The Marketing Funnel for Direct to Consumer (OTT) Streaming Services

Exploring the differences between e-commerce and OTT streaming marketing funnels

Over the next few years, one of the more transformative changes in consumer behavior will be the shift of media consumption from traditional TV to over-the-top streaming platforms. Not only does this shift add complexity to the customer decision journey, it also introduces new elements into the advertising landscape. This shift impacts all direct to consumer advertisers, who must develop an understanding of this new world of OTT media consumption on their customer journey. It also impacts the marketing funnel with streaming services and connected devices being added to the media mix. No surprise, it’s a complex topic. In this article, I will focus on marketing of streaming services that are native to the space. A future article will cover changes to the funnel for e-commerce and CPG.

The marketing funnel for over-the-top services is different from the e-commerce funnel. It is also nuanced from the traditional approach of marketing original content. There are three key areas of divergence.

1. Channels that are at the bottom in a traditional funnel may not be at the bottom in an OTT environment