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[upbeat music] Hey, everybody. I'm David Bloom, co-founder of this podcast, Next TMT Talks.
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We are here for a special edition about what the interface shift and the ways that we receive streaming video are changing in this AI-driven world and, and Looper Insights, whose CEO, uh, Lucas Bertrot, is joining us to talk about that.
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We'll get a little bit deeper into what it means in particular for two of the biggest platforms and three of the biggest streamers, and how that operationally plays out if you are a company with streaming video and you wanna get it seen, you wanna know how well it's doing.
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Strategies are changing with these new platform transformations, and we're gonna get into that with Jeff Clark, with a G, who is the, uh, co-founder of FreeLife Sports and CEO of, uh, a documentary company and other streaming video companies, and Jeff Clad again, who heads distribution for Heartbeats, which is Kevin Hart's gigantic company.
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I don't know how Kevin isn't doing every job there 'cause he is the hardest working man in showbiz, but certainly Jeff with a J is also a very hardworking man. Glad to have all of them here. Lucas, let's start.
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You guys just put it-- You're putting out this report as we speak, is issuing forth.
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Uh, you looked at, to begin with, Roku and Fire TV, the two biggest platforms in the United States, and they both have made big updates in the last three months, I guess, that are really changing...
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Their strategies are very different in terms of what's shifting, but it's-- if you wanna be there and get seen, you've really gotta think hard about this. So talk a little bit about that real quickly to start. Yeah.
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So look, uh, Looper Insights tracks the placement of apps and content on connected TV devices across twenty-five countries, two hundred and fifty different platforms.
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So we're seeing all of these changes in real time, and one of the key things that, that everyone's trying to solve is discovery. How do we make it easier for the consumer?
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Typical consumer spends fourteen minutes, which seems crazy, trying to find stuff that they wanna watch, and that's a real problem, and twenty percent or nineteen percent actually drop off.
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They give up, and I imagine they probably go to the algorithms. They go to YouTube and Shorts or TikTok 'cause they just can't be bothered, right?
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So that's one of the industry problems that we're all trying to solve, is: how can we find content more quickly that's relevant to us?
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And, uh, the streamers, first of all, have dived into that, and they're adding AI capabilities in terms of search. We've seen Netflix, as they do, taking a lead on that front.
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And more recently, we've seen the likes of HBO Max. They're, they're doing testing on this front, and, and Disney+ is as well.
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So the streamers, because they're able to control, I think, a lot of the, the metadata, they're able to provide, I think, uh, pretty good results. It's improving, of course, and it's not perfect.
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You know, we all know that, right? From our-- from our own experiences. The platforms, on the other hand, they are also looking at this and going, "Okay, well, we control the, the shop window," right?
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This is a digital shelf that we're tracking.
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And, and just to be clear to folks who don't understand, what you guys really, really care about intensely in your work is what's being shown in the window and who's getting value out of it.
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That turns into, you called MPV, which is media placement value. Is that right? Exactly. Exactly. It's a, it's a, a proxy measurement to be able to understand the value of placement on a CTV device.
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So we look at the number of devices, we look at the engagement of those devices, and then we look at the CPM in the market, and we calculate what the value of that real estate is, and it gives a really good directional view to any streamer or platform on how much high-value placement they're securing.
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And strategies around that is really what we're about. How can you get more of the high-value place?
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So- So to be clear, you guys help, uh, not only, you not only capture that window and say, "Here's how you're doing," but you also suggest, "Here's how you can do better." That's right. Correct? That's right. Yeah.
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And, and that's really the key because, you know, these things are, are changing all the time.
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Different streamers have got different tent-pole products that they're trying to get in front ahead of the competition, and that requires a, a, a range of strategies depending on who you are.
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You know, if you're one of the big globals, you've got a lot of marketing bucks that you can invest into buying placement. That's a key thing. You've obviously buying placement for your app placement.
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You might be doing that on the screen, across the remote control, across these various elements, driving from social as well, really important to getting that, that viewership.
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And then it's about what could you be doing within each of these OEM or CTV platforms, and including MVPDs and games consoles and phones.
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Need to look at this holistically to understand how can I get my tent pole in front of my competitors so that I drive viewership, I drive engagement, and I reduce churn. Okay.
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So I found some things that were really interesting within the report that, that are just like little mind bombs. Like
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Roku, the biggest platform in America, over a hundred million, they're probably at a hundred and five or something like that now. I can't, I can't even keep track anymore.
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But, but the most American homes have a Roku in there somewhere. In May, they rolled out their first redesign of their home screen in a decade. Yeah. Driven by AI.
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But what's interesting to me is they've totally changed... It used to be they were milking that for cash.
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You all tracked a bunch of stuff in just a few days ago, media placements on there in a single day, eight million, eight point two million dollars of MPV- The Roku Channel itself and Apple TV had just over half of this, of this.
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I mean, I don't know if that's just a, obviously a home field advantage for the Roku [chuckles] Channel- Yeah...
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but, but, uh, Apple's just opening up the pocketbook possibly to make sure its stuff gets seen, or maybe with Ted Lasso and some of the things, they're really th- they're big- That's it... they're big horses.
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They're, they're really pushing those, so. Exactly. But, but it's all changed though, right? They- they've changed... This real estate is now a different thing.
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Uh, it's up for, as you put it, it's now up for algorithmic grabs. Yeah, and- That has a lot of implications... well, look, I think there's a, a... Look, let's face it.
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There is, there is still money changing hands for placement.
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[chuckles] So tho- tho- those algorithms are, are, are skewed to where, you know, how many views they need to provide to satisfy the agreement, so there's a compliance element there.
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But the, the Roku Channel and also Howdy, we're seeing them get promoted just like you see on Fire TV- Mm-hmm... with Prime, right? You, you obviously- Right. Yeah... they, they own the device.
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They've got their own content channels that are being delivered in there. They're eating their cake and, and, and, uh, well- They're making the cake. They're baking the cake...
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making the cake, eating it They're eating the cake. From both sides. They're selling the cake. Yeah. That's right. That's right. It's a lot of cake. [laughs] There's a lot of cake getting eaten.
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Marie Antoinette was very happy with this place, so. Yeah. Anyway. And look, so the, the, the algorithms for them are, are definitely gonna be skewed to favor themselves, so how does everyone else get in there?
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And that's a combination of depending on the platform, right?
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So if you're on Prime Video, well, sorry, on, on Fire TV, it's mainly about the downstream purchases you're gonna make on Amazon, your audience is going to make on Amazon.
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So yeah, you can buy placements, but they categorize you. There's like four categories of, you know, are you in the top category?
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That means y- your audience spends a ton of money on amazon.com, so you're gonna get a bunch of free placements put in there.
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If you've got a small channel that, that the audience doesn't spend a lot, you gotta buy it if you wanna, wanna get up there.
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So even though these things are becoming more and more algorithmic, there's still money being ch- being, you know, e- exchanging hands. Still. And that's a- But, but, but there's a different dynamic, as you say...
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slight key driver. There's, there's a big d- a different dynamic with Amazon uses Prime Video to sell stuff.
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These other guys are making money by stuff being sold on their platform, and you pay to be able to get seen while you're trying to sell more stuff, right? Yep.
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I mean, it's just a, it's a different dynamic, and the sort of class system on Amazon, on the Fire platform is very interesting. Yeah.
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Has implications, it feels like, as you say, for smaller operations, you really gotta pay to play.
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I'm curious, if it's okay, uh, Lucas, I'd love to hear something from the Jeffs, both the J and the G, about what this means as they think about
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where they put their stuff, how they promote, what they promote, what their opportunities are. Jeff at Heartbeat, talk to me a little bit, first of all, briefly, just talk a little bit about what you do at Heartbeat.
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I mean, it's, it's big. Kevin Hart is the most omnipresent performer in Hollywood as far as I'm concerned. I don't have any idea how he does it, but you may not, you may not know either. [laughs] You work with the guy.
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Well, it's... I'll probably... Let me tailor that to what this conversation, 'cause I kinda do everything for Heartbeat, everything from
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Kevin's last tours, I was on the ro- global tours around the world, so, you know, producing his tours. You know, obviously we are Netflix deal, so I, I, I kinda touch everything in the business right now, although my,
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my core DNA is distribution, right? So obviously moving our company from just being a producer to a distributor and a, and a true studio that we can control content. Like in...
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So we, you know, we have our fast channel, which is our, which is called our LOL Network, which we were one of the first movers in the space- Yeah... in terms of- It's like 10 years old now, right? Something like that?
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Yeah. Yeah. We've been, we- Yeah... we, we were the first movers in the space. It's, you know, in, in the ecosystem around our fast channels, we have our LOL Network, which is on Fast CTV.
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We've got LOL Radio, which is on SiriusXM. We've got six million followers of LOL Network on our YouTube, which we do a lot of bus- of business. So I, I made the switch probably about a year ago.
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I treat YouTube like a fast channel versus before- Yeah... we were treating it like a social channel. So we treat it like a fast channel, and it's, it's paid the dividends by treating it- Smart...
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like it's a fast channel. Can, can you real quickly just, just briefly, like what is that difference in terms of how you treat it?
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I mean, are you worried less about, "Oh, I got a bunch of likes," and more about, "I sold a bunch of ads"? [laughs] Two, two, two things. Two, two things. Here, here's what happened.
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Here's, this is what I, I, I say to people. So everybody, you look in the trades, look on LinkedIn every week, everybody's touting how YouTube as a network is streaming. It's streaming more than Netflix.
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So you see all the headlines, right? Yeah. Well, the reality is you have to look at when it really jumped up above in terms of being number one on streaming.
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What happened was once people started watching YouTube on connected TVs, that's when it jumped. It wasn't because any programmer- Right...
