Europe’s broadcaster streaming alliances have often been marked by a lack of total commitment from their founders, as each balances the needs of the joint venture against their own individual CTV offerings.
Not so with Joyn, a hybrid-model streaming services run by Germany broadcaster ProSiebenSat.1 and international media company Discovery. ProSieben chose to fully commit to Joyn, winding down its own 7TV service once the joint venture launched, and closing down a number of other apps earlier this year.
The move has paid off, as Joyn has built a strong audience in Germany. And Henrik Pabst, chief content officer at ProSieben’s SevenOne Entertainment, says he’s confident in Joyn’s future despite the ever-present threat of the international streaming giants.
VideoWeek spoke with Pabst to hear more about how Joyn has overcome the difficulties often associated with broadcaster alliances, as well as how Joyn invests in content to compete with the likes of Netflix and Amazon, and the company’s plans to launch free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channels.
How has Joyn evolved since it launched?
Joyn launched in 2019, which is quite late in the game, but has been able to establish itself as a major player with north of 20 million downloads and over 4 million unique users.
Joyn is our BVOD service, and we do have lots of broadcast content available on-demand on the platform. We’ve also acquired extra content on top of that which serves both the AVOD and SVOD sections of Joyn.
Joyn also offers live TV, which is a really good driver for getting people onto the platform – lots of users come for live TV and then start exploring the on-demand content afterwards. As it stands, we have over 70 TV channels available and more than 15 content partners, and that aggregation strategy has worked really well for us.
That’s how Joyn stands at the moment – the model is primarily AVOD, with a comfortable SVOD section as well.
Joyn already runs regular linear channels – would you consider FAST channels too?
As we know best how to curate content, we will of course offer FAST channels for the AVOD section. In Germany, the willingness to subscribe to more than two services is very limited. Many users have an appetite for ad-supported, well-curated channels.
How does advertising work on Joyn – what sorts of ad products are available, and how does advertising on the live channels work?
Since the streaming sector is coming more and more into focus, also among advertisers, Joyn is increasingly in explicit demand from the advertising market. Bookings increased by one third in 2021 compared to the previous year.
Joyn offers various opportunities for advertisers and our streaming platform clearly benefits from the expertise and possibilities of our large entertainment house with various opportunities. We offer state-of-the-art advertisement possibilities combined with the latest technical solutions via our sales power house Seven.One Media.
As far as the live channels are concerned, Joyn generally reflects the ads which appear likewise on broadcast TV.
Alliances between broadcasters often seem to struggle – how have Discovery and ProSiebenSat.1 made Joyn work?
Discovery has a different content offering compared to ProSiebenSat.1. Discovery is all about international premium factual entertainment content, while ProSiebenSat.1 stands for strong local content, news, sports events, and local reality programming. Due to the complementary nature of our content offering, this works very well.
One of the challenges frequently discussed for broadcaster-owned streaming services is competing with SVOD services whose content budgets are over $10 billion each year. How has Joyn’s content strategy allowed you to compete?
Our content strategy has to be based around the fact that we’re a BVOD service, rather than an international SVOD service. The local aspect of what we do, and the volume of content we already deliver on our broadcast channels, cannot be delivered by an international streamer. We have local shows with local talent on-screen. That means we can offer an alternative to their content offering.
Will Netflix and Amazon continue trying to make content that’s in our ballpark? Yes, but I don’t think they’ll be able to produce the local volume we do, tell the daily stories we tell, have the relevance we deliver and bring the whole family together with our entertainment programs. This is our market where we know our viewers best.
How do you anticipate Joyn will develop over the coming years?
We need to continue to capitalise on the fact that we’re a broadcast video on-demand platform, and that means we need to find content which is popular on the on-demand platform, but also sits well on our linear channels. Achieving the maximum marketable reach is crucial to us.
I think finding that sweet spot with content will be crucial going forward. Traditional watching patterns may very well be on the decline, so in the new fragmented digital world we have to be smart about content investment.
Joyn has a fantastic outlook and is very well positioned in an overly crowded on-demand market.
