Conze: Germany can resist Netflix, Joyn to be leading AVOD platform

The German video entertainment business is capable of defending its patch against the threat of Netflix and new JV streaming platform Joyn will quickly emerge as the leading ad-supported streaming offering in the country, according to CEO Max Conze.

Max Conze

Speaking to Die Welt newspaper, Conze said that there was a “defeatist” view at large that the German entertainment industry would inevitably enter a period of decline and that the future belonged to Netflix.

He said that ProSiebenSat.1 was now delivering a third more in-house production than a year ago, with the most recent season of schedule stalwart Germany’s Next Top Modelbeing the most successful since 2011.

Conze said that ProSiebenSat.1 and Discovery, its partner in the 50:50 Joyn venture, wanted to reach “as many people as possible” to start with and had therefore decided to focus primarily on the advertising-supported VOD opportunity.

He said it was important to harness the power of “smarter advertising” with addressable marketing based on demographic target groups and areas of interest. He said ProSiebenSat.1’s goal is that every ad will be addressable in five years’ time.

Conze said that ProSiebenSat.1 had joined up with RTL to create a new joint venture in order to achieve scale with addressable advertising. He said that currently ProSiebenSat.1 could only address about half of the potential advertising market.

Conze also said that Mediaset was welcome as an investor but added that a broader merger involving ProSiebenSat.1 and any other company made little sense as it would be a diversion from the goal of reorientating to a future likely to be dominated by streaming. He said that the European Media Alliance of which both ProSiebenSat.1 and Mediaset are members offered a way to “build business models together”.