← Next in Media
Next in Media
How Tubi is Embracing Creators - and Trying to Shake up Streaming
00:27:08
Next in Media chatted with Rich Bloom, GM, Creator Programs & EVP, Business Development at Tubi, about the Fox-owned streamers new creator program, which has quickly expanded for five to 50 participants. Bloom also talked about Tubi's overall growth, Gen Z misconceptions, and whether TV needs to adopt more YouTube-like qualities.
Loading summary
Transcript66 lines
- [00:01]
Mike Shields
Collaboration is a new competition. The One Audience alliance by Elemental TV unites premium publishers to tackle CTV's biggest challenge, fragmentation. By collaborating over AI powered audience insights and inventory, we're creating an ecosystem where advertisers win, publishers thrive, and audiences stay engaged. Join the movement redefining ctv@elementaltv.com 1audiencealliance that's e l e m e n t a-l t v.com Oneaud I e n C E A A L L I A N C e listen up B2B marketers. You can pack performance, precision and proof in your CCTV buying with LinkedIn and I spot LinkedIn CTV advertising helps you reach high value professional audiences directly on the TV screen and I Spot's Unified Cross Platform Ad measurement provides the proof you need to turn investments into revenue. Cut the waste, capture your audience drive Measurable impact. My friends at TV Rap just put together the definitive CTV playbook for B2B marketers packed with best practices to help you start driving results. Go download the free report@tdrev.com reports this week on Next in Media, I talked.
- [01:05]
Rich Bloom
To Rich Bloom, Tubi's recently hired General.
- [01:07]
Mike Shields
Manager, Creator Programs and EVP of Business Development. Rich and I talked about why the Fox owned FAST platform believes that creators have a place in long form TV and what the company's learned so far in trying to bring those two worlds together. Rich also talked about how promoting streaming.
- [01:20]
Rich Bloom
Shows to Gen Z is fundamentally different.
- [01:23]
Mike Shields
And whether TV needs to become more.
- [01:24]
Rich Bloom
Like YouTube or vice versa. Let's get started. Hi everybody. Welcome to Next to Media. I'm Mike Shields and my guest this week is Rich Bloom. He is the recently appointed EVP and gmatubi head of the Quick Creator Program and Business Development. Do I have that right? Rich, how are you?
- [01:53]
You do have that right. I'm doing well, Mike. Thanks for having me on.
- [01:57]
Excited to talk to you. Like I said, you're pretty new there. Your job sounds very cool. It sounds like a collision of worlds that are growing in really interesting ways. So why don't you just tell us what this job is? What were you doing before?
- [02:09]
Yeah, so if it's okay, I'd love to start by giving like a quick overview of Tubi and then I can tell you about my background and cause.
- [02:15]
I think people know to be ish but not maybe. But it's probably good to catch everybody up because it's still really early.
- [02:22]
So Tubi is a free streaming service built for every fandom. We have significant scale. We have over a hundred million monthly active users who are really passionate about Tubi. They watch over a billion hours a month on Tubi. We account now for about 2.2% of the total U.S. tV viewing audience.
- [02:41]
You've been popping on that Nielsen gauge chart in the last year or so.
- [02:46]
We'Ve been growing a lot. We have a really diverse young audience. Over half our audience is Gen Z and millennial. Almost 70% are cord cutters and Cord Nevers. So it's a really sought after, hard to reach audience that we have. And then we're often bucketed into the fast category. We are really first and foremost an ad supported VOD platform. About 95% of our viewing time is VOD and about 5% is linear fast. So it's really like an intentional lean forward audience that we have. And then a big part of our secret sauce is we have by far the largest library of any streaming platform. We have almost 300,000 movies and TV episodes. We have about 400 originals. And then that's coupled with this really strong AI driven programming that delivers the right content to the right viewer at the right time.
- [03:41]
Right. I think, yeah, you get lumped into that fast category, which is sort of an amorphous definition, but you're not so much about five zillion niche channels that are live, linear ones. You really, you're really like a brand and a destination with a huge library. That's kind of the way I think about it.
