With television networks relying more heavily on licence fees paid by over-the-top (OTT) video programming distributors, Media Audits International (MAI) has announced the creation of an OTT digital audit programme.
The idea is to audit distribution carriage agreements and subscriber/transactional records maintained by OTT content distributors, including pay-TV providers, for ‘skinny bundles’ of cable and satellite television channels.
During the first quarter of 2018, MAI will be reaching out to TV networks and other entertainment media content providers to participate. In addition to identifying licence fee discrepancies, the audits can identify contractual issues that need to be clarified with both distributors and content owners.
Because OTT content delivery involves different forms of authorisation, distribution, consumption, billing systems and data repositories, MAI’s OTT audit programme will be managed by a new and separate digital audit team to ingest and analyse massive amounts of transaction data.
“At the same time cord-cutting and cord-shaving have cut into the traditional revenue stream for television programming networks, the value of worldwide online distribution has risen to $46 billion per year and already represents 2% of all pay TV households,” said MAI.
CEO Bruce Lazarus. “From experience, we know the underlying billing systems and remittance processes used by new OTT content delivery platforms can evolve during this period of high growth, making this the best time to measure contract compliance with distribution agreements and ensure general payment practices are meeting everyone’s expectations.”
MAI audits more than 100 million cable, telco and IPTV households per year to ensure that the financial and carriage terms are applied in a manner consistent with the terms of its clients’ distribution agreements. More recently, its audit practices have been extended to assist providers of digital home entertainment using electronic-sell-through (EST), video-on-demand (VOD), streaming and pay-per-view (PPV) platforms.