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any creator did something cr- They're watching for- So it's because of the viewer habits. Yeah. They're watching for a half an hour or two hours at a time- Yes... as opposed to- Yes... three-minute things- Yes...
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and then onto the, you know, then- Exactly... pay for your groceries, that kind of thing. Yeah. Because they're on a TV, so your viewing habits on a TV is much different from when you're on your mobile device.
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So the switch I made is, "Okay, let's program YouTube for TV." Mm. Now I'm going all along for 'em. That was a switch I made, and that's, it's, the numbers have jumped.
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You, you went from doing like comedy shorts, like two minutes of Kevin on stage- Yeah... or one of his posse of, uh, the com- the comedians he pulls up. It's not just two-minute blops. It's, uh- It's an hour-long show.
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It's hour long. Exactly. Someone set- someone settled in, and that's what they're doing. That's, that's very interesting. Exactly. Exactly. So, okay.
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So when you look at numbers now, I think, I think it's seventy-five to eighty percent of our viewership on YouTube are connected TVs. It's coming through connected TVs now. So that's why I say- That's-...
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it's my fast, it is a fast channel for me. Absolutely, seventy-five percent. Um, so that's a big deal for you.
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Uh, out of what, uh, Lucas is talking about, anything there resonate with you as you're evolving what Heartbeat is doing in terms of its distribution patterns- Yeah, I mean-... how you get found?
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I mean, that's, that is the challenge from day one.
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So, like, like, true story, about a year, year and a half ago, for fast channels, because, you know, you go on connected TVs, there's probably a hundred to two hundred channels, depending on which device you're on, right?
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So a lotta time, the fight was for where are you gonna rank, that category where's your channel at? So for example, I think we were on Roku.
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We were, they were categorizing comedy in the, I think the point was like three hundreds at one time. We were doing great. We got up, came in on Monday. I think we got some... Our numbers dropped. We didn't know why.
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But they just randomly took the category and put it into the sevens. [laughs] We, we immediate... We, where we were in the three hundred channels, we moved in seven because they moved the category.
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Our numbers dropped prob- it was like eighty percent drop in numbers. Yeah, so- This is a little bit like what Lucas is talking about, though, in terms of- Yeah...
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with Amazon, if you're not above the fold, one of the, I guess- Yeah... it's really, like, one percent of the things you guys looked at, right, Lucas?
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One percent above the fold, so to speak, which is a newspaper term, and I love to see it- Yeah... but it's a little wacky- Mm-hmm... to see it. But if you're not in that first, that first window,
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most of the time you don't, you don't exist. You're not... You don't, you don't exist. Now- Yeah... to Roku's credit, being a good partner, obviously we went and raised a fuss. They then took our channel.
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They kept the category where it was, but they took our channel and recategorized.
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I put us, I think they put us into some, like, TV series or entertainment, which bumped us back up, and our number, and then our numbers went back up. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. Not rocket science.
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So those are the things, those are the things that now, in terms of the algorithm... So when we first started, when we launched, Pluto was our number one platform.
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Doing gangbuster numbers on Pluto, but what happened was, and even coming out their own executive's mouth, they started creating their own proprietary channels
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that they were prioritizing, and our numbers started going down on Pluto. Again, home field advantage. Home field advantage. This is the challenge- Yeah... every time for you guys.
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Um, I'd love to tap into Geoff with a G- Mm-hmm...
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and talk a little about, because you have your hands across many different things here, uh, different kinds of, of streaming content with documentaries, sports a-and other stuff.
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Uh, first of all, give us a little quick sense of the different things that you have your hands in, and then what this means and how you navigate and what changes you're seeing, some of which Lucas has, uh, has spotlighted here.
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Sure. So, um, uh, I'm the CEO of a company called Active, and we are, in essence, fractional employee services or a network in a box. We run twelve to fifteen different channels at any given time.
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But yeah, I mean, we, we think about discoverability every single day. Our strategy is a little different. We, in most cases, don't have someone as popular as Kevin Hart behind us that people are, are searching for.
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Mm-hmm.
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And so we, you know, I kind of go by the, uh, the kind of Malcolm Gladwell blink approach, which is when you see the name of whatever the channel is, in one second, when you look at that guide, you know whether or not you are gonna click on that channel.
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So are brands like Documentary Plus very clear what the proposition is there, or Free Life Sports very clear what the proposition is?
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And so we focus on channels that are usually brand-driven or creator or talent-driven or genre-driven that have a very, very clear value proposition. So one of our clients is Popular Science.
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If you've been around for the past hundred and fifty years, you probably have heard Popular Science before.
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And so when people are flipping through the guide, regardless of any algorithm, you'll probably see the logo and be like, "I've seen that." And the name says exactly [chuckles] what it is, so it's much more clickable.
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And we've worked with clients that have had more obscure branding or labeling and gotten them to adjust what that messaging is in that little tiny logo, and we've seen substantial uptick just from that alone.
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E-even, even the logo, instead of it being Flash or something, it is Flash Sports TV or something like that, right?
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Just something that says this is setting an audience expectation and creating some interest that otherwise is, is sort of an anodyne term or name that means nothing, right? Yeah, I mean, exactly.
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N-not a client of ours, but a good example of, of this strategy is Lionsgate has the 50 Cent channel. It's not called the 50 Cent channel, it's 50 Cent Action- Yeah...
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'cause you know you're gonna get action from that, and if you love 50 Cent- I think this is- Great... it's, isn't it, isn't it Fiddy Cent? Geoff, can you speak to this? I'm not at liberty. It's Fiddy Cent?
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[laughs] I just wanna be true to the man. Curtis has been very- No, it's 50 Cent... very productive. It's 50. Okay. All right.
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I didn't know if he went uptown once he started being a producer and all that stuff, and he started putting the F in there, but it was Fiddy back in the day. Yeah. So okay. No, it's 50 Cent.
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So the 50 Cent channel is you're getting what Curtis Jackson thinks you need to see in action, right? Yeah, and some of that might- Not just, not just cheap movies, which could be misconstrued, right?
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Yeah, and I think his- So-... partnership with Lionsgate is genius. They've got an incredible action library, and I think the social- Yeah...
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media stickiness and probably his ability to game algorithms on social and probably on CTV is very worthwhile to increase viewership. So I think those strategies work really well. Um- So, so those are, those are...
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I don't wanna, I don't mean this in any negative way. But those are kind of Moneyball strategies, right? And that's what you have to be if you're not one of the big seven or own the platform, right? I mean, so- Yep...
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Jeff with a J, he's got, he's got the GOAT there, the omnipresent GOAT, Kevin. Yeah. So that helps.
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Jeff with a G, you've got free live sports, which is a pretty good, pretty good value proposition for a whole lot of folks. It's a wide range of sports.
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But you've got to figure out those ways to punch through to do some of what Lucas and, and Looper have identified, I think are really, um... It's a much more complicated world. I mean, how, how do you...
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Uh, one of the things I guess I, I don't wanna lose track of, Netflix, of course, is ahead of everybody.
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Like, they punched in their AI-powered interfaces with AI-generated trailers spec- specific to you, and AI-generated thumbnails specific to you, and probably rewritten promo bits that are, you know, you like Uma Thurman instead of what's his name, the crazy director of Kill Bill.
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You're gonna see more about Uma than you are about, uh, G- Yeah... the nut job. [laughs] I shouldn't say that. Tarantino. He's gotten a little wacky. Taran- thank you.
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[laughs] Quentin has gotten a little wacky lately, firing at will. But, uh, you're gonna see more of that than the Quentin Tarantino component of it. You're gonna see the Uma thing.
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Now, that kind of stuff they've been doing ahead of everybody. But other folks are catching up. Other folks are doing things, so HBO Max and some of those guys.
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Lessons for the smaller streamers out there out of what they're doing to try to navigate. Any, any thoughts, Lucas, about some of the things you guys found when you looked at Disney Plus, Amazon, and HBO-- not Amazon.
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Uh, Disney Plus, Netflix, and HBO Max? Yeah. Look, uh, those guys have, uh, huge budgets behind them, right?
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So they are able to put together really comprehensive annual or multi-year deals with these platforms that really lock in a whole bunch of prominence that others can't get, right?
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So it's kind of fighting for everything else. I think it's important to understand each platform on its own because they are different.
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We've seen, uh, recently that Roku is moving to more of a channel aggregation play, very similar to like you saw with Amazon Channels or, uh, you know, Prime Video subscriptions. Peacock's doing some of that too, right?
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Sorry? I mean, isn't Peacock doing s- isn't Peacock doing some channel aggregation? I mean, while getting merged into Google TV- Yeah... or Google Premium.
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And, you know, you saw with Apple TV early do- early doors, I haven't-- I'm not sure how well that's, that, that's worked out.
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But they wanna go for that channel aggregation piece, and what we've seen is a twelve percent drop in the prominence given to AVOD content versus SVOD. So- Mm...
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that's a stream that, you know, if you're in the AVOD business that you're swimming against on Roku because they figure they can get more money from these partnerships. So it's critical you understand each platform.
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Like Samsung did that a while ago.
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More and more of these platforms are, are moving the percentage of subscriptions that they can get a cut of versus the ads that they're getting a cut of, and that might be something to do with the ad loads and fill rates.
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And so I think if you're a, a smaller distributor, you wanna be able to go in there and lead on the front foot and talk about how well you're able to monetize your channel and if they're getting a slice of it, how much they're going to be making.
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You know, this is a really, an interesting shift. I, I, uh, Jeff with a G, I'm curious. Sports has been so the tune-in thing. You know, free live sports.
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Okay, well, live sports has been the thing people tune into, and you're, you're not paying, I don't know, hundred and ten billion dollars to the NFL, at least not this week. Maybe soon.
