Eros Now, the online movie streaming from movie production and distribution house Eros International shifted to freemium model last quarter, the company mentioned on its earnings conference call. Until this change, Eros had a premium movies only offering online, even though it had progressively reduced prices, as we'd mentioned in our story in September last year: it had brought down subscription rates to Rs 25 per month, in a possible bid to increase signups, while pricing had earlier been $4.99/month, which was later reduced to $2.99/month. How Eros Plans To Approach Freemium There are essentially three parts to the EROS model going forward: - Advertising for free content, for which revenue will come from brands. For EROS Now, its largest amount of traffic is from India. The company believes that the Freemium model is the "quickest and lowest hanging fruit of monetizing traffic from India is from the business or advertisers and brands, rather than the consumer itself in the – in the next two to three years. And that may change once 3G, 4G and broadband penetration becomes more effective within India." - Transactional, for which revenue will be from customers directly, by premiering movies four or six weeks from the theatrical release on pay-per-view basis. EROS plans to "premier" films on Eros Now, four or five weeks after its theatrical release and "we've seen a lot of transactional traffic come through when we promote those kind of initiatives as well." - Subscriptions, for which revenue will be from customers directly. Deshpande said that…
