Russia’s NTV-Plus ended the third quarter with a total of 205,000 subscribers to its OTT platform.
This, according to the company, was 2.3% more than in the same period last year. At the same time, the total number of NTV-Plus subscribers – the company also operates the country’s longest-established DTH service ¬– was around 1,020,000. The share of NTV-Plus TV (OTT) viewers who were also DTH subscribers was 143% higher in Q3 than a year earlier and exceeded 25% of the entire TV audience.
NTV-Plus notes that such a significant increase in the number of online TV users among satellite TV subscribers is explained by the high penetration of the operator’s converged product – the Basic Online package. NTV-Plus also offers its subscribers the “Online TV (Multiscreen)” service, which allows them to watch TV channels included in the satellite subscription on any digital device on favourable terms.
NTV-Plus also says that the level of loyalty of the online audience remained at a high level in Q3. According to the AppStore, 82% of users renewed their subscription for the next period. The number of subscribers using the SVOD model was about 62% of the total number of digital subscribers, and the number of viewers using the PPV viewing model was about 3%.
Commenting on the figures, Konstantin Smirnov, director of NTV-Plus digital products department, said: “The steady growth in the number of online TV users among satellite TV subscribers suggests that we have correctly assessed the audience’s needs and created a converged product that meets the expectations of subscribers. By and large, the viewer today does not care at all how the signal was received by his device – from a satellite, from the network, or even from a general house antenna. Therefore, the priority for us remains the development of functionality that increases the penetration of services and the expansion of the content offer. The emergence of radio channels on the digital platform corresponds to the development strategy of NTV-Plus TV as a full-fledged service-aggregator”.
