Smart TV operating system provider VIDAA is heading to StreamTV Europe in Lisbon, happening 13-15 April, 2026, and Denis Oštir, editor-in-chief at V, sat down with StreamTV Insider’s Bevin Fletcher to chat about its data-driven content strategy that marries global and local to travel across borders.
Oštir oversees global content strategy for the V OS, with the ultimate goal of maximizing user engagement.
With a presence in more than 180 countries, V is deploying its TVOS across multiple markets that come with their own languages and viewing preferences and behaviors.
This means, it must be very alert to the nuances of each.
“We have to make sure that every customer has the right and best experience,” Oštir told StreamTV Insider.
A “glocal” content strategy
Per Oštir, “TV is extremely local,” but it’s global as well, leading to the company’s overarching “glocal” content strategy that marries and balances the two.
However, there’s one common thread across all markets, which is premium quality.
“People like to see premium stuff on the large screen” and enjoy premium sports, he noted. “But it’s a combination of mostly local and global content that they like to access.”
One recent example of bringing premium global sports to a local audience is the addition of Premiere League action with partner Monomax on V-powered smart TVs in Thailand.
Thailand is a key market for V, where soccer, or futbol, is the number one sport and customers were demanding it, while sales teams in Southeast Asia were asking for it, according to Oštir.
“So of course, we went out and we got it,” he said. “It’s going to fill a nice and important sporting gap in Thailand.”
The move there, while catering to audiences in Thailand, reflects the broader content strategy – which leverages both insights gleaned from TVOS-level viewing data and human editorial curation – to deliver a premium experience and boost user engagement.
When V enters a market it aims to determine the key types of content customers want and then works to create business deals to bring that content to the platform.
Leveraging glass-level insights
As the operating system powering smart TVs V has visibility into viewing behavior, such as actions users take when they turn on the TV, the type of content they’re watching and where it’s coming from.
“What we are able to do with that data is to tailor the experience,” Oštir said, noting V can understand preferences for not only the individual user but more broadly what people enjoy watching within a local area, region, country or continent.
Based on that it uses models to extrapolate what kind of customers might be in a given household, all of which is used to drive the content strategy.
That includes the type of content V acquires, integrates into its platform and serves to a particular viewer or household, as well as recommendations and ads it shows to a user.
Although V has multiple stakeholders including OEM partners and TV brands, content providers, technology partners and advertisers, Oštir cautioned not to forget one key factor.
“The most important stakeholder here is the end customer. It’s the household. It is the people in front of the TV,” he said. “Whatever we do, we have to make sure that the user experience and what customers are watching on their TV, that does not get impacted” in an effort to serve other parties.
A human touch
Oštir is a proponent of AI and data underpins V’s content strategy, but as his title of editor-in-chief (which is not a common one in the TVOS world) might suggest, a human element still plays a vital role in curating and shaping the company’s approach to content.
“We've got to have an editorial strategy because with reach comes responsibility,” he said, noting V needs to ensure the content being served is appropriate.
If all recommendations and content surfacing was left to AI and algorithms it would be “a huge problem,” going down a rabbit hole and ending up with options not fit for general audiences.
Using algorithms would likely mean only suggesting entertainment content, forgoing other categories that still serve a purpose and are key but might not shine based on viewership data alone – such as news programming, documentaries or kids content, according to Oštir.
“There’s a lot of decisions that are still taken by people, but we use data to support those decisions,” he explained.
Understanding what’s important to a local market also comes into play as it can vary, with some over-indexing in news, others in musical content, for example.
“There are market specialties you have to adhere, but at the end of the day, humans do still play a huge role.”
Maximizing user engagement
A great user experience underpinned by a data-driven content strategy is meant to maximize engagement, ultimately to the benefit of all V partners.
When it comes to boosting user engagement, Oštir cited few tactics that have shown success.
One is the free content value proposition.
“Whatever we can provide to customers that is free, especially in markets where the purchasing power might not be as high as it is in others…that definitely works.”
And if that free programming is also premium content “that also drives engagement much, much, much better,” he said, adding that new content and emotionally engaging content also helps move the needle.
But across categories including news, kids content and more, the most engaging content tends to be that coming from the local market.
“In every single market, people love their own content,” Oštir said, noting that some general entertainment content from Hollywood can travel globally and be popular. “But most of the time, it’s not even going to be close to being as popular as local content in the market.”
