How many streaming services do you use in your daily life? From listening to that engaging podcast during your commute, to attending an important video conference at work, and watching a tv show late at night; over-the-top (OTT) services are a big part of our everyday content consumption habits through our screens.

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OTT services are media services offered directly to the audience through the Internet, which in 2021 accounted for a global market worth 104.2 billion USD, with a steadfast growth expected to reach 293 billion USD by 2028, according toa recent study by BlueWeave Consulting.

Even though the OTT services market experienced great growth during the last couple of years because of the coronavirus pandemic with the increasing consumption of online content, as things go “back to normal”, audience demand hasn’t worn down. On the contrary: it has grown, and it certainly has diversified beyond entertainment.

The telecommunication industry for voice and video calling as well as messaging services is anticipated to play an important role in the market’s growth over the next few years with an expected increase in the use of digital collaboration tools many organizations are incorporating as part of the new hybrid and remote work models implemented during the 2020 pandemic.

In a recent survey published by Statista, 79% of respondents stated using collaboration tools for work in 2021, an increase of 44% percent compared to2019. Respondents also stated having less difficulties with collaboration and communication in 2021 than in previous years.

Telecommunication companies have adapted as well to the new normal post-pandemic by offering OTT services along with their data plans. In North American markets, the 5G network services would provide faster as well as more reliable data speed thus enabling improved 4K video streaming with better video quality. Meanwhile, in the Asia Pacific region, widespread publicWi-Fi combined with unlimited wireless data plans are the driving force behind the growth of OTT demand.

As the current hybrid work models are likely to continue, and become the new normal way of working, digital collaboration tools are a big market opportunity for OTT services.

And audiences still want to be entertained in their screens. Even though video-on-demand(VOD) is well established in the OTT market globally, the rise in popularity ofE-sports and gaming applications has opened up an attractive market for OTT innovations like the integration of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality(VR) technologies that provide real-time experience to players through live-streaming.

So, whether it’s for work, entertainment, or education; though our phones, computers, or televisions; OTT streaming services are now a big part of our daily life,  and an attractive market for organizations and brands to keep connected to their audience….Now, tell us, what have you streamed today?

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