Cannes (AFP)

Faced with the giant subscription video Netflix, some platforms play another complementary card, offering free movies and series from catalogs globally less prestigious, with a counterpart: advertising for the viewer.

While Disney +, HBO Max and AppleTV + get into the fray against Netflix and Amazon in the category of subscription video services (SVOD), other players like Tubi, Roku, Pluto or Rakuten are trying to break through by betting on less recent films and series and a certain tolerance of their users in the face of advertising. Adapting the good old model of private television channels.

The Californian platform Tubi and the Japanese giant Rakuten posted their European ambitions this week at MIPCOM, the market for TV programs in Cannes.

Tubi plans to launch in the UK in 2020 before expanding to other countries, and has just launched an offer for kids, with "The Ninja Turtles" or "Paddington". The platform broadcasts 15,000 films and shows including "Scary Movie", "No Country For Old Men" by the Cohen brothers, or one of the last seasons of the show "The Bachelorette". It claims 20 million monthly users in the United States.

Rakuten TV announces an offer initially available on connected TVs, with catalogs but also some unreleased movies, starting with a documentary series on FC Barcelona commented by John Malkovich.

"There is not yet a powerful free platform in Europe," says its CEO Jacinto Roca to AFP. "Viewers will be subscribers to two or three pay services.We consider that the AVOD (ad-supported model) is a natural complement to subscription-based VOD (SVOD) and retail (TVOD) offerings".

The US giant Viacom (Paramount, MTV, Nickelodeon) also showed interest in buying the Pluto TV service in January for $ 340 million. The service, which offers replay channels and programs, is available in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and Switzerland.

- "Innovative" advertising -

Throughout the world, private and public channels are also seeing their catch-up offers attracting more television viewers each year; they offer them more and more long programs, sometimes even in preview, like at TF1, M6 or France Televisions in France.

The pitfall: avoid annoying the audience with endless pages of advertising. American platforms must comply with the habits of Europeans, who are accustomed to seeing fewer commercials on the air, according to local regulations.

"To install Pluto TV in Europe, we have reduced the number of spots," confirmed the director of the platform for the continent, Olivier Jollet, during a round table at MIPCOM.

Free content should be privileged spaces for advertisers, with "innovative" and better targeted advertising, says Jacinto Roca at Rakuten. These offers arouse the interest of advertisers "accustomed to buying a lot of advertising on traditional channels," he says.

Rakuten also promises to offer "half as much" advertising as the terrestrial channels, and intends to attract with this free content viewers ready to release their bank card for its pay VOD offer.

On the side of Tubi, it will be 4 to 5 minutes of advertising per hour, promises Farhad Massoudi. "Most people are perfectly OK with well-directed commercials," he said.

Social networks also want to offer their own offers on this free sector, to keep users as long as possible. Facebook announced for its Watch platform new partnerships with Le Monde, M6 or the gourmet media Tastemade.

And the biggest AVOD global service, launched in 2005 and bought back in Google, remains ... YouTube. If the platform is the preferred showcase of course formats, producers of TV programs also see a way of exploiting securities whose rights they have recovered, such as Lagardère Studios in France with "A guy, a girl", or "C" is my choice.

© 2019 AFP