within a TV app? The simple answer is that they’re not app developers. There are three major streaming TV platforms on the market today — Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Roku. The market is still determining who has the most compelling offer and therefore each platform has roughly the same marketshare, with some give-and-take depending upon the source of reference. In short, this means that an app needs to be available on all three platforms.

The best apps have the best content, and the best content is produced by content creators, not app developers. Yet this is not reflected in the tools provided by the platforms. Instead, content creators are asked to visit a developer subdomain and dive head-first into Xcode, WebView templates and BrightScript. For most, this is a hurdle too high. To prompt an en masse publishing of TV apps, a very different set of tools is required.

There will be no app to develop, only apps to populate. YouTube will supply much of the initial content given that’s where it’s located today. But in order to restore the balance between creator and viewer, subsequent content will reside solely on the app and YouTube accounts will be limited to awareness-driving clips.

The ability to publish an app, versus having to develop one, will give rise to millions of new TV apps. Existing media properties will fragment into multiple apps, specifically targeting their most passionate supporters. MLB.tv will fragment into an app for every team. Universities will leverage their own TV app to engage with alumni. Every musician will have their own TV app as will every active YouTuber, Twitch broadcaster, Vimeo publisher, Snapchat and Periscope user. This, in turn, will propel the broadcast and cable networks to segment their content portfolio by show, if for no other reason than to increase the size of their app store footprint.

But will this result in the total number of TV apps exceeding that of mobile apps? In short, there is a greater number of content creators, than there are mobile apps. For every mobile game, there is more than 10x that in gameplay Twitch accounts. For every email client, there are 100 YouTube channels providing time management advice and for every calendar, alarm clock or other utility app there are another thousand content creators focused on satisfying their specific audience. By removing the barriers to developing a TV app, content creators will flock to establish a presence on these platforms in order to increase the size of their audience and access an additional revenue stream.

Some may argue that this is bad for viewers. That an increase in TV app numbers will mean viewers have to spend more time searching for apps than they would otherwise. However, as content creators seek to grow their business, it’s the TV app that they’ll be directing viewers to. YouTube will continue to be the primary source of content discovery, only now the bulk of the content will live within a TV app. And while there will be a significant increase in the total number of available TV apps, an app will only ever be as popular as its content. However, under a paid subscription model, the size of that popularity no longer needs to number in the millions in order to generate real revenues, as it has on YouTube, which ultimately, will be the primary driver of an increase in TV app numbers.

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Mid 90's — Ad servers

With the popularity of the internet on the rise, publishers began to encounter a problem. They could no longer manage the demand they had across an ever-expanding inventory pool. It was time to automate. The introduction of the publisher ad server meant they could now deploy a single tag across their site, while serving ads on behalf of multiple advertisers through rule-based decisioning.

Not to be outdone, advertisers got their own ad servers. This was prompted by their wanting independent confirmation as to how many times their ad was served. It also gave advertisers the ability to make a creative change just once, as opposed to having to make the same change with each individual publisher they work with.

Thanks to the introduction of ad severs, the ad call that used to go from advertiser to publisher, began to look more like this:

Late 90's — Ad networks

As online audiences grew, publishers found themselves with more inventory than they could sell. Ad networks represented a way for publishers to monetize that unsold inventory. The ad network would package the inventory with that from other publishers and sell the audience by vertical. For example, travel, automotive, financial, etc.

For advertisers, ad networks represent a simple way of accessing a target audience, without having to work with multiple publishers.

However, like many publishers, ad networks often find themselves with more inventory than they can sell. They too use ad networks to try and fill that unsold inventory, which creates what’s known as daisy chaining. Daisy chaining occurs when a single impression is sold multiple times before an ad is displayed. This can increase the publisher’s page load time and can even result in a single ad network buying the same impression multiple times.

Early 00's — Ad exchanges

With advertisers seeking more transparency, coupled with publishers wanting to increase inventory yields, a new category emerged. The ad exchange allows publishers to transact individual impressions based on user-level data.

Similarly, each impression passed through an exchange is auctioned. Meaning that advertisers know exactly what they’re buying, and it’s value, while publishers are no longer forced to sell unsold inventory in bulk at a discounted rate. With the introduction of the ad exchange, the landscape shifted again.

While many publishers and advertisers work directly with the exchange, ad networks continue to participate in the ecosystem by bidding into the exchanges and working with publishers directly. However, the industry fragmented further with the introduction of the demand side platform (DSP) and supply side platform (SSP). A DSP is designed to help advertisers make a more informed decision as to which impressions they should bid on, while the SSP manages yield optimization on behalf of the publisher.

The above image is relatively accurate in terms of where we are today. As you can see, the ad networks are still operating and now work directly with the exchanges and the SSPs, along with the publishers, to buy and sell inventory.

The Future

While the view of some may be that today’s approach to ad serving is chaotic, it offers more transparency to both publisher and advertiser than ever before. And it’s transparency that drove the development of the ad server, the ad exchange and more recent developments such as viewability and 3rd party attribution. Similarly, it’s likely what will drive the next wave of innovation in the programmatic media industry.

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