Indonesia, treasure trove for pay-TV operators
With a population of over 250 million, Indonesia is the world’s fourth largest country by population and also the largest archipelago in the world.
According to Nielsen based on a gross rate card that excluded digital, it showed ad spend to have reached Rp 118 trillion (US$8.77billion). Early 2015 saw a deep slowdown in the market but advertising expenditure recovered at over 7%, being only slightly slower than 2014.
Zenith Media expects the global advertising market to grow by US$77 billion from 2015 to 2018, with Indonesia in fourth place contributing to 5% of this extra advertising expenditure. A slight change is also expected in the ranking of the world’s largest advertising markets from 2015 to 2018, where Indonesia is expected to replace Canada as the 10th largest advertising market.
Among Indonesian e-commerce startups, online marketplace Tokopedia and online ticket-booking platform Traveloka were found to have spent the most on TV advertising in 2015, with Tokopedia reportedly spending Rp 559billion (US$40.2million) while Traveloka spent a total of Rp 553billion (US$39.8million). Both companies were placed ninth and tenth position in the general top 10 list of companies that were the biggest spenders in TV advertisements in 2015.
CASBAA found that Indonesia had the lowest pay-TV penetration rate of TV households in Asia-Pacific in 2013, with a percentage of 9. However, it has the highest projected pay-TV subscriber growth in the Asia-Pacific, at 15%. A forecast for 2016 shows for the penetration of pay-TV subscribers to grow by 2% and for the number of pay-TV subscribers to be 6.3 million. 2017’s forecast also sees a 2% rise in penetration and 7.1 million pay-TV subscribers.
New channels
Celestial Tiger Entertainment’s Miao Mi made its debut on PT MNC Sky Vision network in January this year. Miao Mi is the first pan-regional Mandarin kids channel, created specifically to entertain and educate pre-school children regardless of their language background.
Turner International Asia-Pacific’s Oh!K also extended its service to Indonesia this year, offering an OTT deal with first-run, localised and high quality video on mobile devices and online via Tribe.
Key developments
Twitter has had many successful initiatives in Indonesia since the opening of its office in March 2015. Some of these include Peta Jakarta with the Jakarta city government, the Ramadhan campaign that managed to garner 20% of global conversation from Indonesia alone. Another initiative by Twitter Indonesia was the Independence Day campaign, Nyalakan Indonesia, which resulted in more than 440,000 tweets using the hashtag #R170.
CNN Indonesia began broadcasting in August 2015 for the first time from Transmedia broadcast centre in Jakarta. The start of CNN Indonesia follows the launch of its website, CNNIndonesia.com in October 2014.
It offers a mix of local and international news and the latest in business and sports, all in Bahasa Indonesia. CNN Indonesia is part of a strategic effort by CNN International to explore ways to reach consumers more locally, regionally and internationally by partnering with other leading media organisations.
Beln Sports acquired the Indonesian English Premier League (EPL) rights for US$75 million from 2016 to 2019. Returns on EPL distribution have shown to be challenging especially for pay-TV in Indonesia. Packaging is the key in increasing the value of EPL for Beln on pay-TV platforms in Indonesia.
Zee Entertainment’s Zee Hiburan channel has successfully completed its first year (as of March 2016) in Indonesia. It ventured into Indonesia to consolidate their position and market share, which is one of the fastest growing pay-TV markets in the Asia-Pacific region. The channel is currently available on five platforms in Indonesia – viz.ICTA, K Vision, Orange TV, First Media and Dili Timor Leste ETO Telko.
Eccho Rights has also signed a new deal with Indonesian broadcaster SCTV for its Turkish drama Elif. In the first run of its first season, the show became number one in the timeslot, consistently scoring over a 20% share of audience as compared to the channel average of 10%.
In March this year, iflix announced the completion of a large new round of funding led by Sky PLC. Emtek Group also participated in the round through its subsidiary Surya Citra Media, one of Indonesia’s leading television and content companies.
