Sky Invests in Synamedia to Embrace the Future of Video

By Viraj T On Jan 9, 2019

As the Globe Shifts Its Preferences from Viewing the Video through Traditional Capabilities, Strong Industry Players like Sky Are Paying Heed

Synamedia officially released a statement that it has received fresh investment from Sky, one of Europe’s biggest media and entertainment companies. Synamedia, a leading industry brand in developing software for video broadcast, is majorly held by Permira funds and will be joined by Sky now.

This will, in turn, bolster the relationship between Synamedia and Sky as long-standing technology partners. Sky will now leverage Synamedia’s technological abilities to delve deeper into the emergence of Pay-TV & Media.

Why Synamedia?

Sky and Comcast, Sky’s parent company, have been clients of Synamedia for a very long time. All over the world as people switch from watching DTH/cable and adapt to parallel means, enterprises need to accept these winds of change. What are the newer ways that people are viewing the screen for engaging content?

Pay-TV
OTT
IPTV
Hybrid Models

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Comcast is the second largest broadcaster, globally. Its annual revenue in 2017 was $84.526 billion. The company also employs 164,000 people. For a traditional broadcaster the size of Comcast, the transition to newer broadcasting methods is never going to be easy. For Comcast’s and, subsequently, Sky’s transition to happen effortlessly, Synamedia will be deploying their best-in-class capabilities. The video technology leader has perhaps the best software inventory when it comes to video broadcast of any kind.

Synamedia’s purpose towards its clients is to help them fully utilize their existing infrastructure while simultaneously developing/blending newer viewing models into the core of enterprise operations. This ensures customer satisfaction along with the opening of newer revenue streams. Synamedia has more than 200 customers, currently.

Andrew Griffith, Sky’s Group Chief Operating Officer, said, “We’ve long collaborated with the team at Synamedia to help bring great content, products, and entertainment to millions of customers across Europe and this investment will help deepen our innovative partnership.”

Yves Padrines, CEO of Synamedia, added, “At a time of accelerated evolution in the pay-TV industry, this investment is a fantastic endorsement of our product vision, R&D roadmap and service portfolio from Sky, Europe’s leading media and entertainment company.”

Also Read: 2019’s Content Strategy Primer

Why Is This Happening?

This is happening primarily because of the options atop that present video on demand on multiple devices. Users can control what they see — more so see it whenever they want. This is in stark contrast with broadcasters who have set time-slots for content distribution. Nowadays, most countries, even in the third world, have inexpensive internet access with good latency. With declining smartphone costs, users are bound to be more inclined to a video-on-demand model.

What should marketers know?

There are a dozen businesses that work in the video technology space. Some of these brands develop and deploy technology all by themselves while some have partners. Marketers should know that technology industry titans — Adobe, Amazon, Apple, Google etc. — are all working in this space. The video marketing/advertising industry is predicted to be worth $117 billion by 2025. Hence, technology funding is going to be massive in this sphere. Marketers now, along with social media, will also need to learn new strategies that specifically cater to mobile advertising. But with Mobile MarTech on the surge, marketers should a get a hang of it fairly easily. MarTech Series has partnered with Synamedia for the MGS 2019 Summit taking place in San Francisco on 13-14 February, 2019.