How to Reel In VOD Viewers

By Kent Gibbons -- Multichannel News, 10/10/2011 12:01:00 AM

New York — Sending fight fans on a free trip to Las Vegas before a big bout and offering the first 10 minutes of a video-ondemand movie for free to hook the viewer into buying — those are among the tactics cable operators are using to pump up the pay portion of the video-on-demand business.

Operators on a panel at the CTAM in New York conference last week made clear they see free and pay VOD as a vital and growing part of the video mix.

“We talk about VOD being a differentiator,” Gary Lindemann, senior director of video at cable provider Mediacom Communications, said. “It’s prominent in everything we do. It’s a cool application and we try to get that across.”

Comcast has seen the platform grow to the tune of 400 million views per month, Michael Imbesi, executive director of programming and promotions at Comcast’s Xfinity On Demand, said during the same session. That’s up from 350 million views Comcast said it was getting just this past April.

Sampling is something operators can do with the platform to try to boost usage and buys, Imbesi said. Comcast offered 10-minute free previews of Tron and Hanna, two movies with enough action up front to hook a viewer into buying, he said.

Kristin Malaspina, senior director of partnership marketing at Time Warner Cable, said a key to boosting buy-rates is to start promoting movies and events weeks before their on-demand window opens. Time Warner Cable did that while Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was still in theatres, “leveraging the buzz” ahead of the VOD release, she said.

Before the Sept. 17 welterweight pay-perview fight between Floyd Mayweather and Victor Ortiz, Time Warner Cable had a contest to send subscribers to Las Vegas, Malaspina said. “That helped us start the promotion for the fight much earlier, because we had something to talk about to customers. And it wasn’t really ,‘Buy the fight, buy the fight,’ it was, ‘Get exclusive access to win a trip there.’ ”

The fight drew an estimated more than 1 million buys, the third straight 1- million-plus-buy fight for Mayweather.