Watch the full video interview between V’s Denis Oštir and StreamTV Insider’s Bevin Fletcher above or read the transcript below.
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Transcript:
Bevin Fletcher:
Hi, everyone. Welcome, and thank you for joining us. My name's Bevin Fletcher, senior editor of StreamTV Insider, and I'm here with Denis, editor-in-chief of smart TV OS platform, V, formerly VIDAA. Hi, Denis, thanks for being here with us. How are you?
Denis Oštir:
Doing good. You?
Bevin Fletcher:
Good, thanks. Okay, so you oversee global content strategy for the V TV OS platform, where the ultimate goal is to maximize user engagement. So as we head into StreamTV Europe in Lisbon, could you just talk to me a little bit about what that's like as you deploy the OS across multiple countries, markets that might have different languages, viewing preferences, et cetera? Is there a common guiding strategy, or is it very much a market-by-market approach?
Denis Oštir:
You're asking me how it is. It's wild. Let me put it this way. We are present in 180 countries, which means that we have to be really alert. We have to make sure that every customer has the right and the best experience.
As you probably can imagine, TV is extremely local. It's a combination of global and local. We call it a glocal strategy. That means that what we have to do is we have to leverage, we have to weigh between local content, high-quality global content, but there is one thread which is common across all the markets, and that's premium. People like to see premium stuff on the large screen, people like to enjoy their premium sports, but it's a combination of mostly local and global content that they like to access.
Bevin Fletcher:
Makes sense, glocal. I like that. Okay. So from your position as a TV OS provider, you benefit from what some call glass-level insights or the ability to see content across the different services. So as you tailor to these different market preferences, what type of data are you able to leverage, and how is that helping to you to inform the content strategy overall?
Denis Oštir:
If I go very, very, I'm going to say, all the way down to the bottom. Essentially what we know about the customer is that we know everything that happens on the TV. When do they turn on the TV? What type of content are they accessing? Where is the content coming from? Is it coming through a terrestrial signal? Is it coming through a streaming platform? Is it coming through a satellite provider? All that information is provided to us, and it is at our disposal.
I want to point out one thing very, very clearly, is we are extremely, extremely sensitive when it comes to customer's private information. That type of information, of course, is only gathered and used if the customer allows it. What we are able to do with that data is to tailor the experience. We are able to understand what are the prefaces, not only of the individual customer, but also of the people inside of the area, inside of the country, at a continent. What are the relationships between their watching patterns on one platform and another platform? We're able pretty much to understand what the household does enjoy to watch.
Based off of that, we're able to extrapolate, using large models, what kind of customers could potentially be in that household. And all of that is used to drive our content strategy. First of all, in terms of what is the type of content that we acquire, then what is the type of content that we integrate into our platform, then what is the type of content that we serve to a particular customer or a particular household? And at the end of the day, what type of recommendations and/or ads would be served to those users?
Bevin Fletcher:
And so using all this data [inaudible 00:03:14], from the content strategy, obviously it seems to have clear benefits for the user. How does it enable you to meet the needs of you serve multiple stakeholders in terms of content partners, advertisers? So how does it meet all the needs of those parties?
Denis Oštir:
There's one thing that we shouldn't forget. I do understand there's several stakeholders in here. We've got the advertisers, we've got the content providers, we have potential technology providers as well. We have the manufacturers, we have the brands that make these TVs. But one thing we should not forget, the most important stakeholder here is the end customer, it's the household, it is the people in front of the TV, and we should not betray their trust. So that's one thing that we need to clear out first, is whatever we do, we have to make sure that the user experience and what customers are watching on their TV, that does not get impacted. And then, of course, we are able to tailor to the needs of every single one of them.
Two, for example, to advertisers, we are able to deliver the right customer at the right time for their advertising to be the most impactful. At the same time, for the content providers, we're able to give the right recommendations to the right customers to make sure that they're able to grow engagement and they're able to grow reach. And to the brands which are selling the TVs, we're able to provide a high-quality operating system, which is going to allow them to sell more TVs.
At the end of the day, we are purely a platform, we are here to serve all the stakeholders, but as I've said initially, the most important and by far the most important stakeholder here is the customer sitting in front of the TV. And we should not betray their trust. We are able to use the data to serve main stakeholders, but we should not forget that we are here primarily to make sure that the entertainment experience of a customer at home is the best as it can be.
