After delivering massive growth over the past several years in the US market DirecTV is ready to take its inflight live television content further afield. The company is looking to more international markets as it seeks to continue its expansion, delivering US content well beyond US borders.
We are only domestic right now, but that is going to change in 2024. We’re looking at bringing US-based content across the globe.
– Vinny Caruolo, Senior Strategic Business Development Manager for the commercial and private aviation sector at DIRECTV for BUSINESS
Sports, news, and weather still dominate the live TV content demand profile, and those are the types of content the company aims to deliver. While some major events and leagues may have exclusive contracts with other providers, DirecTV currently holds global distribution rights for a number of US channels and it is working to expand that selection. And by offering multiple channels, allowing passengers to choose what events to watch, DirecTV believes it can put together a strong offering.
The company also believes its offering can be compelling on the technical side. It has refined its cooperation with inflight internet partners to optimize the IP data stream in recent years, making it more efficient to bring content to aircraft.
As for who might be interested in bringing the expanded DirecTV offering to its aircraft, Caruolo sees virtually no limits to the market. “We are looking not just at domestic carriers,” he explains. “There are also major international carriers that have a lot of routes in and out of the United States.” And with certain content packages the company has the interest could spread to airlines who never touch the United States, featuring content that is decidedly not US-focused sports.
Making it make more money
Separately from growing the reach of its content, DirecTV also plans to increase its value to airlines. Today they pay a sizable sum to license the live television feeds. Moving forward, there’s hope of recoupling a bit more of that through more effective advertising. The company has access to “local” advertising slots on most of the channels it aggregates and distributes to aircraft. It is now working with the network providers who help deliver the content to the aircraft on deals that would enable custom ads to be inserted.
It is a complex process and unlikely to get to passenger or tail-specific ads in the immediate future. But Caruolo is confident the economics can work, still besting the default rates currently in play.
You’re gonna start to see a lot of targeted advertising come out. Advertisers and connectivity providers are saying, ‘We’ve got captive audiences here, we need to get targeted advertising in front of them.’ It is an area that has not really been tapped into.
Caruolo sees the ad offerings as an opportunity for the inflight connectivity and entertainment providers who are delivering the content to the aircraft, not something DirecTV plans to sell directly. While the company has its own ad sales team, getting into aero world is not a segment it currently plans to pursue.
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