- [03:57]
That's a good way to think about it. And now I can tell you a little bit about my, my background and my role. So I joined Tubi about three months ago. Most recently before Tubi, I was at Vimeo where I was the GM of Vimeo Ottoman. And one thread throughout my career has been at Vimeo and previously at startups and other larger companies. I've worked with creators to give them opportunities to create original content, bring their existing content to build new audiences and build new business models. So that segues really well into my role at Tubi. I won this new creator program and also run business development. And my, my mandate is to provide creators as well as independent filmmakers with innovative and meaningful ways to work with Tubi. And we hear a lot from our fans and we're really responsive to our fans that they want more unique ip, they want more authentic voices and the top source they see for this are as creators. So my main focus the last few months since joining has been conceptualizing and launching this program called To Be for Creators. And the idea behind this is we're working with native digital creators and Giving them a path to Hollywood that allows them to elevate their careers, elevate their businesses. And we think about as taking the next step. And we want to do it in a way that's unique and allows them to preserve and amplify what already made them successful in the first place.
- [05:30]
Okay. Lots of questions about that program because I think you are, you're at the heart of this question I think a lot of people are asking, which is, you know, you have these two very fast growing areas that are just streaming in general and ad supported streaming and the creator economy and brands want to figure out both of them. I think the big, the big overarching question is kind of like, are they going to grow separately and be distinct or should they come together or not? And it's interesting that you're kind of exploring that. I want to get into that, some of the specifics, but can you maybe. I was out of the loop on this. I learned about Sideline recently, which is a pretty interesting case study. It's. I think it's before you got there, but it's an example of maybe how this collision might work well or not. But tell people about that project and how it worked and what you also learned about promotion and bringing the different audiences together.
- [06:21]
Sure. So Sideline was an original that we released last year. It came out of a desire to continue to serve our Gen Z audience by sourcing material from non traditional places and working with non traditional talent. So it's actually an adaptation of a novel from wattpad that was really popular in wattpad. So there's this built in audience there. It starred Noah Beck, who's a huge TikTok star who was really eager to make a crossover into acting. We casted him in the lead and our bet really paid off. So it was the most successful original we've ever had. It brought in more new viewers than any title we've ever had. And you know, you had this combination of fans of the novel from wattpad who came to watch it. A huge volume of fans of Noah Beck. And then not only did Noah Beck activate his fans, but his fans activated broader audiences. So we had a few clips from the movie that went viral on TikTok. There was one audio in general of Nice catch quarterback that, you know, you had NFL teams replicating celebrities, other creators. And it just created this viral loop that just kept driving audience to us to watch the movie.
- [07:38]
Okay, so there's a bunch of pieces there. This has every element of this is going to go wrong. Right. Like Hollywood saying Let's put it, let's put a TikTok kid in a movie that'll work. And that sounds like that's going to go bad. Trying to get you. The presumption is you can't get TikTok viewers to come to television. They're young, they don't, they don't like that. The interface experience. Everybody wants to like make a viral thing like that happen. I wonder if you can engineer that at all. Why did this work? Like, because it could have gone wrong in so many ways.
- [08:08]
Yeah, I mean, look, I think it was a combination of a lot of factors that went right. I do think the underlying IP being something that, you know, the majority of people that came to watch it certainly had not read the book on wattpad, but you had some users who had, you had Noah Beck who was really innovative. The movie was good and it was really entertaining. And, you know, I do think it proved that there's this misconception that Gen Z is, you know, not watching streaming services, not watching tv. And we find that not to be the case. The other thing that really helped here is Tubi is a really easy to use free service. So the fact that we don't have.
- [08:51]
A paywall, you're not asking too much to like send the, send people back and forth.
- [08:55]
Yeah, I mean, it's one of the, you know, one of the things that has made us successful is just we're very accessible. So you can log in and there's some advantages, but you don't have to. So, you know, somebody would see a clip of this on TikTok on their phone and they could click a link and go to Tubi and watch it on their phone or they could, you know, watch it on their tv. And we, we had a lot of viewing on, on both TV and mobile for this. So that ease of use and accessibility without having a paywall is a huge advantage when it comes to something like this that goes viral when you want to drive new viewers. And a paywall is a, is. Is very cumbersome, especially when you're trying.
- [09:35]
To audience a lot of money to throw around. Okay, so let's get into the creative program you referenced, you're working on, because I think there's a couple of interesting questions you're exploring. You know, I think we've, we've definitely seen with YouTube's growth that there is a. At one point you might have thought those kinds of formats don't work on television. You know, the vlogger thing or the gamer thing, that's the reason they work is because they popped on other places. Why would that work on the TV screen? That seems to be disproven. But how do you figure out it's such a vast landscape, what to put on television and what format and why?