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I guess they're gonna open up some of this stuff again. So how do you get the live events which have value and will catch the eye of somebody if they know you've got, like, a surfing championship?
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Does that kind of stuff s- tend to get algorithmically upped, or do you gotta, do you have to pay to pump that up?
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Because if, if there's a surfing person who's watching a specific platform, I would think they would have some--
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They would, they would turn to you guys and highlight you guys without you even-- maybe not even having to pay for it. Or is that just a- Yeah, I mean, I think-... a different time, a different, gentler time?
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[clears throat] Yeah, I mean, listen, there's... I think there's, like, two value propositions for audiences when it comes to sports.
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I think the viewer that is subscribing to the CBS Paramount Plus, Amazon Prime, Netflix, et cetera, or to, to old-school cable, is not necessarily the same viewer that's coming to watch a Red Bull live event for flu tag or a billiards TV championship for a weekend.
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You know, it's, you know, if, if you've had Time Warner Cable for the past twenty years, you're probably gonna stick with Time Warner Cable for your NFL package. It just probably is what you're gonna do.
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So we try to target the emerging sports, you know, in addition to those other sports, and college football and localized sports and, and other sports that you're never gonna see on Time Warner, on an ABC or a CBS or a Fox, because if they're paying billions of dollars for the NBA or, or the NFL, they don't necessarily need the billiards channel.
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But- Sure... the fandom for these emerging sports, as we've kind of seen in the past few years, especially since pandemic, is skyrocketing.
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You'd be shocked some of the numbers that we see for some of these sports that maybe you would never watch, but a nineteen or twenty-five-year-old kid is definitely watching.
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Or in the days of, uh, Kalshi and Poly Market and draft kings- Right... and all of these other things. They want those live sports 'cause they're betting on it. 'Cause they're betting on it. Yeah. Yeah.
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Or they wanna research or You know, they're an obscure soccer club that you can't find in the US on any sort of pay TV window.
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So they're- Some- somehow it's not one of the twenty-seven major leagues in the United States, and South America, and Europe, and Saudi Arabia that's not already on somebody's channel, right?
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So- Yeah, and I think we've seen Netflix become a little wise to these types of plays. I mean- Yeah... a guy climbing a skyscraper or- Yeah...
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a golf championship that's not even a real golf league, that's a pop-up live event, but still has a Tiger Woods or a Ro-Rory McIlroy- Yeah... something like that.
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You're not gonna see those on Fox because that's just not what they do. Right.
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So I think there is a lot of value in those types of sports that are a little less traditional, but people still love, and I think that's the beauty of being in the streaming ecosystem, and especially with Fast. Sure.
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Sure. There's unlimited of those. I mean, a World Chase Tag League, you're not gonna find that on ESPN, no way. But it drives billions and billions of views on social every month.
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So we try to find and cherry-pick a lot of those types of sports, and in the aggregate it becomes a really great offering for our customers.
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You know, you mentioned Fox and sports, and it makes me think, having watched the Fox coverage of the World Cup... Maybe you all did? Show of hands? That you guys watched? Most of, most of America did probably.
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No, I did but- Probably not, Lucas. No, you were, you were somewhere else. But on Fox, let me just say, on Fox, you got a pretty
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healthy showing of everything Fox does, including their streaming service that they never talked about for years, Fox Nation. I mean, it was just one of the... And I'm just thinking, boy, once they acquire Roku,
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it's g- I-I'm just wondering if there's gonna be any room for anybody else, and they're just, are they just gonna promote everything Fox always on Roku? I, I find that in- Great... any thoughts?
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Anybody wanna jump into that? Yeah, why, why wouldn't they? Well, it's a- Right. [laughs] It's a, it's a great Barca channel, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know? Totally, but- That, that- that's the thing about- But-...
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owning the real estate all the way downstream- It-... it gives you that huge advantage.
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Jeff, you, you mentioned the social element, you know, driving perhaps views and- Yeah, what I, what I, what I was gonna s- what I was gonna say to that question,
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maybe, maybe not, because the thing is, is that so the ecosystem that Fox is building, they already have Tubi, which is arguably the number one AVOD platform. Absolutely. I don't really see, I don't really see
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them imposing their influence over Tubi. Obviously, they do do some collaborations. Obviously, Roku could be different 'cause it's platform, so it's probably a whole different ballgame.
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But it's, you know, because they're distributing other channels, they, you know, probably- Right. I think the jury's out in terms of how much influence they could have. Well, I mean, is it...
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Do you guys even think-- I mean, like, I think about Tubi, I think of it as a platform. I mean, I, I don't think of it- Yeah, it's a platform... as, as much that different from...
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I mean, it's so weird the, the taxonomy- Yes... of these things, right? So- Yes... I'm a distributor. I'm a service. I'm a platform that's virtualized, like a Tubi or a Pluto. Mm-hmm.
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I'm a physical thing built into your TV set platform. You know, like, each of those- Yeah... has its levels and power and reach and all that. Yeah.
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Uh, but Tubi and, and, and whatever the cable guys are doing with Xumo... By the way, Time Warner is just a billing ad, uh, construct now [laughs] within Charter/Cox- Yeah...
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slash all that stuff, just to clarify, people are confused. But as of the deal closing a couple of weeks ago, what will now be called Cox was Charter, was Time Warner. [laughs] Oh, okay.
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Those, I mean, like, we, we, we get Charter, and it's still, my, we still pay the bill to Time Warner, which is funny 'cause they didn't, they didn't change that legal payment thing. Anyway,
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but it'll be interesting to think about. Lucas, is it different within a Tubi to be seen versus the Roku Channel/Roku?
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I think Jeff with a J has a really interesting point that, uh, maybe they don't wanna mess too much with that golden goose they have. I think that's basically what you're saying, right, Jeff? Like, you, you got- Yes...
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you got Tubi already, and, and it has been inten- I had a friend who was working over there when they were bought right in the middle of the pandemic for what turns out to be one of the great deals in recent media M&A history.
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Uh, you know, they were running, like, day two versions of The Masked Singer on Tubi and seeing really good pickup. You know, and they were doing that pretty, pretty quickly on.
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But do you necessarily wanna go all Fox on Roku when people go to Roku for more than that? I mean, that's a really interesting question. Yeah. They're, they're not, they're not- So Jeff with a, Jeff with a J says no.
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You, what do you say, Lucas? Well, I, yeah, I agree. They're, they're not gonna kill the, the platform, right? They've got a huge audience. They've gotta cater to all these partnerships.
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They've got these commercial arrangements in place. But you see these subtle SKUs that go on, right? You know, they, they, they're going to favor themselves when they need to, and outside of that- Yeah...
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they'll favor the other relationships so that they can be compliant with their agreements and, and do all of that, right?
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I, I, I wanted to pick up on something that J-Jeff said, uh, around the social element, because this is really important as well, right?
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So there's the on-screen real estate in your room being promoted there, but also everyone's sitting at home on their devices as well. You know, we talked about the algorithm- Yeah...
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drawing you for the twenty percent who can't be bothered spending fourteen minutes finding something. And we see that. We see sleeper hits kind of popping out, like Widow's Bay on Apple, for example.
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If you look at the Google Trends and searches for, for that title, it matches the algorithmic placements that it was getting across these platforms.
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And so it's a little bit like the, the old T- you know, I say the old TVOD days, they're obviously still [laughs] massively around, but- So long ago... it's how did you get up the charts?
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It's 13 months ago, back in the old days. You know? Right? So, yeah. If you got in the top 50 titles, it became self-perpetuating- Yeah... that you're gonna sell more, right? And you just had to get- Mm-hmm...
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yourself in the top 50. So do you buy the placement to get in the top 50? Do you drive it through social? Like, what strategies can you employ to get yourself picked up by the algorithms?
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Because as soon as you do, you're getting, you're getting free, and we all love free, right? Yeah. Free placement. This, this feels like TikTok, right? Like, in TikTok- Yeah...
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if TikTok decides to bless your specific little piece of content and push it themselves, all of a sudden you're gigantic, right? That's it. Yeah.
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And you've got a record deal, you're on The Tonight Show, I mean, et cetera, et cetera. So- Um, it's kinda like that but for- Yeah, to, to add to that-... for shows. Yeah, go...
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yeah, I mean, on the TikTok note, if anybody watched Suits, that was why. Yeah. They clipped out Suits. It went incredibly viral.
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A bunch of young kids and other people below 40 who had never heard of Suits or maybe even the USA Network were then like, "Whoa." Or, or worn one, let's just be clear. [laughs] They didn't even wear suits, so, you know.
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For sure. Like, they were... That was a nice discoverability tool, and they knew that- Yeah... most likely those people were not cable subscribers, and the only other place you could find it was on Netflix.
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Those, those strategies work really well. We had a clip yesterday from one of our films called Still Working 9 to 5 that was a documentary about the film Working 9 to 5 with Dolly Parton.
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Obviously, God rest her soul, Dolly Parton passed yesterday. That's right. We posted a bunch of those clips. We had one clip- Yeah...
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that's done already 18 million views on Facebook alone and has driven substantial viewership to Documentary Plus- Right... because of that clip.
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Because probably a lot of those people never heard of Documentary Plus, but they love Dolly, and they're willing to click on a link to go see it. They can watch it- Mm-hmm... for free or sign up for a seven-day trial.
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I think that's the new funnel to get people to go to streaming. And I jokingly say, you know, there's, you know, the clipping world works really well.
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I don't know if you guys have ever heard of that kid Clavicular- Oh, yeah... that goes viral all the time. Yeah. Everything I've learned about that guy has been against my own will. I have helped break his cheekbones.
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[laughs] Like, it is... No one was ever looking for that, but he was able to game the algorithms- Yeah... for his success, spent a bunch of money clipping, and that led to whatever level of fame or hate or whatever.
