Bitmovin announced highlights from its seventh annual Video Developer Report, saying the latest report reflects a turbulent economic year for the industry but one that is primed to seize many opportunities for growth in 2024.

This year’s Video Developer Report saw advertising (36%) identified as the greatest opportunity for growth by video developers. Additionally, the research showed that advertising/AVOD is the top monetisation model for 56% of respondents, and FAST is the priority for 39%, up from 40% and 26%, respectively. Regarding advertising technologies, server-side ad insertion is used by 67% of respondents and client-side ad insertion is used by 51%, up from 55% and 44% in the previous year.

1. Stefan-Lederer-Bitmovin

Stefan Lederer, Bitmovin

The second biggest opportunity for video developers is AI-generated content and video enhancements at (32%), followed by low latency at (31%). Ad insertion was also said to be the greatest challenge (33%) for video developers in 2023, revealing that the opportunity advertising presents is not so simple to achieve.

The second most significant challenge faced by video developers was controlling costs (29%), which is unsurprising considering macroeconomic circumstances; the third biggest challenge is playback on all devices (26%).

Stefan Lederer, CEO and co-founder of Bitmovin, said: “After a challenging year, 2024 could see the video streaming industry have a renewed focus on growth, which is reflected in the jump advertising has made as the greatest opportunity for video developers, the fact AVOD is the top monetisation model and the increased usage in advertising technologies. In 2024, it’s essential that video streaming companies diversify their revenue streams by evolving their monetization models, and ad-based revenue models are clearly the most popular.”