- [10:13]
Yeah, so I think first of all, look, the line between creator content that's on YouTube and traditional content is getting blurrier and blurrier, right? So on YouTube now, YouTube for a while has been favoring content that's 20 minutes or longer in terms of the algorithm, in terms of monetization, the barriers to entry, to create, you know, content with high production value is really coming down. So, you know, we start from a premise of that is an artificial line and it's going to get blurrier and blurrier. The other thing that's really clear from YouTube is, you know, the majority of view it views on YouTube are now happening on a TV, right? And we're seeing creators crossover more and more and have their shows on streaming services. So one of the different. So we look at it as there's a big pool of talent that are talented in front of and behind the camera creating high quality content that's already being consumed on TV and has the opportunity to be consumed on TV more. And we see that as a huge opportunity in terms of which formats are going to work best. The idea behind our program is for to be for creators. Initially we are focused on those creators already creating longer form content and we're giving them an opportunity to have their content on tubing reach a larger audience, get incremental monetization. Our starting place is focusing on genres that already do well on tubi, but being experimental and open with the formats that we're going to try. So for instance, and we launched the program about six weeks ago. So we launched the program with.
- [12:00]
It's real early.
- [12:01]
It's real early, but it's moving fast. So we launched the program with about six creators, about 500 episodes of content. Six weeks later, we have almost 50 creators and over 5,000 episodes of content. So it's moving fast. We're seeing amazing performance, we're seeing huge engagement with this content. And we're focused on bringing in content right now in the genres that already do well on tubing. So a couple of examples of that are coming of age stories, right? Like sidelines. So we have creators like Kanyeger Dion and Dan and Raya who make these great teen drama series. Black entertainment's a really big category for us. And we have creators like Funny Mike and the Prince family who are Doing really well. Thriller and horrors of the category for us. And there's some really talented creators there, like Watcher, creating, you know, really high quality episodic content. And this content is really resonating with our audience. You know, it's generally 20 minutes or longer, very high production value. And we're featuring it on Tubi and something called the creator verse, where we house all of the creator content and viewers are discovering content there. But then it's also living side by side traditional Hollywood content in the corresponding genres. And we're seeing our tubi fans are discovering it in both places, engaging with a mix of creator and traditional content. And it's off to a really strong start.
- [13:29]
So, again, really early. But do you. It sounds like you don't like. You might think, well, let's just find the 10 biggest creators with huge followings, you know, and stick them in a preconceived show or something. Regardless of whether these people are like, you know, proven as actors, it sounds like you have to have some kind of chop, so to speak, that will lend themselves to episodic television or your scripted stuff. Is that hard? I don't know if that's a hard and fast rule at this point.
- [13:55]
No, I mean, look, we have two different approaches. So there's the sideline approach where you're doing more of a traditional production and you're casting a creator in a role. We will do more of that. We have a wise leap this year with some interesting creator talent cast in it, and that's a path we're going to pursue and we had success in. And that's something our content team will continue to work on. What I'm focused on is a much bigger opportunity to do much more than work with five or 10 creators or bring in a small number of creators to create a new original show where we're pairing them with a production company. We generally have a point of view of we're much more ambitious and optimistic about the potential for creators. Our point of view is creators are the new media startups. They are sophisticated, they're producing content. They own ip, they have huge distribution channels, they have giant, giant fan bases who are really loyal. And we are really betting on creators and believe there's a wide variety of creators that are a fit for 2B and a fit for streaming platform platforms. And so we're starting with this really simple way to get them on the platform by taking content they're already producing for YouTube and other platforms and bringing it to 2B. And then we're seeing what content performs well. And we're already going out to creators who are in our first cohort of.
- [15:25]
Launch partners with a little bit of learning. Like this is what we, what we should do next time.
- [15:29]
Well, it's less prescriptive than that. It's more. Your content is performing really well and we are going to invest in them to help fund production for them, for them to level up what they're doing a little bit. What I hear from creators is not, you know, I want to get paired with a production company and create a traditional TV show. It's I want to increase my, if I could increase my budget by 50 or 100%, I could 3x the quality of what I'm doing. And I have a clear vision of what I want to do. So our approach is really to make those bets and to, you know, out of the gate, it's to be pretty hands off in terms and give them a huge amount of creative freedom and make bets on creators that are performing well. And you know, one of the bets we're making is we trust creators know what their fans want and they've demonstrated.
- [16:22]
They know what they're doing already.