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But they understood the algorithm, and that pushed massive eyeballs, and that's in essence where we're at today.
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Everybody does it now, you know, with sports and, you know, you look at a lot of the successful brands like Almost Friday, who five years ago was brand new, now that entire cast is getting Netflix movies.
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They're, you know, have top podcasts. Their YouTubes have exploded. They learned. They were very smart. They understood the algorithms and how to use them to their favor and then followed that up with exciting content.
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Um- Right... so, so I think that's the new way. If you, if you can't afford to pay Roku their 400 grand for a commercial placement or Samsung or Vizio or whoever, that's the new way to push eyeballs.
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I mean, we see it in politics. They've been doing that for years. We've seen it in the manosphere with podcasts. Obviously, that's worked really well for them.
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It's this, that sentiment of just flooding the market with clips. You'll eventually find an audience that is gonna like you. Right.
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So- We are seeing, we are seeing the big streaming services, as you mentioned in the report, Lucas, going with shorts. Netflix has been doing some of this.
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Disney Plus, HBO Max are doing clips that are basically promotional, but, uh, some of the, some of the big streamers are also doing original content. I think Peacock is doing,
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and this makes total sense to me, vertical, vertical content in unscripted, right?
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Like, that's totally on brand with their Bravo verse and all that, and vertical totally where the kids are, and they know scripted re- or unscripted really, really well.
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So I think that you're gonna see a lot more of that, but- I mean, we, we even do that on- Go ahead... Documentary Plus. We launched verticals- Right... three months ago.
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Well, you gotta d- And- Unfortunately, now you're gonna need to do it for Tim Curry, who died at 80 today, another, another great.
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Uh, there's gotta be at least 16 Tim Curry documentaries [laughs] and Rocky Horror documentaries out there. Maybe Rocky Horror ones, for sure. Now, I don't know if we've got one. Right.
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Well, you can't, you can't do Rocky Horror without Tim Curry, but anyway. But you should be looking, so, uh, anyway.
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I'm g- curious, Jeff with a J, are there, are there examples like that where, as you say, you were programming for connected TV YouTube, which I think is a really smart but very interesting shift, and it's paid off big time for you.
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But the short component of that, how does that manifest for you? 'Cause you do have all that comedy content from Kevin, from all the folks that are in his ambit that you can do a lot of things with.
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So talk briefly, if you would, about how you use that to help punch above your weight. So there's, there's two,
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two, two ways to think about it, is that we w- we were in a vertical business and been s- doing clips for, for years, like- Ever... on our- Yeah, yeah... that we've been doing it, right?
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But what happens is that where we're successful at in terms of, like, f- I would say gaming the algorithm at, is the platforms we can link to. So I can link... I can put a link in there straight to Tubi.
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I can put a link in there straight to Pluto. So there's certain platforms I can do. I c- you can't click the link and go onto a Samsung TV or a Vizio TV, right? That's an oversight on their part. So it's hard to- Right.
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Yeah, exactly. So but the ones where I can link to, uh, we, we game the algorithm. Obviously, I, I know when I can push stuff up, and then you can, you can see the results based on the thing.
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And you can really push, and then, and then the algorithm, Tubi picks it up, oh, it's doing well, and then it starts going up, right? Right. But that's 'cause we're pushing from our social.
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But it's w- if they say, "Hey, okay," a lot of times the connected TV's, "Okay, can you tag us?"
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I can tag you, but a- at the end of the day, if the person doesn't have a Vizio TV or a Samsung TV, it's, you know, you, you... it's kinda shot in the dark.
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From social, from a social standpoint Like, like how do you pick that? 'Cause I think Samsung is like one of the biggest OEMs, but it's still... I mean, Samsung Plus is, what is that, three percent, five percent- Yep...
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of the households, something like that? I mean, it's a, it's a small target. It's a good one, but it's a small target. Yeah, it's a good one. I mean, it's still millions of people.
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So, so what we've done from a marketing standpoint, obviously to support our partners, I use Facebook, we use it for clipping, we use it for streaming, but I also use it for a lot of research. I do a lot of research.
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So obviously with, you know, using Kevin's Facebook and our LOL Facebook is
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we've done a lot of polls and stuff and research, so I have lists like, "Hey, who-- are you, are you-- do you have a Samsung TV or do you have a Vizio TV? Do you have Vizio?" Then I get their info.
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So I have big email lists that are very targeted- So you know his fans on Facebook- Yeah. Yes... will do a survey- Where they're at... and they'll say, "I use this platform." Yes.
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Which one's, which one's over indexed for Kevin Hart? Which platforms? I'm curious. Um, definitely Roku. Definitely Roku. On connected TV. Yeah. Like it's already the biggest, and it's even more that, so.
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It's already the biggest, yeah. And then, and then it, it splits between like Samsung, Vizio and, and the connected TVs, and obviously, uh, Tubi's a big one. Hmm. Interesting.
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So that helps you figure out where you're gonna target. It's not a direct benefit on Facebook, though some of that too, but it becomes your research platform. Well, yeah, yeah.
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What happens is that on the research, what I'm able to do, ironically, my team didn't think it would-- we could actually do this, or people would actually do it. When we do these polls, we get 'em...
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they're giving us our e... their emails and their cell phones, [laughs] like even us- Wow... so I actually have a list. Yeah.
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So if I know here's my Samsung- There's a lot of very jealous marketers hearing this and going, "Oh my God." You get one email address- How is this possible?... let alone a cell phone.
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Pollsters can't get somebody to pick the phone up, and they're like, "No, you can call us." Send us some more emails with Kevin being funny, you know? It's like, okay. So- Exactly... that's great.
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So, you know, there's- We have these, we have these li- we have these lists by, by... We have these lists that we just send out emails or text to. That's fantastic.
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How are you using, I mean, you've-- Geff with a G, how are you guys, how are you guys leveraging then the, the, the documentary stuff?
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You talk about sort of surfing the stream of news and awareness and like Dolly's death. Uh, "9 to 5," probably her biggest hit. S- the, uh, song was one of her biggest hits, the, the theme song.
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But are, are there other less obvious ways that you guys are able to leverage for either Doc+ or for FreeLife Sports?
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Yeah, I mean, uh, that's, uh, t- two answers there, but are, which are somewhat of kind of the same answer.
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But yes, I mean, for FreeLife Sports, you know, sports are very seasonal, so we lean into seasonal sports that we know are the zeitgeists just for like natural discoverability and what's, what's strong in the algorithms.
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Obviously coming up here, college football, NFL, uh, you know, Major League Baseball playoffs. So during those times of the year, we're gonna lean a little heavier into that type of content.
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And then on the Doc+ side, you know, the, the beauty of documentaries is that it's much more of a medium than a genre. It's a medium with all sorts of genres.
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You've got true crime, you've got sports, you've got food, you've got social action, you've, you know, et cetera, et cetera. There's a hundred categories you could probably identify.
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So we instead back into whatever is going to be in the zeitgeist. So an example of that is September, we're doing a back to school push. November, you'll see a midterms political push.
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Those types of things, because we know that's what the topics are online, and that's what is going to be favored in the algorithm, whether we're doing something or not. People are talking about that.
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In October when you've got Major League Baseball playoffs, you're gonna see much higher viewership in Major League Baseball than any other time of the year, just because those games are more exciting.
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So we're gonna have on Documentary+ our Nolan Ryan biopic that is, you know, an incredible offering for fans, or similar things in that vein so that we can stunt these.
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And then those are also the same types of content that we service to all the platforms because, you know, when we do our monthly editorials to Vizio or Samsung or Roku, if they're like, "Ooh, Major League Baseball.
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Oh, Nolan Ryan, he's a legend," they're more likely gonna wanna promote that in their unsold inventory that they have for that placement than just some random cooking documentary that no one's heard of.
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I mean- Unless Nolan Ryan is cooking, but you made me think of a mashup you totally should be doing. So you got back to school, you've got midterm elections. How about midterm exam specials- [laughs] Too early...
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for all the kids- Too early. Too early. You gotta wait till January, February for that. Yeah. Maybe. That's successful like finals. Nobody cares about those kids anyways. They, they want content. Oh, yeah.
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They want, they want good content. Who's going to college? Yeah, I totally get it. But hey, October you will see spookier stuff or, you know- No...
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unexplained docs maybe about aliens or ghosts or whatever, because that's what the algorithm wants, whether we want it or not. Um, so we- How about alien ghosts in honor of Ray Bradbury and Martian Chronicles?
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Just saying. That's an idea. This feels like a good place to wrap this conversation up.
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It has been very interesting and wide-ranging, and I wanna thank our, our sponsor, Looper Insights, Lucas Bertrand, the, the CEO, Geoff Clanagan, the do everything for Mr.
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Seen Everywhere, Kevin Hart and Heartbeats, and Geoff Clark, CEO of Active and Doc+ and a founder of FreeLife Sports. This has been next TMT Talks.
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Uh, you can get it free twice a week @nextTMT, where we put out a newsletter twice a week. And, uh, you can get all that, plus all this intellectual goodness just by tagging along with us.
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Like, share, subscribe, please comment. There's lots of things these guys commented about. Comment further.
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We'd like to hear what you all think about this changing face of how TV is getting seen at a time when operational artificial intelligence is helping educate and transform how these platforms work.
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It's a really interesting topic. We could probably talk for another three hours, but these guys are hardworking people, and they gotta get back to it, and I need to lull about and, uh, drink a mai tai.
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So with that, we will wrap this up. Uh, I'm David Bloom, co-founder of next TMT with my co-founder, Daniel Frankel, who's lurking offstage somewhere. Anyway, with that, we will wrap this up. Thank you, everybody.