Bevin Fletcher:
So a very customer-centric approach. So that's interesting. And thinking about you're sitting on all this data, we're obviously in the age of AI and plenty of data to be had, but is there still a human element that's important? Do you still use a human element when you're curating the content strategy with that kind of end user?
Denis Oštir:
A billion percent. We have to. I'm a fan of AI, I'm a fan of algorithms, but I have a journalism background. I've worked in journalism for 20 years, and there's one thing that I'm sure is that if everything is left to algorithms and AI to determine what content gets served to every single customer, we have a huge problem. We've got to have an editorial strategy because with reach comes responsibility. You cannot pretend that what we've got is a huge responsibility. So we must make sure that the content which is being served is appropriate.
There's a saying in the industry that says enrangement drives engagement. If we were only to serve maximum engagement and we left it to machines to determine 100% of the content that gets served there, I'm pretty sure sooner or later we would go down a rabbit hole of having content which is completely inappropriate for the general audience. We would see a similar effect that we are seeing on social media, which means that bubbles are getting created, the funnel gets narrower and narrower. So for sure, we still use a lot of manual decisions. There's a lot of decisions that are still taken by people, but we use data to support those decisions. I think that's probably the better way of doing it.
We need to understand, for example, that news is important, it serves a purpose. If you only looked at viewership data, I'm pretty positive that the algorithm alone would only recognize entertainment. Entertainment will be by far the most represented category. You might not have kids' content, you might not have documentary content, yet all of that represents a high-quality offering.
I'm a proponent of AI, I'm a proponent that inside of the company we have the same principle, but there's got to be human touch to it. We have a feeling about what is the best solution there.
There's one thing I want to point out also is it is very, very localized. In some markets, you need to over-index news. In some markets, you have to over-index musical content. In some markets, you have to over-index, I don't know, locally produced musical shows. There are market specialties that you have to adhere to, but in the end of the day, humans do still play a huge role, and I'm 100% confident, are going to continue to play a crucial role in determining what recommendations are being served to customers and what type of content gets to people's homes.
Bevin Fletcher:
Great. So leveraging, not ignoring new technology, but still keeping that human touch. Makes sense.
Denis Oštir:
You got to have the human touch. Without the human touch, I can tell you, if machines, at the end of the day ... I don't want to sound dystopian, but if at the end of the day, we allow algorithms and AI to serve the entirety of content, it's not going to be okay. We have to have a human touch to it. That is why we have an editorial team, that is why my role is editor-in-chief, which is something which not a lot of platforms have because we do have to take a human touch in determining what contents get served to the end customers.
Bevin Fletcher:
Okay. So let's maybe take a specific example. I saw you had just added Premier League action with Monomax to V-powered smart TVs in Thailand. So I'm curious, why was that an important addition to your offering in Asia? And maybe you could tell me about the strategy behind that.
Denis Oštir:
Very simple, football is the number one sport. I mean, in the US, you guys call it soccer. We call it football because it's played with a foot and you kick a ball, football. And Premier League is the premier league globally for the sport. And Monomax is the partner that carries it in Thailand.
Now, Thailand is an important market for us. The customers have demanded it. The sales teams in Southeast Asia have asked for it. So of course, we went out and we got it.
Now, it's going to fill a nice and important sporting gap in Thailand. As you can imagine, in Thailand, football is the number one sport. Other sports which are also popular, there's some badminton being done there as well. Motorsports, by the way, hugely important, which is the reason why we have a couple of other sports applications that carry motorsports there as well.
We go into a market, we try to determine what are the key applications or what is the key types of content that customers want. And then we go out, and our business team creates business deals to bring that content onto the platform.
And the Monomax deal was purely driven by that, trying to bring high-quality content in, which was demanded by a customer sitting in front of a TV, the sales team out there, and also simply, it was also a business decision.
Bevin Fletcher:
Makes sense. And goes back to that kind of premium content you mentioned at the top of live sports?
Denis Oštir:
Yes.
Bevin Fletcher:
Okay. So clearly maximizing user engagement is a main goal of this data-informed strategy. So have you found any techniques or one factor that's most impactful at increasing that metric or any unexpected learnings in terms of successful strategies to boost user engagement?
Denis Oštir:
There's a couple. So the first one is free content. Whatever we can provide to customers that is free, especially in markets where the purchasing power might not be as high as it is in others, that definitely works.