- [16:24]
Yes. And we're trusting them with budgets and to manage those budgets and to deliver content and we're going to deliver it to our audience. So, you know, we're working on our first few deals with creators that, you know, joined us just six weeks ago and we saw really strong performance and you know, we want to give them the support of up leveling their production, giving them access to this broader audience. About 35% of our audience is not on YouTube at all, which is a pretty big incremental audience considering the footprint.
- [16:56]
Yeah, it's hard to find that.
- [16:58]
Yeah. And we think we can then have this content that is exclusive to Tubi for a period of time. But we also, again, want to be really creator friendly. So creators will get funding for production. We'll have an exclusive window, we think that will drive some of their fans and then we can bring them new audience. And at the end of that window, they own that ip, they can distribute it other places. And we think it's going to be a win win for them, for our fans, for their fans that already exist. And for Tubi and for our advertisers.
- [17:30]
Ultimately, I imagine that ownership thing is key. They don't want to get. They're used to doing that or used to having that be automatic and they don't want to give that up. One thing you are seeing like, you know, at the same Time as your program, you're seeing a lot more creators come to fast, but it's a little bit more like let's take your almost quote unquote, your reruns, like your library content and just populate a fast channel. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but it feels like, I don't know, that feels like another, another way to get a check versus you gotta have people that are pretty invested in this and are trying to help you bring the audiences back and forth. Is that pretty accurate?
- [18:06]
I actually view it differently.
- [18:07]
Okay.
- [18:08]
I don't, I don't think there's. I actually think in some ways creators support a game and traditional media does in distributing their existing library, whether it's fast or, or vod. Right. I mean people on the traditional side, the thinking is you have this library of content, you have this IP and you should find the best way to exploit it and the best way to build more audiences. And I think it's even more true for creators who often only distribute to YouTube and social and don't reach a lot of audiences that don't go there. And frankly a lot of those audience don't really understand what's there. So my point of view is it's complementary. Like there's a really valid and valuable pathway to distribute existing content to streaming platforms. Whether that's FAST or AVOD or svod, drive incremental revenue, build new audience. And it's frankly a low friction way to do it as a platform. We view it as a way to get really high quality content that's unique for our viewers that they're going to enjoy. And then when we take that step of bringing exclusive content, we've already built up a new audience who's a fan of the, of the library content and vice versa. You know, there are a few deals we're doing where out of the gate we're getting exclusive content. And in all of those cases we want to get not just the exclusive content, but get some mix of their catalog content. Because our view is once we have a viewer engage with that content and become a fan of that creator, we want them to be able to go down a rabbit hole to watch other content.
- [19:45]
Okay, so there is a library play for this even. You're kind of bringing those two strategies. Yeah, that's interesting.
- [19:51]
Yeah. And I think for creators, it's a way for them to, you know, bring a large mix of exclusive and non exclusive content and really, you know, serve existing and build new fan bases like.
- [20:03]
Any media company like Any production company.
- [20:06]
Exactly.
- [20:07]
Okay, obvious question here is how can or should brands get involved? Like is this just yet another source of great inventory? Is this like a way to, you know, just, you know, reach these, these particular audiences, which is great. Or are there ways for brands to get involved at a deeper level?
- [20:23]
We think there's going to be some really interesting ways for brands to get involved in this. So right now we're, you know, we're a month and a half in. We're primarily focused on getting this program to scale, increasing engagement, increasing the amount of viewing time on it. But it is progressing really quickly. So we're actually about to give brands the opportunity to sponsor what I mentioned is the creator verse, which is the home base where all this content lives on Tubi. We're going to give brands the opportunity to buy inventory directly in creator content. And then in the, you know, not too distant future, it's a natural place to have brands get involved in branded content and product integrations. We potentially see opportunities for brands to help fund original production from creators who are successful in the platform and potentially include native integrations in the content. So, you know, it's something our sales team's really excited about. The other thing that we think is going to be really valuable here is we're creating this full ecosystem with creators, right. We're already up to 50 creators, we'll soon be to hundreds of creators with a really large library of content. And it's really this, you know, library of kind of the best of the best of creator content in a really brand safe, curated environment. And we do believe there's going to be a lot of value for brands to partner with us in this area.
- [21:45]
Right. Because you are still not going to be, I don't think, becoming a wide open platform for ugc. There's still an element of like brands who like predictability will be able to find that.
- [21:56]
That's right. We're going to be focused on, you know, high quality, brand safe content across a lot of different areas.