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Take care. All right, thanks. Thank you. [upbeat music]
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[upbeat music] Hey, everybody. I'm David Bloom, co-founder of this podcast, Next TMT Talks.
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We are here for a special edition about what the interface shift and the ways that we receive streaming video are changing in this AI-driven world and, and Looper Insights, whose CEO, uh, Lucas Bertrot, is joining us to talk about that.
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We'll get a little bit deeper into what it means in particular for two of the biggest platforms and three of the biggest streamers, and how that operationally plays out if you are a company with streaming video and you wanna get it seen, you wanna know how well it's doing.
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Strategies are changing with these new platform transformations, and we're gonna get into that with Jeff Clark, with a G, who is the, uh, co-founder of FreeLife Sports and CEO of, uh, a documentary company and other streaming video companies, and Jeff Clad again, who heads distribution for Heartbeats, which is Kevin Hart's gigantic company.
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I don't know how Kevin isn't doing every job there 'cause he is the hardest working man in showbiz, but certainly Jeff with a J is also a very hardworking man. Glad to have all of them here. Lucas, let's start.
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You guys just put it-- You're putting out this report as we speak, is issuing forth.
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Uh, you looked at, to begin with, Roku and Fire TV, the two biggest platforms in the United States, and they both have made big updates in the last three months, I guess, that are really changing...
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Their strategies are very different in terms of what's shifting, but it's-- if you wanna be there and get seen, you've really gotta think hard about this. So talk a little bit about that real quickly to start. Yeah.
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So look, uh, Looper Insights tracks the placement of apps and content on connected TV devices across twenty-five countries, two hundred and fifty different platforms.
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So we're seeing all of these changes in real time, and one of the key things that, that everyone's trying to solve is discovery. How do we make it easier for the consumer?
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Typical consumer spends fourteen minutes, which seems crazy, trying to find stuff that they wanna watch, and that's a real problem, and twenty percent or nineteen percent actually drop off.
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They give up, and I imagine they probably go to the algorithms. They go to YouTube and Shorts or TikTok 'cause they just can't be bothered, right?
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So that's one of the industry problems that we're all trying to solve, is: how can we find content more quickly that's relevant to us?
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And, uh, the streamers, first of all, have dived into that, and they're adding AI capabilities in terms of search. We've seen Netflix, as they do, taking a lead on that front.
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And more recently, we've seen the likes of HBO Max. They're, they're doing testing on this front, and, and Disney+ is as well.
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So the streamers, because they're able to control, I think, a lot of the, the metadata, they're able to provide, I think, uh, pretty good results. It's improving, of course, and it's not perfect.
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You know, we all know that, right? From our-- from our own experiences. The platforms, on the other hand, they are also looking at this and going, "Okay, well, we control the, the shop window," right?
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This is a digital shelf that we're tracking.
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And, and just to be clear to folks who don't understand, what you guys really, really care about intensely in your work is what's being shown in the window and who's getting value out of it.
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That turns into, you called MPV, which is media placement value. Is that right? Exactly. Exactly. It's a, it's a, a proxy measurement to be able to understand the value of placement on a CTV device.
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So we look at the number of devices, we look at the engagement of those devices, and then we look at the CPM in the market, and we calculate what the value of that real estate is, and it gives a really good directional view to any streamer or platform on how much high-value placement they're securing.
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And strategies around that is really what we're about. How can you get more of the high-value place?
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So- So to be clear, you guys help, uh, not only, you not only capture that window and say, "Here's how you're doing," but you also suggest, "Here's how you can do better." That's right. Correct? That's right. Yeah.
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And, and that's really the key because, you know, these things are, are changing all the time.
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Different streamers have got different tent-pole products that they're trying to get in front ahead of the competition, and that requires a, a, a range of strategies depending on who you are.
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You know, if you're one of the big globals, you've got a lot of marketing bucks that you can invest into buying placement. That's a key thing. You've obviously buying placement for your app placement.
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You might be doing that on the screen, across the remote control, across these various elements, driving from social as well, really important to getting that, that viewership.
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And then it's about what could you be doing within each of these OEM or CTV platforms, and including MVPDs and games consoles and phones.
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Need to look at this holistically to understand how can I get my tent pole in front of my competitors so that I drive viewership, I drive engagement, and I reduce churn. Okay.
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So I found some things that were really interesting within the report that, that are just like little mind bombs. Like
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Roku, the biggest platform in America, over a hundred million, they're probably at a hundred and five or something like that now. I can't, I can't even keep track anymore.
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But, but the most American homes have a Roku in there somewhere. In May, they rolled out their first redesign of their home screen in a decade. Yeah. Driven by AI.
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But what's interesting to me is they've totally changed... It used to be they were milking that for cash.
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You all tracked a bunch of stuff in just a few days ago, media placements on there in a single day, eight million, eight point two million dollars of MPV- The Roku Channel itself and Apple TV had just over half of this, of this.
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I mean, I don't know if that's just a, obviously a home field advantage for the Roku [chuckles] Channel- Yeah...
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but, but, uh, Apple's just opening up the pocketbook possibly to make sure its stuff gets seen, or maybe with Ted Lasso and some of the things, they're really th- they're big- That's it... they're big horses.
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They're, they're really pushing those, so. Exactly. But, but it's all changed though, right? They- they've changed... This real estate is now a different thing.
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Uh, it's up for, as you put it, it's now up for algorithmic grabs. Yeah, and- That has a lot of implications... well, look, I think there's a, a... Look, let's face it.
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There is, there is still money changing hands for placement.
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[chuckles] So tho- tho- those algorithms are, are, are skewed to where, you know, how many views they need to provide to satisfy the agreement, so there's a compliance element there.
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But the, the Roku Channel and also Howdy, we're seeing them get promoted just like you see on Fire TV- Mm-hmm... with Prime, right? You, you obviously- Right. Yeah... they, they own the device.
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They've got their own content channels that are being delivered in there. They're eating their cake and, and, and, uh, well- They're making the cake. They're baking the cake...
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making the cake, eating it They're eating the cake. From both sides. They're selling the cake. Yeah. That's right. That's right. It's a lot of cake. [laughs] There's a lot of cake getting eaten.
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Marie Antoinette was very happy with this place, so. Yeah. Anyway. And look, so the, the, the algorithms for them are, are definitely gonna be skewed to favor themselves, so how does everyone else get in there?
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And that's a combination of depending on the platform, right?
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So if you're on Prime Video, well, sorry, on, on Fire TV, it's mainly about the downstream purchases you're gonna make on Amazon, your audience is going to make on Amazon.
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So yeah, you can buy placements, but they categorize you. There's like four categories of, you know, are you in the top category?
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That means y- your audience spends a ton of money on amazon.com, so you're gonna get a bunch of free placements put in there.
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If you've got a small channel that, that the audience doesn't spend a lot, you gotta buy it if you wanna, wanna get up there.
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So even though these things are becoming more and more algorithmic, there's still money being ch- being, you know, e- exchanging hands. Still. And that's a- But, but, but there's a different dynamic, as you say...
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slight key driver. There's, there's a big d- a different dynamic with Amazon uses Prime Video to sell stuff.
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These other guys are making money by stuff being sold on their platform, and you pay to be able to get seen while you're trying to sell more stuff, right? Yep.
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I mean, it's just a, it's a different dynamic, and the sort of class system on Amazon, on the Fire platform is very interesting. Yeah.
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Has implications, it feels like, as you say, for smaller operations, you really gotta pay to play.
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I'm curious, if it's okay, uh, Lucas, I'd love to hear something from the Jeffs, both the J and the G, about what this means as they think about
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where they put their stuff, how they promote, what they promote, what their opportunities are. Jeff at Heartbeat, talk to me a little bit, first of all, briefly, just talk a little bit about what you do at Heartbeat.
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I mean, it's, it's big. Kevin Hart is the most omnipresent performer in Hollywood as far as I'm concerned. I don't have any idea how he does it, but you may not, you may not know either. [laughs] You work with the guy.
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Well, it's... I'll probably... Let me tailor that to what this conversation, 'cause I kinda do everything for Heartbeat, everything from
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Kevin's last tours, I was on the ro- global tours around the world, so, you know, producing his tours. You know, obviously we are Netflix deal, so I, I, I kinda touch everything in the business right now, although my,
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my core DNA is distribution, right? So obviously moving our company from just being a producer to a distributor and a, and a true studio that we can control content. Like in...
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So we, you know, we have our fast channel, which is our, which is called our LOL Network, which we were one of the first movers in the space- Yeah... in terms of- It's like 10 years old now, right? Something like that?
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Yeah. Yeah. We've been, we- Yeah... we, we were the first movers in the space. It's, you know, in, in the ecosystem around our fast channels, we have our LOL Network, which is on Fast CTV.
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We've got LOL Radio, which is on SiriusXM. We've got six million followers of LOL Network on our YouTube, which we do a lot of bus- of business. So I, I made the switch probably about a year ago.
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I treat YouTube like a fast channel versus before- Yeah... we were treating it like a social channel. So we treat it like a fast channel, and it's, it's paid the dividends by treating it- Smart...
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like it's a fast channel. Can, can you real quickly just, just briefly, like what is that difference in terms of how you treat it?
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I mean, are you worried less about, "Oh, I got a bunch of likes," and more about, "I sold a bunch of ads"? [laughs] Two, two, two things. Two, two things. Here, here's what happened.
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Here's, this is what I, I, I say to people. So everybody, you look in the trades, look on LinkedIn every week, everybody's touting how YouTube as a network is streaming. It's streaming more than Netflix.
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So you see all the headlines, right? Yeah. Well, the reality is you have to look at when it really jumped up above in terms of being number one on streaming.
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What happened was once people started watching YouTube on connected TVs, that's when it jumped. It wasn't because any programmer- Right...
