The natural selection of the video on demand market in Southeast Asia has already taken place. iFlix and Hooq run out of fuel. iFlix was acquired by Tencent, while the remnants of Hooq were acquired by Coupang. In Indonesia, the video on demand industry competition is quite fascinating. Video as a local player managed to compete with Viu and Netflix. Vidio proves that their strategy to capture Indonesian market has finally gaining results.
Vidio team told DailySocial that their application managed to get 5 million downloads in April 2020. The visitor rate has reached 60 million times a month. An increase also occurred in downloads through Smart TV which reached 1 million downloads until July 2020.
“This increasing number shows the great enthusiasm of the people for Vidio’s features and services. The thing is, this growth occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic. This shows a change in Indonesian people’s habit to enjoy online entertainment content,” Vidio’s VP Marketing Rezki Yanuar explained.
Platform transformation and content improvement
Since it was first launched, Video has undergone some adjustments. In the beginning of its appearance, Vidio carried the concept of User Generated Content (UGC). Progressively, Vidio was transformed into a video on demand platform that not only provided films but also sports news footage, series, and other original content.
Vidio’s Chief Product Hadikusuma Wahab (Dhiku) explained this is inseparable from the demand of the Indonesian market that requires longer and higher quality content.
“[…] The growing interest in original content is now one of Vidio’s leading features. For us, consumer demand is the most important thing. Therefore, we have moved towards OTT applications (over the top) since 2019. in order to present the best content and services for the Indonesian people. This strategy has proven to produce Vidio’s ever-increasing customer loyalty and is recognized as a local OTT to be proud of,” Dhiku added.
According to Vidio’s Chief Content, Tina Arwin, it has launched several original series contents with various genres since 2019 in few categories, romance, thriller, comedy, and action. Some titles including Girls in The City, Heart Series, I Love You Baby, Get Married the Series, Jawara, On The Weekend, and Omen were successfully produced by Vidio to meet the demands of the Indonesian people for content demand.
“Vidio’s viewers and partners are the main strength of Vidio’s continued growth. We strongly believe that interesting content presented by a good platform, with strong marketing and distribution, will not succeed without an audience that continues to love domestic content and products. We want to thanking the Indonesian audience and our partners who made Vidio what it is today,” Vidio’s COO Hermawan Sutanto said.
Competition with foreign platforms
Quoted from a report, Vidio ranks second as the most popular platform in Indonesia after Viu. He became the only local video on demand player that triumphed in his country. Even in Indonesia, despite being blocked by a giant operator group, Netflix still competes in the top three.
Facing this intense competition, Hermawan explained three important points of their strategy to compete.
The first strategy is content. Hermawan said that content is the king of everything. Indonesian male audiences, for example, enjoy watching sports content such as Shopee Liga 1, UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, NBA, and One Championship. These shows are exclusive content that can only be watched on the Vidio platform.
For drama fans, besides having original content, Vidio also has popular FTV shows, Mini-Series from TV, local films, Korean dramas, and featured soap operas aired on SCTV and other local television. Running under the same group as two popular TV channels in Indonesia is one of its own advantages.
Aside from content, product innovation is one of Vidio’s focuses to raise interest of many Indonesian users. Hermawan said, his platform has the fastest product customization capabilities considering all are developed by local young talents.
“This is reflected in the Vidio platform development that is massively available, not only on Android and iOS, but also available on Android Smart TVs, Tizen (Samsung), WebOS (LG), to Linux. What makes us proud is that the Vidio platform always features as a recommendation application for entertainment on all platforms, from mobile phones to TVs,” Hermawan explained.
Vidio also innovates by developing interactive features, such as quizzes, games, and polls.
Last is to optimize existing marketing channels. In addition to his position as a member of a large media group in Indonesia, Vidio also believes that cooperation with related parties is able to have a big impact. For example, working with Smart TV developers to become a pre-installed application, working with telecommunications operators to facilitate payment and others.
“Vidio’s collaboration with e-commerce and fintech [platforms] has also encouraging results. Vidio is currently the OTT [platform] with the most sales [voucher codes] at Shopee and LinkAja in June 2020. Achievements that can only be achieved by working with the same value as the partners,” Hermawan explained.
Understanding Indonesian market
Some video on demand platform providers have proven themselves how hard it is to win the hearts of Indonesian users. As Vidio observes, Indonesian users are quite distinct, therefore, they need efforts to present diverse content on their platforms and education to continue for them to love and support Indonesian original content, products and works.
“We always prioritize product development to ensure user’s convenience while using the Vidio application. In addition, we will be more intensive to collaborate with distribution partners to introduce Vidio closer to the Indonesian people,” explained Rezki.
One of the challenges of many video-on-demand platforms in Indonesia is piracy. Even though there are already many legal platforms present in Indonesia, illegal platforms cannot be blocked.
Vidio has continued to actively educate the public that OTT is the best option at an affordable price to be able to enjoy quality content while helping the national creative industry grow.
“Vidio also works with content owners, OTT partners in the industry, and is part of related associations to work with Google, Facebook, and other global platforms to reduce piracy with more intensive education,” Hermawan concluded.
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Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian
