How Asian Streamer Viu Is Fighting Off Global Competition With Youth Focus, Hot Content Trends: K-drama, Boys’ Love & Rising Thai Wave

deadline.com:

EXCLUSIVE: Pan-regional streaming service Viu, owned by Hong Kong telco and media group PCCW, has been one of the biggest local success stories in Southeast Asia, holding its own against the entrance of global giants including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+.

The streamer is number one in terms of monthly active users (MAUs) across Southeast Asia, according to data from Media Partners Asia (MPA), and number three in paid subscribers behind Disney+ and Netflix.

In the first half of 2022, Viu’s MAUs grew by 23% to 60.7 million, while paid subscribers increased by 31% to 9.1 million. Viu’s ‘freemium’ business model and partnerships with regional telcos and other tech providers have contributed to that success, but as Asia content chief Marianne Lee explains, it’s also down to a nimble and hyper-localized content strategy.  “We serve a very young audience,” says Lee, who joined Viu last year from WarnerMedia in the role of Chief of Content Acquisition & Development for Asia (Viu also operates as a streamer and content producer in the Middle East and South Africa).  “Our audience is young and they’re digital natives.

They may have skipped over that pay-TV stage and moved straight into watching content on their mobile phones. We’re also mass audience, so in Hong Kong we aim for Cantonese speakers, and in Malaysia we aim for the audience that speaks Malay.”  That gives Viu slightly different positioning to the global streamers, which are now starting to go mass market in Southeast Asia, but were initially aiming for slightly older, professional viewers with greater ability to pay.