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any creator did something cr- They're watching for- So it's because of the viewer habits. Yeah. They're watching for a half an hour or two hours at a time- Yes... as opposed to- Yes... three-minute things- Yes...
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and then onto the, you know, then- Exactly... pay for your groceries, that kind of thing. Yeah. Because they're on a TV, so your viewing habits on a TV is much different from when you're on your mobile device.
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So the switch I made is, "Okay, let's program YouTube for TV." Mm. Now I'm going all along for 'em. That was a switch I made, and that's, it's, the numbers have jumped.
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You, you went from doing like comedy shorts, like two minutes of Kevin on stage- Yeah... or one of his posse of, uh, the com- the comedians he pulls up. It's not just two-minute blops. It's, uh- It's an hour-long show.
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It's hour long. Exactly. Someone set- someone settled in, and that's what they're doing. That's, that's very interesting. Exactly. Exactly. So, okay.
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So when you look at numbers now, I think, I think it's seventy-five to eighty percent of our viewership on YouTube are connected TVs. It's coming through connected TVs now. So that's why I say- That's-...
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it's my fast, it is a fast channel for me. Absolutely, seventy-five percent. Um, so that's a big deal for you.
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Uh, out of what, uh, Lucas is talking about, anything there resonate with you as you're evolving what Heartbeat is doing in terms of its distribution patterns- Yeah, I mean-... how you get found?
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I mean, that's, that is the challenge from day one.
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So, like, like, true story, about a year, year and a half ago, for fast channels, because, you know, you go on connected TVs, there's probably a hundred to two hundred channels, depending on which device you're on, right?
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So a lotta time, the fight was for where are you gonna rank, that category where's your channel at? So for example, I think we were on Roku.
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We were, they were categorizing comedy in the, I think the point was like three hundreds at one time. We were doing great. We got up, came in on Monday. I think we got some... Our numbers dropped. We didn't know why.
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But they just randomly took the category and put it into the sevens. [laughs] We, we immediate... We, where we were in the three hundred channels, we moved in seven because they moved the category.
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Our numbers dropped prob- it was like eighty percent drop in numbers. Yeah, so- This is a little bit like what Lucas is talking about, though, in terms of- Yeah...
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with Amazon, if you're not above the fold, one of the, I guess- Yeah... it's really, like, one percent of the things you guys looked at, right, Lucas?
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One percent above the fold, so to speak, which is a newspaper term, and I love to see it- Yeah... but it's a little wacky- Mm-hmm... to see it. But if you're not in that first, that first window,
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most of the time you don't, you don't exist. You're not... You don't, you don't exist. Now- Yeah... to Roku's credit, being a good partner, obviously we went and raised a fuss. They then took our channel.
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They kept the category where it was, but they took our channel and recategorized.
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I put us, I think they put us into some, like, TV series or entertainment, which bumped us back up, and our number, and then our numbers went back up. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. Not rocket science.
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So those are the things, those are the things that now, in terms of the algorithm... So when we first started, when we launched, Pluto was our number one platform.
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Doing gangbuster numbers on Pluto, but what happened was, and even coming out their own executive's mouth, they started creating their own proprietary channels
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that they were prioritizing, and our numbers started going down on Pluto. Again, home field advantage. Home field advantage. This is the challenge- Yeah... every time for you guys.
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Um, I'd love to tap into Geoff with a G- Mm-hmm...
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and talk a little about, because you have your hands across many different things here, uh, different kinds of, of streaming content with documentaries, sports a-and other stuff.
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Uh, first of all, give us a little quick sense of the different things that you have your hands in, and then what this means and how you navigate and what changes you're seeing, some of which Lucas has, uh, has spotlighted here.
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Sure. So, um, uh, I'm the CEO of a company called Active, and we are, in essence, fractional employee services or a network in a box. We run twelve to fifteen different channels at any given time.
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But yeah, I mean, we, we think about discoverability every single day. Our strategy is a little different. We, in most cases, don't have someone as popular as Kevin Hart behind us that people are, are searching for.
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Mm-hmm.
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And so we, you know, I kind of go by the, uh, the kind of Malcolm Gladwell blink approach, which is when you see the name of whatever the channel is, in one second, when you look at that guide, you know whether or not you are gonna click on that channel.
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So are brands like Documentary Plus very clear what the proposition is there, or Free Life Sports very clear what the proposition is?
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And so we focus on channels that are usually brand-driven or creator or talent-driven or genre-driven that have a very, very clear value proposition. So one of our clients is Popular Science.
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If you've been around for the past hundred and fifty years, you probably have heard Popular Science before.
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And so when people are flipping through the guide, regardless of any algorithm, you'll probably see the logo and be like, "I've seen that." And the name says exactly [chuckles] what it is, so it's much more clickable.
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And we've worked with clients that have had more obscure branding or labeling and gotten them to adjust what that messaging is in that little tiny logo, and we've seen substantial uptick just from that alone.
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E-even, even the logo, instead of it being Flash or something, it is Flash Sports TV or something like that, right?
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Just something that says this is setting an audience expectation and creating some interest that otherwise is, is sort of an anodyne term or name that means nothing, right? Yeah, I mean, exactly.
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N-not a client of ours, but a good example of, of this strategy is Lionsgate has the 50 Cent channel. It's not called the 50 Cent channel, it's 50 Cent Action- Yeah...
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'cause you know you're gonna get action from that, and if you love 50 Cent- I think this is- Great... it's, isn't it, isn't it Fiddy Cent? Geoff, can you speak to this? I'm not at liberty. It's Fiddy Cent?
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[laughs] I just wanna be true to the man. Curtis has been very- No, it's 50 Cent... very productive. It's 50. Okay. All right.
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I didn't know if he went uptown once he started being a producer and all that stuff, and he started putting the F in there, but it was Fiddy back in the day. Yeah. So okay. No, it's 50 Cent.
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So the 50 Cent channel is you're getting what Curtis Jackson thinks you need to see in action, right? Yeah, and some of that might- Not just, not just cheap movies, which could be misconstrued, right?
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Yeah, and I think his- So-... partnership with Lionsgate is genius. They've got an incredible action library, and I think the social- Yeah...
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media stickiness and probably his ability to game algorithms on social and probably on CTV is very worthwhile to increase viewership. So I think those strategies work really well. Um- So, so those are, those are...
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I don't wanna, I don't mean this in any negative way. But those are kind of Moneyball strategies, right? And that's what you have to be if you're not one of the big seven or own the platform, right? I mean, so- Yep...
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Jeff with a J, he's got, he's got the GOAT there, the omnipresent GOAT, Kevin. Yeah. So that helps.
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Jeff with a G, you've got free live sports, which is a pretty good, pretty good value proposition for a whole lot of folks. It's a wide range of sports.
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But you've got to figure out those ways to punch through to do some of what Lucas and, and Looper have identified, I think are really, um... It's a much more complicated world. I mean, how, how do you...
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Uh, one of the things I guess I, I don't wanna lose track of, Netflix, of course, is ahead of everybody.
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Like, they punched in their AI-powered interfaces with AI-generated trailers spec- specific to you, and AI-generated thumbnails specific to you, and probably rewritten promo bits that are, you know, you like Uma Thurman instead of what's his name, the crazy director of Kill Bill.
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You're gonna see more about Uma than you are about, uh, G- Yeah... the nut job. [laughs] I shouldn't say that. Tarantino. He's gotten a little wacky. Taran- thank you.
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[laughs] Quentin has gotten a little wacky lately, firing at will. But, uh, you're gonna see more of that than the Quentin Tarantino component of it. You're gonna see the Uma thing.
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Now, that kind of stuff they've been doing ahead of everybody. But other folks are catching up. Other folks are doing things, so HBO Max and some of those guys.
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Lessons for the smaller streamers out there out of what they're doing to try to navigate. Any, any thoughts, Lucas, about some of the things you guys found when you looked at Disney Plus, Amazon, and HBO-- not Amazon.
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Uh, Disney Plus, Netflix, and HBO Max? Yeah. Look, uh, those guys have, uh, huge budgets behind them, right?
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So they are able to put together really comprehensive annual or multi-year deals with these platforms that really lock in a whole bunch of prominence that others can't get, right?
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So it's kind of fighting for everything else. I think it's important to understand each platform on its own because they are different.
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We've seen, uh, recently that Roku is moving to more of a channel aggregation play, very similar to like you saw with Amazon Channels or, uh, you know, Prime Video subscriptions. Peacock's doing some of that too, right?
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Sorry? I mean, isn't Peacock doing s- isn't Peacock doing some channel aggregation? I mean, while getting merged into Google TV- Yeah... or Google Premium.
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And, you know, you saw with Apple TV early do- early doors, I haven't-- I'm not sure how well that's, that, that's worked out.
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But they wanna go for that channel aggregation piece, and what we've seen is a twelve percent drop in the prominence given to AVOD content versus SVOD. So- Mm...
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that's a stream that, you know, if you're in the AVOD business that you're swimming against on Roku because they figure they can get more money from these partnerships. So it's critical you understand each platform.
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Like Samsung did that a while ago.
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More and more of these platforms are, are moving the percentage of subscriptions that they can get a cut of versus the ads that they're getting a cut of, and that might be something to do with the ad loads and fill rates.
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And so I think if you're a, a smaller distributor, you wanna be able to go in there and lead on the front foot and talk about how well you're able to monetize your channel and if they're getting a slice of it, how much they're going to be making.
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You know, this is a really, an interesting shift. I, I, uh, Jeff with a G, I'm curious. Sports has been so the tune-in thing. You know, free live sports.
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Okay, well, live sports has been the thing people tune into, and you're, you're not paying, I don't know, hundred and ten billion dollars to the NFL, at least not this week. Maybe soon.