- [22:02]
All right, let me ask you like a, it's such an interesting moment. This is kind of a macro question again. You've been there for a couple months.
- [22:09]
I'm a pro at this point.
- [22:10]
Yeah, but I mean like you're, you're seeing you know, the, the huge growth in streaming. Duh. And the, you, the huge, maybe still surprising growth of YouTube on television and also all these other newer platforms. You know, there's like you said, we shouldn't view them as totally different worlds where audiences don't Come back and forth. But there's a, there's a sense that whether, okay, TV is screwed if it doesn't get more like social and then okay, but then, you know, how much, how far can you go there? How much can you make television about short form and in feed and vice versa. So like, how do you think about that? Like should television start embracing elements of YouTube just like YouTube is embracing elements of television?
- [22:53]
Look, I think it's a natural evolution and I think the convergence is clearly already happening. I think of it less in terms of short form, long form for qb. At least for now, in the foreseeable future we are focused on longer form content that's 15, 20 minutes and up in general. And we think, at least for now, that's the right length. I think and I mentioned this, like to me one of the biggest things to take from what's working with creators on YouTube and social platforms is they're not giving notes to creators, they're not prescriptive about what type of content should be there. And that's a lesson we really want to take. Again, we're not going to be an open platform, but we want to choose creators that we think are a good fit for Tubi and then just let them do their thing and trust them. And that's one of the big learnings that we have. And then we want to marry that with giving them support that they're not able to get from YouTube and social platforms now. Right? Funding for production, more active support in reaching new audiences and helping them up level and have this path to Hollywood and to us. We're in a unique position to, to offer that and that's, that's really the path we're focused on.
- [24:08]
Do you think TV need, you know, like there's a certain thinking that this generation is used to other media being participatory or active. Like does TV need to adopt elements like community and sharing? Does that make sense in a lean back place?
- [24:22]
Look, I think it's a good question. It's an open question. I'm on YouTube right now. When you're watching YouTube on TV, it is more of a lean back experience, right? It's not. And so over time, TV in general might lend itself to more interactive experiences. But I'd say for now we're looking at the community aspect less and more working with creators being this opportunity for us to bring really diverse voices, unique stories and then we're keeping an eye on kind of how that evolves and whether, you know, different aspects of community over time and Then other things like interactivity for, you know, for the super bowl, for instance, we had shoppable video as part of our shoulder content there. So those are things to look, you know, that all streaming services are looking at. But for now, it's not the primary focus for us.
- [25:16]
Lastly, besides the super bowl, what's. What's popping on Tubi that maybe people don't expect or appreciate? Besides your work, of course. And then give me something weird to find.
- [25:28]
So I want to point to just one thing on Tubi of that people might. Might not be aware of. I think the. The really unique thing about Tubi is we have, because of the breadth and depth of our library, we're just feeding all these different fandoms, and there's so many different unique things with these really, really passionate fans. And, you know, we see these things on social of, you know, people talking about 2B movies, which are original movies from really independent filmmakers. And to me, what's unique about 2B is you have, you know, you have these subreddits where people are talking about these two B movies and original series. Like, one thing doing great right now from a creator named Big Jaw is this series called the Lesbian Homie. And then on the other side, you have people that are really excited that we have Murder, She Wrote right now. And like, we thrive on serving these really diverse fandoms, and that is something we're going to continue to do and really a big part of our secret sauce of what's true in our growth.
- [26:34]
My question about Murder, She Wrote is why would you ever hang out with her if you knew that character? Because someone always dies wherever she goes.
- [26:40]
That's just it. It's.
- [26:42]
It's a question that's a rusty proposition.
- [26:44]
We're going to get to the bottom of it, right?
- [26:45]
All right. All right. On that note, let's leave them. Leave the mystery there. Awesome conversation. Rich, fascinating stuff. Let's talk again.
- [26:51]
All right. Thanks, Mike. I really appreciate it.
- [26:53]
Thank you.
- [26:54]
Mike Shields
Thanks again to my guest this week.
- [26:55]
Rich Bloom
To be Rich Bloom and.
- [26:56]
Mike Shields
And my partners at Elemental TV and LinkedIn. If you like this week's episode, please take a moment to rate and leave a review.
- [27:02]
Rich Bloom
We have lots more to bring you, so please hit that subscribe button.
- [27:05]
Mike Shields
See you next time for more on.
- [27:06]
Rich Bloom
What'S next in media. Thanks for listening.