WeTV, a video streaming platform run by Chinese internet giant Tencent, expects its business growth in Thailand to treble by 2023, driven by a broad variety of content and exclusive offerings.
Thailand is WeTV's largest market in Asean.
"Thailand's over-the-top [OTT] market sees intense competition with more than 20 players involved," said Kanokporn Prachayaset, chief commercial and country manager of WeTV Thailand.
"Each player develops quality content, offers exclusive content and creates new content that catches up with the trends."
Each month Thai people engage with an average of 4.5 OTT apps and spend 129-149 baht on OTT viewership. WeTV offers a starting price of 59 baht for the first month and also has a free viewership model with advertising.
People spend an average of 3.30 hours a day watching OTT apps, said Ms Kanokporn.
Before the pandemic, the peak time for viewership was from 6-10pm, but as more people now work from home, the time spent by many people on OTT apps has extended to 1am, she said.
Some 70% of Thai respondents said they were willing to pay for digital content, Ms Kanokporn noted.
WeTV, which has been operating for three years, now has 13 million daily active users, 25% of whom are paid subscribers. The number of users of its service surged 63% last year.
Some 70% of WeTV's Thai customers are female. The biggest customer group by age are 18-24 (29%), followed by 25-34 (26%), 32-44 (20%), 45-54 (16%) and finally those aged 55 and up (9%).
"We aim to increase the usage among young and male audiences by increasing the amount of e-sports content like ROV game," said Ms Kanokporn.
Kanokporn Prachayaset, chief commercial officer and country manager of WeTV Thailand, Tencent (Thailand) Co, gives a keynote presentation at the live press conference for 'WeTV Always More 2022.'
WeTV is at the top of the OTT market in terms of advertising video on demand and second in terms of subscriptions.
In 2021, 50% of WeTV content is from China and the rest from local productions and elsewhere.
The amount of Chinese content on the platform has surged 137% from last year, and content from Thailand has jumped 40%. Animation content has risen 93%.
In a bid to push up business growth by three times by 2023, WeTV will expand its content range to Korean and Japanese series, animation, Yaoi (boys' love) series, variety shows and e-sports, according to Ms Kanokporn.
WeTV will also partner with telecom companies, payment service operators and OTT device makers to expand viewership channels with more convenient payment methods.
Additionally, it will gear up to partner e-commerce and delivery platforms and build synergy with Tencent Thailand services, including Sanook, Joox, PUBG Mobile and WeComics, to expand viewership channels.
WeTV will boost user experiences by building new features for engagement. Its flying comment feature has grown in popularity with comments reaching 1.5 million per month.
Kaichen Li, head of WeTV and iFlix for Southeast Asia, said there are 180 million OTT users in Asean.
A study shows 57% of OTT users have spent more time on video streaming during the pandemic, he said. WeTV saw 45 million monthly active users globally from January to August this year with more than 25 million engaged in streaming per day.
WeTV subscribers grew by more than 150% year-on-year with key markets clustering in Asean, led by Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam, Mr Li said.