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I guess they're gonna open up some of this stuff again. So how do you get the live events which have value and will catch the eye of somebody if they know you've got, like, a surfing championship?
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Does that kind of stuff s- tend to get algorithmically upped, or do you gotta, do you have to pay to pump that up?
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Because if, if there's a surfing person who's watching a specific platform, I would think they would have some--
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They would, they would turn to you guys and highlight you guys without you even-- maybe not even having to pay for it. Or is that just a- Yeah, I mean, I think-... a different time, a different, gentler time?
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[clears throat] Yeah, I mean, listen, there's... I think there's, like, two value propositions for audiences when it comes to sports.
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I think the viewer that is subscribing to the CBS Paramount Plus, Amazon Prime, Netflix, et cetera, or to, to old-school cable, is not necessarily the same viewer that's coming to watch a Red Bull live event for flu tag or a billiards TV championship for a weekend.
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You know, it's, you know, if, if you've had Time Warner Cable for the past twenty years, you're probably gonna stick with Time Warner Cable for your NFL package. It just probably is what you're gonna do.
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So we try to target the emerging sports, you know, in addition to those other sports, and college football and localized sports and, and other sports that you're never gonna see on Time Warner, on an ABC or a CBS or a Fox, because if they're paying billions of dollars for the NBA or, or the NFL, they don't necessarily need the billiards channel.
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But- Sure... the fandom for these emerging sports, as we've kind of seen in the past few years, especially since pandemic, is skyrocketing.
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You'd be shocked some of the numbers that we see for some of these sports that maybe you would never watch, but a nineteen or twenty-five-year-old kid is definitely watching.
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Or in the days of, uh, Kalshi and Poly Market and draft kings- Right... and all of these other things. They want those live sports 'cause they're betting on it. 'Cause they're betting on it. Yeah. Yeah.
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Or they wanna research or You know, they're an obscure soccer club that you can't find in the US on any sort of pay TV window.
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So they're- Some- somehow it's not one of the twenty-seven major leagues in the United States, and South America, and Europe, and Saudi Arabia that's not already on somebody's channel, right?
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So- Yeah, and I think we've seen Netflix become a little wise to these types of plays. I mean- Yeah... a guy climbing a skyscraper or- Yeah...
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a golf championship that's not even a real golf league, that's a pop-up live event, but still has a Tiger Woods or a Ro-Rory McIlroy- Yeah... something like that.
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You're not gonna see those on Fox because that's just not what they do. Right.
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So I think there is a lot of value in those types of sports that are a little less traditional, but people still love, and I think that's the beauty of being in the streaming ecosystem, and especially with Fast. Sure.
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Sure. There's unlimited of those. I mean, a World Chase Tag League, you're not gonna find that on ESPN, no way. But it drives billions and billions of views on social every month.
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So we try to find and cherry-pick a lot of those types of sports, and in the aggregate it becomes a really great offering for our customers.
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You know, you mentioned Fox and sports, and it makes me think, having watched the Fox coverage of the World Cup... Maybe you all did? Show of hands? That you guys watched? Most of, most of America did probably.
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No, I did but- Probably not, Lucas. No, you were, you were somewhere else. But on Fox, let me just say, on Fox, you got a pretty
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healthy showing of everything Fox does, including their streaming service that they never talked about for years, Fox Nation. I mean, it was just one of the... And I'm just thinking, boy, once they acquire Roku,
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it's g- I-I'm just wondering if there's gonna be any room for anybody else, and they're just, are they just gonna promote everything Fox always on Roku? I, I find that in- Great... any thoughts?
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Anybody wanna jump into that? Yeah, why, why wouldn't they? Well, it's a- Right. [laughs] It's a, it's a great Barca channel, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know? Totally, but- That, that- that's the thing about- But-...
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owning the real estate all the way downstream- It-... it gives you that huge advantage.
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Jeff, you, you mentioned the social element, you know, driving perhaps views and- Yeah, what I, what I, what I was gonna s- what I was gonna say to that question,
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maybe, maybe not, because the thing is, is that so the ecosystem that Fox is building, they already have Tubi, which is arguably the number one AVOD platform. Absolutely. I don't really see, I don't really see
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them imposing their influence over Tubi. Obviously, they do do some collaborations. Obviously, Roku could be different 'cause it's platform, so it's probably a whole different ballgame.
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But it's, you know, because they're distributing other channels, they, you know, probably- Right. I think the jury's out in terms of how much influence they could have. Well, I mean, is it...
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Do you guys even think-- I mean, like, I think about Tubi, I think of it as a platform. I mean, I, I don't think of it- Yeah, it's a platform... as, as much that different from...
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I mean, it's so weird the, the taxonomy- Yes... of these things, right? So- Yes... I'm a distributor. I'm a service. I'm a platform that's virtualized, like a Tubi or a Pluto. Mm-hmm.
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I'm a physical thing built into your TV set platform. You know, like, each of those- Yeah... has its levels and power and reach and all that. Yeah.
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Uh, but Tubi and, and, and whatever the cable guys are doing with Xumo... By the way, Time Warner is just a billing ad, uh, construct now [laughs] within Charter/Cox- Yeah...
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slash all that stuff, just to clarify, people are confused. But as of the deal closing a couple of weeks ago, what will now be called Cox was Charter, was Time Warner. [laughs] Oh, okay.
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Those, I mean, like, we, we, we get Charter, and it's still, my, we still pay the bill to Time Warner, which is funny 'cause they didn't, they didn't change that legal payment thing. Anyway,
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but it'll be interesting to think about. Lucas, is it different within a Tubi to be seen versus the Roku Channel/Roku?
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I think Jeff with a J has a really interesting point that, uh, maybe they don't wanna mess too much with that golden goose they have. I think that's basically what you're saying, right, Jeff? Like, you, you got- Yes...
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you got Tubi already, and, and it has been inten- I had a friend who was working over there when they were bought right in the middle of the pandemic for what turns out to be one of the great deals in recent media M&A history.
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Uh, you know, they were running, like, day two versions of The Masked Singer on Tubi and seeing really good pickup. You know, and they were doing that pretty, pretty quickly on.
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But do you necessarily wanna go all Fox on Roku when people go to Roku for more than that? I mean, that's a really interesting question. Yeah. They're, they're not, they're not- So Jeff with a, Jeff with a J says no.
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You, what do you say, Lucas? Well, I, yeah, I agree. They're, they're not gonna kill the, the platform, right? They've got a huge audience. They've gotta cater to all these partnerships.
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They've got these commercial arrangements in place. But you see these subtle SKUs that go on, right? You know, they, they, they're going to favor themselves when they need to, and outside of that- Yeah...
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they'll favor the other relationships so that they can be compliant with their agreements and, and do all of that, right?
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I, I, I wanted to pick up on something that J-Jeff said, uh, around the social element, because this is really important as well, right?
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So there's the on-screen real estate in your room being promoted there, but also everyone's sitting at home on their devices as well. You know, we talked about the algorithm- Yeah...
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drawing you for the twenty percent who can't be bothered spending fourteen minutes finding something. And we see that. We see sleeper hits kind of popping out, like Widow's Bay on Apple, for example.
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If you look at the Google Trends and searches for, for that title, it matches the algorithmic placements that it was getting across these platforms.
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And so it's a little bit like the, the old T- you know, I say the old TVOD days, they're obviously still [laughs] massively around, but- So long ago... it's how did you get up the charts?
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It's 13 months ago, back in the old days. You know? Right? So, yeah. If you got in the top 50 titles, it became self-perpetuating- Yeah... that you're gonna sell more, right? And you just had to get- Mm-hmm...
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yourself in the top 50. So do you buy the placement to get in the top 50? Do you drive it through social? Like, what strategies can you employ to get yourself picked up by the algorithms?
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Because as soon as you do, you're getting, you're getting free, and we all love free, right? Yeah. Free placement. This, this feels like TikTok, right? Like, in TikTok- Yeah...
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if TikTok decides to bless your specific little piece of content and push it themselves, all of a sudden you're gigantic, right? That's it. Yeah.
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And you've got a record deal, you're on The Tonight Show, I mean, et cetera, et cetera. So- Um, it's kinda like that but for- Yeah, to, to add to that-... for shows. Yeah, go...
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yeah, I mean, on the TikTok note, if anybody watched Suits, that was why. Yeah. They clipped out Suits. It went incredibly viral.
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A bunch of young kids and other people below 40 who had never heard of Suits or maybe even the USA Network were then like, "Whoa." Or, or worn one, let's just be clear. [laughs] They didn't even wear suits, so, you know.
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For sure. Like, they were... That was a nice discoverability tool, and they knew that- Yeah... most likely those people were not cable subscribers, and the only other place you could find it was on Netflix.
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Those, those strategies work really well. We had a clip yesterday from one of our films called Still Working 9 to 5 that was a documentary about the film Working 9 to 5 with Dolly Parton.
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Obviously, God rest her soul, Dolly Parton passed yesterday. That's right. We posted a bunch of those clips. We had one clip- Yeah...
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that's done already 18 million views on Facebook alone and has driven substantial viewership to Documentary Plus- Right... because of that clip.
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Because probably a lot of those people never heard of Documentary Plus, but they love Dolly, and they're willing to click on a link to go see it. They can watch it- Mm-hmm... for free or sign up for a seven-day trial.
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I think that's the new funnel to get people to go to streaming. And I jokingly say, you know, there's, you know, the clipping world works really well.
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I don't know if you guys have ever heard of that kid Clavicular- Oh, yeah... that goes viral all the time. Yeah. Everything I've learned about that guy has been against my own will. I have helped break his cheekbones.
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[laughs] Like, it is... No one was ever looking for that, but he was able to game the algorithms- Yeah... for his success, spent a bunch of money clipping, and that led to whatever level of fame or hate or whatever.
