Streaming video marketplace MyBundle will debut a new platform that aggregates the best Black Friday deals in the industry, its top executive confirmed this week.
The Black Friday platform will integrate directly into the MyBundle website for consumers and through white label versions of the MyBundle marketplace that is offered to more than 270 broadband Internet service providers.
In an interview with The Streaming Wars on Wednesday, MyBundle CEO Jason Cohen said the launch of the platform is part of the company’s overall mission of helping consumers and broadband ISP partners move from traditional cable TV toward comparable streaming services.
Black Friday is a tremendous opportunity for customers to try out streaming video services at a reduced cost compared to the normal retail price of each product, Cohen noted, and MyBundle wants to spotlight as many as they can, irrespective of whether the company actually has an afiliate or marketing agreement with the service.
The reason? Cohen sees it as a benefit for consumers, for broadband ISPs and for streaming services alike, because all the best offers will be available in one central location, which takes the guesswork out of finding them on an individual basis.
“Most consumers aren’t waking up on Thursday, Friday or Monday saying, I’m going to hunt for all these streaming services,” Cohen said. “We already have a ‘Best Deals’ section on the MyBundle marketplace, where we’re listing different bundles at difference price points, and as more bundles come out, we want to play a role in helping consumers find the ones that are right for them.”
The idea of bundling services together was the foundation of MyBundle in the first place: When the company started out several years ago, it sought to offer a single point of reference for cable and satellite customers who wanted access to certain TV programming and channels, and who needed a better reference point on which services to buy.
Its flagship tool — which is still available — asked customers to put in the channels they wanted access to, and the type of programming they find most favorable, and then offered suggestions of subscription-based linear and on-demand services that could best cater to those needs. Taken together, customers built their own “bundle” of streaming services that gave them exactly what they wanted to watch, at varying price points.
Cohen believed early on that MyBundle would compete with the cable companies — so, he was somewhat surprised when some cable providers started inquiring if MyBundle was open to various partnerships.
The service launched at the right time: Cable companies have increasingly grown tired of offering low-margin cable service, where the bulk of the revenue goes out the door by way of distribution and affiliate fees, and are more-focused on building up their broadband Internet products, which allow them to keep more subscription revenue for themselves.
“The smaller and medium-sized cable companies – they’re done,” Cohen said in an earlier interview. “They are looking to get out of video. The line we keep hearing is, video is 95 percent of my complaints and zero percent of my profits.”
Those headaches are fewer these days for the platforms that have integrated MyBundle’s white-label marketplace into their own offerings. But MyBundle isn’t the only one embracing the idea of content and subscription bundling: Some of the services have pursued opportunities with their peers to launch their own bundles, including Disney (which allows streamers to bundle their offerings with Warner Bros. Discovery-owned Max) and Starz (which now offers a bundle with Britbox).
Cohen said he finds those bundles interesting, but feels streaming services are not in the best position to offer the kind of bundles that consumers crave, and at the prices they want.
“I do not believe that streaming services bundling with each other is the right solution,” Cohen affirmed. “I believe, fundamentally, that you need a neutral third party, whether that is an Internet or phone provider, a utility company or a tech startup…I feel confident that if the streaming services do it for themselves, they will fail.”
Cohen said there were a number of complicated things that streaming services have to work out among themselves before they can launch a bundle, including how to price the service and how to share customer data between the two companies, if they’re allowed to do that all. By contrast, MyBundle has few, if any, of these issues, because they’re simply pointing consumers and broadband subscribers to the best streaming video services that make sense based on their wants and desires — and they leave the pricing and data collection to the services themselves.
There is, apparently, a strong appetite from consumers for a platform like MyBundle, especially if it’s offered by their broadband ISP: The company recently asked 1,000 consumers who they thought could best help bundle streaming subscriptions. The overwhelming majority of those surveyed — 78 percent — said they feel Internet providers are in the best position, compared with just 2 percent who said the same for streaming services themselves. (The runner-up in the survey was mobile phone providers, at a distant 28 percent.)
Similar surveys, including one released by technology firm Bango, have also found high interest in purchasing streaming services and bundles from broadband ISPs. A global subscription survey released by Bango earlier this year found 50 percent of consumers want their mobile broadband provider to offer subscription content hubs, and 26 percent said the same for broadband ISPs. (Bango and MyBundle forged a business partnership around this time last year.)
Over time, MyBundle has developed and launched a number of tools that help cater to the interests of would-be streamers. Earlier this year, it launched a new mobile app that allows streamers to input a TV show or film, then directs them to the free or subscription video app where the content is available, coupled with a dedicated watch list and subscription management tool. It followed up by launching a free, ad-supported linear service of its own, as well as a tool that allows football fans to select their favorite team and find out which channel and streaming service games are offering that team’s game each week.
Cohen said these tools don’t just benefit streamers and broadband ISPs — they help the streaming services themselves, because MyBundle is able to put their product in front of millions of consumers and broadband ISP subscribers in a way that would cost a tremendous amount of money if they tried to market their services directly themselves.
If a streamer has a Black Friday deal, Cohen said the company can email blackfriday@mybundle.tv, and MyBundle will add it to their page.
