Kiel (Germany), November 05, 2021 – The Spanish video-on-demand streaming app ATRESplayer is now available on the Foxxum App Store. The ATRESplayer app was created as a catch-up service from Atresmedia – one of the leading media publishing houses in Spain, that owns multiple popular private TV channels like Antena 3 and laSexta, which broadcast nationwide.

With the ATRESplayer app, viewers can gain access to all the programs from Antena 3, laSexta, Antena 3 International and the entire streaming content on Flooxer.

 

ATRESplayer is a freemium service, offering a free but limited selection of content with ads.

Additionally, users can purchase a monthly subscription to access all the ad-free content with ATRESplayer PREMIUM. The app is accessible worldwide and users who live outside of Spain can simply purchase the ATRESplayer PREMIUM International subscription to access the exclusive premium content.

 

Audiences who, for example, want to catch-up on the interviews of national and international celebrities, can find all the episodes from the entire seasons of the highly popular TV show “El Hormiguero 3.0“on the ATRESplayer app. In addition, viewers can enjoy a broad variety of TV series like “Los Hombres de Paco”, TV shows like “Mask Singer: Adivina Quién Canta”, the news, Spanish movies like “Veneno” and telenovelas such as “Amar es Para Siempre”.

 

“We are very proud to integrate ATRESplayer in this new world of smart TVs around the globe, high quality brands and devices that will strengthen our content, and FOXXUM gave us this opportunity to be closer to our subscribers,” says Juan Ignacio Jimenez Gargantilla, Director of Digital Business Development of Atresmedia.

 

“The addition of the ATRESplayer app to our Foxxum App Store is very special to us and brings tremendous value to our Spanish and international market. We are extremely delighted to be able to share the incredible content on the ATRESplayer app with our Spanish speaking viewers worldwide,” says Ronny Lutzi, CEO at Foxxum GmbH.

 

The ATRESplayer app is available on all Vestel devices and TV brands such as: Toshiba, Telefunken, Hitachi, and JVC.

Foxxum’s president Dirk Wittenborg sat down for a highly interesting interview with the German news magazine ADZINE to talk about the current state of the CTV world and market – from monetization options for operating systems to toll bridges, walled gardens, and the general outlook of the CTV world in the future, among other topics.

Below you will find the translated English version of the interview. To read the original German interview on the ADZINE website, click here. 

 

The Global Battle for Toll Bridges in CTV

When people in the advertising industry talk about CTV, most people immediately think of app providers and their streams. However, there is another level before that – the operating systems. With Foxxum, Dirk Wittenborg introduces such a CTV operating system, which is used by various TV brands in a similar way to Android TV or Amazon Fire. After Samsung, Foxxum is the second largest CTV platform in Europe, but nobody knows this because it’s used as a white-label solution. Simultaneously, Foxxum’s Kiel-based team develops CTV apps and operates rlaxx TV, a linear AVOD+FAST service. In this interview, Wittenborg explains why the real battle in CTV is taking place worldwide at a platform level and who will win the race.

 

ADZINE: Hello Dirk. How does the marketing on CTVs work when we go to the level of operating systems?

 

Dirk Wittenborg: Generally, the app providers work together with the platform partner, for example with us or Samsung. Nowadays, this often boils down to an inventory split because Amazon has shaped it that way. The platforms often want thirty percent of the inventory – which is just insanely expensive because it’s usually not there as a margin. We do this differently. For example, the TV manufacturer Sharp uses our operating system in Europe. We take over the marketing here and share the revenue with the brand.

ADZINE: What are the monetization options for operating systems?

 

Wittenborg: There are three levels: firstly, there’s the placement – if someone wants to, for example, sit next to Netflix on the landing page. These are the so-called placement fees. That’s when display banners are possible on the landing page of the platform.

And thirdly, you can work with pre-rolls or post-rolls, depending on the legal agreements in the video playout. Of course, you need the appropriate permissions for this. At rlaxx TV, we show an advertising video in a recommendation layer, where we recommend content from another app before it gets clicked. However, the partner must first allow the recommendation, followed by the marketing.

 

ADZINE: What about pre-, post-, and mid-rolls within streams?

