Media streamer Plex promised years ago to expand its free streaming service to include rentals, but the announcement came just before the pandemic, at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2020. I was. After that, the company also faced many other problems, including technical concerns. , which forced the company to reprioritize its plans. Now, Plex says it is finally close to launching a marketplace that will allow consumers to rent or buy movies and TV shows, making Plex a one-stop-shop for all media content.
The company says it plans to launch a TVOD store (transactional video on demand, aka rental) by the second quarter of this year.
Asked what the holdup was, Plex admitted the project was more difficult than originally anticipated.
Plex co-founder and chief product officer Scott Olechowski said: “We switched DRM providers to get all his DRM features working everywhere, and had to get approval from all the studios,” he explained. Plex has also decided to move away from another third party his partner was working with to power its AVOD service (video on demand with ads).
And then the company was hit by something internally dubbed “Androidgeddon.” This was essentially an all-hands-on technical nightmare with ad breaks randomly stopping streams on Android TV, Android Mobile, and Amazon Fire TV platforms. The problem was eventually traced to a change in the SDK (software development kit) provided by Google, but it took months to fix and used up all engineering resources in the process.
In addition to this combination of factors slowing the launch of the rental market, Plex has chosen over the past year to focus on another popular product, FAST Channels, or free, ad-supported streaming TV. FAST channels are basically like TV guides from your cable provider, like Pluto TV or Xumo. (Roku and Amazon also offer his FAST channel through The Roku Channel’s Live TV Guide and Amazon Freevee, respectively.) It’s a growing segment of the streaming market, with declining cable TV viewership. It serves as a way for advertisers to reach consumers.
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The FAST channel is a significant growth area for Plex’s business, consumer engagement and revenue. The company announced at CES this week that he’s doubled his FAST programming over the past year, reaching over 300 channels including A+E’s Crime 360, Hallmark Movies & More, and Stories’ The Walking Dead by AMC. announced. In addition, growing the user base to his 16 million monthly active users and streaming billions of minutes of content through FAST programming, ad-supported content and more has nearly tripled Plex’s annual ad revenue. I was. However, in terms of ad revenue, ad-supported video still outperforms FAST, although both are growing.
Plex doesn’t disclose revenue, but it’s in the double-digit millions. The company now has 175 employees of his, and unlike many in the tech industry, he never had to resort to layoffs.
Moreover, the tightening of advertising budgets has not yet had an impact on business.
“Healthy,” Olechowski said. “We haven’t seen the big changes in the programmatic market that have affected us year after year…we are pretty happy where we are,” he said.
Image credit: Plex
Video rentals aren’t the only thing on Plex’s roadmap this year. The company still hopes to launch a subscription service that will allow users to subscribe to paid streamers through his Plex. We also aim to introduce recommendations in the “Discover” section launched earlier this year, giving users a universal watchlist and first social experience. The latter will roll out to all his Plex users later this year, not just Plex Pass. Premium Subscriber.
The company says it also wants to introduce a way for users to leave reviews for shows and movies they’ve watched instead of leaving star ratings, but the timing for that feature has yet to be determined. Also includes some UX updates (user experience design changes).
