Cannes NEXT Webinar: How can distributors and VOD platforms work together to grow their audiences?

The presentation from the session with all the reports is available for download here: https://gruvi.docsend.com/view/29wyrqjpwe4pfat8

The session talk provides an overview of the state of VOD today and the challenges the sector faces tomorrow, focusing on how VOD platforms should be exploiting their own behavioural audience data to grow audiences and revenue.
Ben was joined by a panel of fellow industry experts: · Lisa Rousseau (Head of TV & Film, EMEA, YouTube & Google Play)· Philip Mordecai (Director of Digital Group Ventures, Curzon)· Kate Gerova (Marketing & Brand Director, Curzon)· Jon Watts (Director of Strategy and Editorial, Beet.TV)· Ian McKee (Founder & CEO, Vuulr)

Questions Raised by the Audience During the Session

During the event, we answered live questions and discussed comments submitted by viewers, these have been included here to add further context to debate and presentation:

Q: You say that one problem with switching from theatrical to home ent is that audience data for marketing only lasts 30 days; can you explain that? Is that due to regulation around keeping personal data? Or does it just age quickly?
A: Most data that is collected via pixels only lasts max 30 days - Facebook is the exception where audiences can last upwards of 90 days.

Q: Can you explain the “affiliate program”?
A: Affiliate programs are arrangements in which an online merchant Web site pays affiliate Web sites or advertisers a commission to send them traffic that generates sales. These affiliate advertisers link to the merchant site and are paid according to a particular agreement, i.e. % of sale price on sale. The presence of an affiliate program allows you to track sales through your advertising efforts.

Q: Global PVOD - is Piracy thru hacking another factor that is making rights holders nervous?
A: Yes, the theatrical window has been good at preventing piracy. As more content moves to PVOD the tendency to pirate will be higher; although most platforms have DRM there is always the threat that these can be hacked or screen recorded.

Q: Why can't behavioural and consumer journey data (and its tracking) also be so useful for theatrical releases? In fact, studios are eager to know that detailed data, but the starting point for research is the ticket purchase (to go back in time to see how the moviegoer behaved), so the data is in exhibitors' hands... Wouldn’t this be an opportunity to build something really useful for studios?
A: The focus of this presentation was VOD platforms, however, this data is also highly useful for distributor and exhibitor theatrical campaigns. Our blog contains many such examples https://www.gruvi.tv/post/using-cinema-ticketing-data-adds-strength-to-the-advertising

Q: Is the downstream revenue of Trolls: World Tour being much less than the original Trolls caused by the pandemic (people can not go out and purchase merchandise), and not cause by the PVOD platform release?
A In the case study, we were only looking at revenues from VOD. It remains unclear what the impact will be on EST downstream. The strategy seemed to work well in the USA but poorly internationally as there were no vertically integrated distribution options for Universal to take advantage of. There would have also been an enormous issue with Piracy as the purchase price was around $19 to rent (not own). We still don't understand the impact on downstream EST revenues and rights. My feeling is that cinema is still the Golden Goose for Hollywood tentpole releases.

Q: You mentioned the interactive details on PVOD to capture attention would increase ticket revenue. Could you please elaborate?
A: The more information that can be made available about a film release the better the audience is able to make up their mind to watch a film. Ratings, trailers, behind the scenes footage, reviews, etc are all useful metadata for users looking to research before they buy. Any service provider looking to work directly with a distributor should look at how to showcase the movie on their platform.

Q: Can we define “audience behaviour” in more detail
A: We have a really detailed blog about the results from The Audience Project (TAP) that goes into real details about how we measure audience behaviour. The key things we look for are depth of video view, number of videos watched in a sequence, was the content or experienced shared to the user's social networks, etc - we find these a better measure of meaningful audience engagement than impressions. https://www.gruvi.tv/post/the-audience-project-using-audience-behaviour-to-improve-admissions-and-predict-success
If you have a question or would like to leave a comment once you have watched the webinar please do so below, we will get back to you ASAP.