 

Wittenborg: At this point, we’re directly in the video playout. Starting from an ecosystem, you take the app to a foreign country. Usually, the app owner takes over the marketing there, but signs a revenue share agreement with the platform. The classic rate for distribution is thirty percent, which dates all the way back to the old YouTube world. As I said, today it’s often not thirty percent of the revenue, but rather thirty percent of the inventory.

 

ADZINE: Advertisers are very interested in advertising on CTV, but it hasn’t really taken off yet, at least in Germany. What’s the problem?

 

Wittenborg: Germans are, simply speaking, specialists in making everything complicated. Marketing in CTV in this country often runs through sisters of the traditional TV marketers. Prosieben and RTL try to keep this situation as stable as possible for as long as possible. And the advertising industry is very conservative, they are doing what they know for now.

Nevertheless, U.S. players like Roku and Pluto are already here. Their advertising models are already established in the U.S., and they will also establish themselves here through view time and aggressive marketing.

 

ADZINE: The CTV market in Europe is very fragmented. Recently, one of our guest authors – from RTL – outlined an AdTech platform for CTV that covers several European markets and bundles TV-like advertising inventory. Do you think this is realistic?

 

Wittenborg: It’s realistic, but it won’t happen. It’s like the old Roman Empire. It’s a question of who sets up the toll stations. On the one hand, we have the cable network operator, who determines – via his subscribers and his set-top box – which of the advertisers gets into the living room. Then we have the satellite distribution channels like SES Astra, which in turn determine what it costs there.

In CTV, you’ll find walled gardens like from Samsung or LG. Sony and Phillips run ninety percent of their TVs on Android TV, so this walled garden is effectively run by Google. If someone wants to start an advertising community for CTV, then it’s called Google in the end anyway. But they’re definitely not going to join anywhere.

 

ADZINE: Who is building the most toll bridges?

 

Wittenborg: There’s a lot of speed on the market. In the U.S., Amazon has just announced that it’s developing its own TV set. They already sell their own chips for their cloud service, and the next step will be chips for end devices, like Apple is already doing. The goal here is maximum distribution of the toll bridges.

At a local level, the players are all different. The television market in Austria is perhaps still similar to the one in Germany, but in France or Spain it’s completely different. In the CTV field, Android, Amazon, Roku and maybe Facebook are the main players with global ambitions. There just aren’t many that market globally.

 

ADZINE: What made you think of Facebook?

 

Wittenborg: Facebook is looking for growth. Users on social media are no longer growing as strongly and advertising intensity has been exhausted there too. So, outside of the mobile space, the big TV screen is still the best place to advertise.

It’s just a question of who Facebook buys. Maybe it will be Roku – they only cost forty-five billion. Microsoft is sure to follow the same strategy soon. They could even buy Roku and Netflix with ease. And Disney, too, if they wanted to. In two years, Disney will have surpassed Netflix, and then it will be exciting to see what the even bigger ones do.

To put it this way: The giants in the USA have woken up. Amazon has just bought some content from MGM for 9 billion. But that’s still low compared to what one can spend.

 

ADZINE: Who do you see as the winner of this game?

 

Wittenborg: Netflix doesn’t have the financial strength to compete against players like Amazon, Google, or Facebook once they build the toll bridges and simply copy and displace Netflix. Disney, too, is very strong worldwide and has content brands like Mickey Mouse or Marvel and even theme parks – Netflix is far away from that. Plus, a lot of the content today is produced just to keep subscribers from leaving. So, the cost of content is going up, as is the cost of marketing due to increased competition.

 

ADZINE: How is this resolved?

 

Wittenborg: Above all, there will be a big race for the toll bridges, i.e., there will be a battle for the operating systems. Sixty percent belong to the big brands like Samsung, LG etc. forty percent are independent. Here in Germany these include Medion or Orion from the Otto Group. In each country, there are between three and five local brands, which are usually as big as Samsung. Everyone is fighting for this market right now. Samsung has gone from being a manufacturer to a global broadcaster. No one is attacking them directly, so it’s better to offer the local brands an operating system. That’s what we’re doing. For two years now, we’ve been competing with Android, Amazon, and Roku.

Google pays manufacturers ten dollars to use their operating system. At one-hundred million TV sets, Google is pricing the ticket to enter the game at a billion – in the first year. To build a base, they need five to seven years. That puts us at five to seven billion U.S. dollars, and that’s how much it costs just to participate. That’s an expensive gig.

 

ADZINE: Thank you very much for the interview!