Damián Craimowicz Latam Director at Grey Juice Lab, talked to Prensario about the current situation of the company and mentioned which are the priorities for this year.
Despite the continuing pandemic, the overall outlook has been good. The studios started to release new titles in the theatrical window with the gradual opening of theaters and that has a direct positive impact on our business.
On the other hand, new operators have decided to launch different projects in the region, taking advantage of the momentum of digital home consumption. This led us to close new content deals to meet the demands of our customers'.
New agreements
At the client level, we have closed deals in different Latin American countries. In Costa Rica we successfully launched Soy TV in Costa Rica, a transactional content solution for web and mobile devices. Meanwhile, Multicines, a leading cinema chain in Ecuador, decided to take a step forward in the value chain and is already in beta for its transactional product.
Thus, by covering the first and second windows, it will have great opportunities in terms of commercial and marketing actions, since, for example, it will be able to commercialize in VOD the movie sagas that are released in theaters. We also closed a pan-regional agreement with One Play, a company of Uruguayan origin, whose main concept is to ally with brands of different types in order to have a greater capillarity of product sales, which will include TVOD and SVOD.
Finally, we closed a deal with Smart in Belize, a mobile operator, also for a transactional video service. In this way, GJL also sets foot in the English-speaking Caribbean'.
Most required content
On a transactional level, new releases are the most requested titles. In this sense, we have managed premium windows with the studios simultaneously with the cinema that worked very well on VOD.
But we also work with bookstore selections with special discounts that have generated a lot of elasticity in local markets. In SVOD, the most requested contents are short series, in episodes and seasons, family and children's movies. And we cannot leave aside the boom of Nordic and Turkish series, which are a great success in the region'.
Market situation
Clearly these were years of great change in the industry. The launch of studio OTTs changed some of the rules of the game, but in general we see them as complementary windows, and so do the majors. The penetration of an OTT service depends on several factors, especially in our countries, and we know that it hardly exceeds 15% of a customer base. For all other customers, rental remains an attractive option that allows them to control spending without being tied to a monthly payment.