Being Asia’s largest video-ondemand service, HOOQ debuted in Indonesia with over 35,000 hours of international and local titles. A startup venture between Singtel, Sony Pictures Television and Warner Bros., it aims to drive the entertainment revolution and change the way Asians consume entertainment, particularly in the emerging markets.
Ideal Systems took the lead to design and build CNN Indonesia’s new turnkey newsroom solution. The launch was the result of collaboration between CNN International and CT Corp Indonesia. The groundbreaking channel is a first of its kind for CNN in Southeast Asia, which delivers CNN’s unique brand of high-quality news. CNN Indonesia also plans to acquire licensing for free-toair broadcast in the upcoming DVB-T2 switchover in Indonesia.
Media innovation in Thailand
W ith a population of 71 million and a TV penetration of 96.5%, Thailand ranks as Southeast Asia’s largest TV market due to its size and longevity in the business. New digital platforms for terrestrial, satellite and broadband distribution are dramatically reshaping industry dynamics. NBTC licensing brings greater clarity with DTH, cable TV and DTT platforms being licensed. An IPTV service is also operated by a telco, under its telecom operator license.
Thailand’s digital advertising forecast is expected to rise by 23% this year, according to DAAT. An estimate of THB 9.9 billion (US$280 million) is expected to be spent on digital media advertising. Advertisers are surpassing traditional straight to digital media, with cost-effectiveness in mind, even though the first quarter of 2016 saw a 6% drop in overall advertising spend. This is also encouraged by the ascension of online video consumption and active mobile Internet users.
2015 saw a huge decrease in mobile subscriptions across all operators, especially DTAC. However, 3G penetration is still growing strongly with over 90% of subscribers now on 3G networks.
Even though pay-TV growth is limited due to free satellite and digital terrestrial, TrueVisions has managed to grow by repackaging its products effectively. Much of its pay-TV growth is being driven aggressively with broadband bundling.
OTT regulations
For OTT services in Thailand, there is no economic regulation of internet-based content services. However, there are some restrictions on advertising certain goods and services online (e.g. firearms, medicine, food, fortune-tellers) and content (e.g. obscenity, offending the monarchy). Enforcement of content restriction is stricter in respect of local services as opposed to offshore OTT services.
Key developments
Magine TV’s first step into the Asian mobile TV market in October 2015 ended up in a partnership with Thailand-based cable network CTH. Magine TV will power CTH’s OTT offering, distributing their entertainment and sports channel including the Barclays Premiere League coverage across Thailand. Netflix arrived in Thailand in January this year. Since then, only Thai censorship was incorporated leaving Thai subtitles and other support for later. This was the result of a global expansion by Netflix to 130 new countries overnight. Netflix is offering a free, no-obligation trial of its services for a month, with the option to switch between three payments plan then after.
GRB Entertainment clinched programming deals for 18 factual entertainment titles with Thailand’s Next Step Company. Many extreme nature and wildlife titles were sold, such as Expeditions to the Edge and I Cloned My Pet.
Smoke & Mirrors (S&M) launched a new joint venture with Oriental Post, a subsidiary of leading Thai entertainment company, Kantana Group. The new venture saw S&M take its first step into the ASEAN region with the launch of Smoke & Mirrors Bangkok. The newly established company is a full service post-production facility offering onset supervision, colour grading, online compositing and finishing, CG / 3D animation and a comprehensive visual effect department, employing leading creative talents globally.
In April, AIS partnered with Turner to carry five of its channels on the AIS Playbox OTT service and the Play mobile app. This led to almost 40 million AIS mobile subscribers being able to live-stream the five linear channels and to watch catch-up content. Turner is the first international broadcaster to offer content on the AIS platforms. This is also the first time HLN and the World Heritage Channel were made available in Thailand. The five channels are Warner TV, Toonami, World Heritage Channel, HLN and Boomerang.
AIS switched on commercial voiceover- LTE (VoLTE) service across Thailand. It gives users with the proper device with ‘crystal clear’ HD voice quality, reduced background noise, faster call connection and the ability to access the Internet simultaneously while on a VoLTE call.
