What Happened
AT&T is reportedly planning to give away streaming devices for free to incentivize customers to sign up for its upcoming OTT live TV streaming service DirecTV Now. Subscribers who agree to pay for three months of the service will receive a fourth-gen Apple TV, whereas those who pay for one month will get an Amazon Fire TV stick. The service is set to release before the end of the month.
Why Brands Should Care
While this not exactly a new tactic for enticing sign-ups (Sling TV had a similar giveaway of Fire TV and Roku devices last year), the potential scale and cost of AT&T’s plan far exceeds its precedents. Gradually, we are seeing some ISPs jumping on the cord-cutting bandwagon to court customers either by launching their own streaming services like AT&T and Verizon, or integrating popular streaming services into their own set-top devices, such as the case with Comcast and Netflix. Such a trend will no doubt propel more customers to cut the cord and switch to OTT services.
As more and more consumers choose time-shifted streaming over linear TV, brands should follow the viewers and start to explore new TV ad formats on connected TV devices to engage with the audience in their living rooms. To read more on how brands can reach viewers on OTT platforms with ads and branded content, please check out the Appified TV section in our Outlook 2016.
Source: Apple Insider