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But they understood the algorithm, and that pushed massive eyeballs, and that's in essence where we're at today.
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Everybody does it now, you know, with sports and, you know, you look at a lot of the successful brands like Almost Friday, who five years ago was brand new, now that entire cast is getting Netflix movies.
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They're, you know, have top podcasts. Their YouTubes have exploded. They learned. They were very smart. They understood the algorithms and how to use them to their favor and then followed that up with exciting content.
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Um- Right... so, so I think that's the new way. If you, if you can't afford to pay Roku their 400 grand for a commercial placement or Samsung or Vizio or whoever, that's the new way to push eyeballs.
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I mean, we see it in politics. They've been doing that for years. We've seen it in the manosphere with podcasts. Obviously, that's worked really well for them.
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It's this, that sentiment of just flooding the market with clips. You'll eventually find an audience that is gonna like you. Right.
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So- We are seeing, we are seeing the big streaming services, as you mentioned in the report, Lucas, going with shorts. Netflix has been doing some of this.
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Disney Plus, HBO Max are doing clips that are basically promotional, but, uh, some of the, some of the big streamers are also doing original content. I think Peacock is doing,
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and this makes total sense to me, vertical, vertical content in unscripted, right?
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Like, that's totally on brand with their Bravo verse and all that, and vertical totally where the kids are, and they know scripted re- or unscripted really, really well.
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So I think that you're gonna see a lot more of that, but- I mean, we, we even do that on- Go ahead... Documentary Plus. We launched verticals- Right... three months ago.
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Well, you gotta d- And- Unfortunately, now you're gonna need to do it for Tim Curry, who died at 80 today, another, another great.
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Uh, there's gotta be at least 16 Tim Curry documentaries [laughs] and Rocky Horror documentaries out there. Maybe Rocky Horror ones, for sure. Now, I don't know if we've got one. Right.
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Well, you can't, you can't do Rocky Horror without Tim Curry, but anyway. But you should be looking, so, uh, anyway.
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I'm g- curious, Jeff with a J, are there, are there examples like that where, as you say, you were programming for connected TV YouTube, which I think is a really smart but very interesting shift, and it's paid off big time for you.
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But the short component of that, how does that manifest for you? 'Cause you do have all that comedy content from Kevin, from all the folks that are in his ambit that you can do a lot of things with.
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So talk briefly, if you would, about how you use that to help punch above your weight. So there's, there's two,
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two, two ways to think about it, is that we w- we were in a vertical business and been s- doing clips for, for years, like- Ever... on our- Yeah, yeah... that we've been doing it, right?
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But what happens is that where we're successful at in terms of, like, f- I would say gaming the algorithm at, is the platforms we can link to. So I can link... I can put a link in there straight to Tubi.
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I can put a link in there straight to Pluto. So there's certain platforms I can do. I c- you can't click the link and go onto a Samsung TV or a Vizio TV, right? That's an oversight on their part. So it's hard to- Right.
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Yeah, exactly. So but the ones where I can link to, uh, we, we game the algorithm. Obviously, I, I know when I can push stuff up, and then you can, you can see the results based on the thing.
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And you can really push, and then, and then the algorithm, Tubi picks it up, oh, it's doing well, and then it starts going up, right? Right. But that's 'cause we're pushing from our social.
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But it's w- if they say, "Hey, okay," a lot of times the connected TV's, "Okay, can you tag us?"
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I can tag you, but a- at the end of the day, if the person doesn't have a Vizio TV or a Samsung TV, it's, you know, you, you... it's kinda shot in the dark.
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From social, from a social standpoint Like, like how do you pick that? 'Cause I think Samsung is like one of the biggest OEMs, but it's still... I mean, Samsung Plus is, what is that, three percent, five percent- Yep...
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of the households, something like that? I mean, it's a, it's a small target. It's a good one, but it's a small target. Yeah, it's a good one. I mean, it's still millions of people.
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So, so what we've done from a marketing standpoint, obviously to support our partners, I use Facebook, we use it for clipping, we use it for streaming, but I also use it for a lot of research. I do a lot of research.
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So obviously with, you know, using Kevin's Facebook and our LOL Facebook is
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we've done a lot of polls and stuff and research, so I have lists like, "Hey, who-- are you, are you-- do you have a Samsung TV or do you have a Vizio TV? Do you have Vizio?" Then I get their info.
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So I have big email lists that are very targeted- So you know his fans on Facebook- Yeah. Yes... will do a survey- Where they're at... and they'll say, "I use this platform." Yes.
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Which one's, which one's over indexed for Kevin Hart? Which platforms? I'm curious. Um, definitely Roku. Definitely Roku. On connected TV. Yeah. Like it's already the biggest, and it's even more that, so.
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It's already the biggest, yeah. And then, and then it, it splits between like Samsung, Vizio and, and the connected TVs, and obviously, uh, Tubi's a big one. Hmm. Interesting.
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So that helps you figure out where you're gonna target. It's not a direct benefit on Facebook, though some of that too, but it becomes your research platform. Well, yeah, yeah.
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What happens is that on the research, what I'm able to do, ironically, my team didn't think it would-- we could actually do this, or people would actually do it. When we do these polls, we get 'em...
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they're giving us our e... their emails and their cell phones, [laughs] like even us- Wow... so I actually have a list. Yeah.
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So if I know here's my Samsung- There's a lot of very jealous marketers hearing this and going, "Oh my God." You get one email address- How is this possible?... let alone a cell phone.
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Pollsters can't get somebody to pick the phone up, and they're like, "No, you can call us." Send us some more emails with Kevin being funny, you know? It's like, okay. So- Exactly... that's great.
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So, you know, there's- We have these, we have these li- we have these lists by, by... We have these lists that we just send out emails or text to. That's fantastic.
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How are you using, I mean, you've-- Geff with a G, how are you guys, how are you guys leveraging then the, the, the documentary stuff?
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You talk about sort of surfing the stream of news and awareness and like Dolly's death. Uh, "9 to 5," probably her biggest hit. S- the, uh, song was one of her biggest hits, the, the theme song.
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But are, are there other less obvious ways that you guys are able to leverage for either Doc+ or for FreeLife Sports?
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Yeah, I mean, uh, that's, uh, t- two answers there, but are, which are somewhat of kind of the same answer.
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But yes, I mean, for FreeLife Sports, you know, sports are very seasonal, so we lean into seasonal sports that we know are the zeitgeists just for like natural discoverability and what's, what's strong in the algorithms.
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Obviously coming up here, college football, NFL, uh, you know, Major League Baseball playoffs. So during those times of the year, we're gonna lean a little heavier into that type of content.
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And then on the Doc+ side, you know, the, the beauty of documentaries is that it's much more of a medium than a genre. It's a medium with all sorts of genres.
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You've got true crime, you've got sports, you've got food, you've got social action, you've, you know, et cetera, et cetera. There's a hundred categories you could probably identify.
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So we instead back into whatever is going to be in the zeitgeist. So an example of that is September, we're doing a back to school push. November, you'll see a midterms political push.
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Those types of things, because we know that's what the topics are online, and that's what is going to be favored in the algorithm, whether we're doing something or not. People are talking about that.
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In October when you've got Major League Baseball playoffs, you're gonna see much higher viewership in Major League Baseball than any other time of the year, just because those games are more exciting.
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So we're gonna have on Documentary+ our Nolan Ryan biopic that is, you know, an incredible offering for fans, or similar things in that vein so that we can stunt these.
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And then those are also the same types of content that we service to all the platforms because, you know, when we do our monthly editorials to Vizio or Samsung or Roku, if they're like, "Ooh, Major League Baseball.
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Oh, Nolan Ryan, he's a legend," they're more likely gonna wanna promote that in their unsold inventory that they have for that placement than just some random cooking documentary that no one's heard of.
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I mean- Unless Nolan Ryan is cooking, but you made me think of a mashup you totally should be doing. So you got back to school, you've got midterm elections. How about midterm exam specials- [laughs] Too early...
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for all the kids- Too early. Too early. You gotta wait till January, February for that. Yeah. Maybe. That's successful like finals. Nobody cares about those kids anyways. They, they want content. Oh, yeah.
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They want, they want good content. Who's going to college? Yeah, I totally get it. But hey, October you will see spookier stuff or, you know- No...
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unexplained docs maybe about aliens or ghosts or whatever, because that's what the algorithm wants, whether we want it or not. Um, so we- How about alien ghosts in honor of Ray Bradbury and Martian Chronicles?
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Just saying. That's an idea. This feels like a good place to wrap this conversation up.
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It has been very interesting and wide-ranging, and I wanna thank our, our sponsor, Looper Insights, Lucas Bertrand, the, the CEO, Geoff Clanagan, the do everything for Mr.
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Seen Everywhere, Kevin Hart and Heartbeats, and Geoff Clark, CEO of Active and Doc+ and a founder of FreeLife Sports. This has been next TMT Talks.
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Uh, you can get it free twice a week @nextTMT, where we put out a newsletter twice a week. And, uh, you can get all that, plus all this intellectual goodness just by tagging along with us.
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Like, share, subscribe, please comment. There's lots of things these guys commented about. Comment further.
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We'd like to hear what you all think about this changing face of how TV is getting seen at a time when operational artificial intelligence is helping educate and transform how these platforms work.
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It's a really interesting topic. We could probably talk for another three hours, but these guys are hardworking people, and they gotta get back to it, and I need to lull about and, uh, drink a mai tai.
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So with that, we will wrap this up. Uh, I'm David Bloom, co-founder of next TMT with my co-founder, Daniel Frankel, who's lurking offstage somewhere. Anyway, with that, we will wrap this up. Thank you, everybody.
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Take care. All right, thanks. Thank you. [upbeat music]