Now, if that content that is available for free is also premium content, that also drives engagement much, much, much better.
Stuff that is new, stuff that is emotionally interesting, which drives emotional response, that also drives more engagement than other types of content.
Sports is, of course, universal. Premium sports anywheres in the world, you're going to get a response from customer.
Now, that doesn't mean that all sports is going to be equally popular. You go to India, it's got to be IPL, it's got to be the cricket league. You go ... For example, I just came back from a trip in Malaysia. In Malaysia, if you do badminton, you're going to get the most responses.
Now, if you go, for example, in Canada, it might be hockey. In the US, it might be American football.
Sports, for example, is one thing which is definitely universal. Another thing would be news. It might not be as popular, but news is universally appealing just because it impacts our lives. A good weather report, a good traffic update or just general news impacts our lives directly and instantly. So we tend to do that as well.
Kids content also, but with kids' content, it's got to be hyper-localized. People would not watch, let's say, generic English content across the board. It's got to be local.
And the last thing, which also ties into this, would be local. In every single market, people love their own content. Yes, some generic content coming from the US, coming from Hollywood, yes, it's going to be popular, but most of the time it's not even going to be close to being as popular as local content is in the market.
We can, by the way, see that on huge platforms as well. Even on the large global streamers, the local releases tend to perform better in a particular environment, even though you're not going to see it in the stats because the stats get consolidated on a global level. But a Polish movie on a global streamer most likely is going to be the number one thing in Poland. The same goes for Turkish drama, Syrian shows, or for Asian K-pop content, for example.
Bevin Fletcher:
So you can really see that granularity as you drill down. And then, I mean, so there's no shortage of content options clearly. And beyond just the content strategy, V also ... you have the entry point to the TV screen as the OS. So I'm curious, can you talk to me about the importance of placements and promotion within the operating system and if there are any tactics that help content owners either be successful at driving engagement or getting their content in front of consumers when there's just so many choice out there?
Denis Oštir:
A while back with one of the first versions of VIDAA when we became an independent company where the VIDAA was still VIDAA and the VIDAA was still the OS as well, I think it was in 2019 when we came up with a version called VIDAA 4, we started focusing on recommendations. That was one of the things that we own the home screen. When customers get into the home screen, we wanted them to have a very, very rich content-forward or content-centric experience.
So we went out to partners, we asked them, "Give us the metadata of all of your content inside of your application, and we're going to make recommendations this way."
I know a lot of marketing people might have a hard time hearing this, but shows usually are bigger brands than the streaming platforms. People don't go to a streaming platform to be in the streaming platform. They go there to watch a particular show. They go there for Spider-Man, they go there for Batman, they go there for Friends. Those are the brands that people are looking for. And that's what people want to do on the TV. That means that we try to make the experience, when it comes to the home screen, very, very content-centric.
Now, you've asked me, what is the recommendation for content providers? I dare say that if you are not on the home screen, if you're not grabbing customers' attention, it's very, very difficult to get customers to tune in. We work very closely with content providers that are on our platform to make sure that we have the right recommendations. Of course, all of them also driven by AI, by individualized recommendations for customers. But if you're not on that home screen on the home unit, it is very, very difficult to break through.
Our editorial team works very, very closely with content providers to get also the insights from them. They're the experts, they know their content best, to let us know what is coming this month, what is the new stuff, which they expect is going to be a hit show, getting the assets from them in terms of banners, video material, and so on, so we can do proper promotions. But being on the home screen, I think that is the most important thing for any content provider. If you're not there and if you're not one of the top five global and top three local providers, you're going to have a really hard time breaking through.
At the end of the day, time is the only absolute category that we've got. It's got 24 hours. People are not going to be able to extend time to watch more streaming content on their TVs, so they're going to be splitting it up between what they see and what is appealing to them.
Bevin Fletcher:
So what I'm hearing is content is still king, but visibility is very important.
Denis Oštir:
I would say visibility is the kingdom within which people are trying to find content and then watch it in the end. Content itself is great, but it needs to be exposed.
Bevin Fletcher:
All right. Well, great. That's our time, but such great stuff. Denis, thank you so much for being here, sharing your insights. And I'm looking forward to more great conversations at StreamTV Europe.
Denis Oštir:
Yeah, see you there.