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The Power of Nostalgia: Reaching Gen Alpha Through Their Parents’ Childhood
00:28:07
This week, Mike is joined by WildBrain’s VP of Media Solutions, Emma Witkowski. Together, they dive into the major advertising disconnect in the kids' media space, how nostalgia is driving family shared screen time, and the way upcoming privacy rules like COPPA 2.0 are completely reshaping digital targeting.
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- [00:00]
A
The audience is just completely fragmented. Like I said, it's not just one destination. So I think for brands, that presents a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge is that it's so much harder to capture the full attention in one place like you were 20 years ago, 10 years ago on Nickelodeon. You have to be present where the audience is and meet kids where they are. But the flip side of that and the opportunity is with the right strategy, there's a way to drive better engagement with this audience. Tailoring it to the platform Digital advertising
- [00:33]
B
is facing growing signal loss across browsers, devices and connected TV. That makes accurate identity more important than ever. IntentIQ is a privacy first identity resolution leader, helping advertisers, publishers and platforms recognize and reach real audiences across both cookie based and idealist environments. Powered by a patented identity graph and advanced signal enrichment, Intent IQ delivers the scale and accuracy needed to drive measurable performance and better monetization for both advertisers and publishers. To learn how Intent IQ helps turn fragmented signals into real results, visit intent IQ.com this week on Next Media, I spoke with Emma Witkowski, global advertising and partnerships lead at WildBrain. While you might not know Wildbrain, you probably know their franchise Teletubbies. And in fact, Emma's previous gig was at Moonbug, the company that brought you Cocamelon. So you have Emma and her friends to thank for those omnipresent kids hits or not. I asked Emma about building a kid's media business in a streaming YouTube centric era and where brands find viewership when you can't count on Nickelodeon and Saturday morning cartoons anymore. We talked about Wild Brain's brand studio work, its fast strategy and how to avoid getting in hot water with kids privacy washdogs. Lots to get into. So let's get started. Hi everybody. Welcome to Next in Media. I'm Mike Shields. My guest this week is Emma Wachowski. She's the vice president of media solutions at WildBrain. Hey Emma, thanks for being here.
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A
Hi. It's good to be here. Thank you for having me excited to
- [01:50]
B
talk to you because this is a sector that doesn't get covered enough. I think it's always been hold a lot of interest to me but I think it's probably good to give people a little bit of your background and what how you got where you are and what Wild Brain is because not everybody's going to know. They're going to know probably some of the brands and, but not maybe the company.
- [02:06]
A
Yeah, sure. So I'll start with Wild Brain. We're a franchise led company built around some of the world's most beloved kids and family brands. So Strawberry Shortcake, Teletubbies, Inspector Gadget to name a few. These franchises which are some of the world's most enduring kids and family franchises, we grow them through world class storytelling, a global digital kids network that reaches hundreds of millions of fans and a licensing business that brings our IP to life through products and experiences. So I as VP of Media Solutions, I run their global advertising business. So my background predominantly is actually decades in media agencies before transitioning to the publisher side five, six years ago where I've really specialized in kids and family entertainment.
- [02:52]
B
And you were most recently at Moonbug, right? Which I think a lot of people know for Cocomelon.
- [02:57]
A
Exactly. Cocomelon and Blippi.
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B
Yeah, for sure. So you know all the different sides of this as like as an advertiser and a programmer if you were, if you're in the agency world. But I don't know if you thought have thought about things this way but like if you were marketing to kids 10, 15 years ago versus now, it's obviously radically different, probably more different than even the adult market. How do you even wrap your head around where to start? Like there used to be a time when the T the kids TV up front was such a big deal. Now it's. Everything has changed. Where do you even begin?
- [03:30]
A
It's interesting, right, because there's two things I think if we start with the audience, right, and the shift to the complete fragmentation and how dramatically Gen Alpha has shifted and fragmented away from the traditional linear TV. You know, they're now on Netflix, they're on YouTube, they're on fast channels, they're on social, they're on gaming. So that fragmentation means that there's no longer a go to single destination to reach Gen Alpha and their parents. Instead attention is completely scattered across screens, devices, formats. I think for blind.
- [04:03]
B
I was sorry to interrupt you. I remember that when I started my, when I started my career I worked on the Lego and Burger King and Kids accounts and I remember in the decks it would say Nickelodeon literally has 60% of gross ratings points. And it was like that's like they couldn't be, it couldn't be further from where things are now.
- [04:21]
A
It really couldn't. Like I think it's more than half like the audience is just completely fragmented. Like I said, it's not just a one destination. So I think for brands that presents a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge is that it's so much harder to Capture the full attention in one place like you were 20 years ago, 10 years ago on Nickelodeon. You have to be present where the audience is and meet kids where they are. But the flip side of that and the opportunity is with the right strategy, there's a way to drive better engagement with this audience. Tailoring it to the platform so that, that's the first part of it and it's really about where the audience is. The second part of it then is about ad dollars and have the ad dollars then followed where this audience is. And my answer to that is both yes and no.
- [05:12]
B
That's what I was going to ask next because I wonder if the market has caught up to what's going on.
- [05:16]
A
Exactly. So if you are a toy company, a studio, an entertainment brand that are trying to reach a very specific gen Alpha cohort like Kids 6 Plus, then their ad dollars have shifted and they've followed the audience and they're actually, you know, their media investments showing up where kids are actually spending time. The more interesting part is the ad dollars that have lifting kids content on traditional linear, but we're actually reaching the parent in particularly that mom in that co viewing moment. Those are the ad dollars that haven't followed and it's a really big disconnect, have they?
- [05:53]
B
So that's interesting. So if you're, if you're Lego, you're Hasbro, you've been living this, you get it, you've, you've figured out I gotta be on YouTube, I gotta work with creators, I gotta work on fast. It's the dollars that would go to both. And I actually reminds me of like when I worked on Burger King and the kids brand that was like sort of going to both, both constituencies. Are they frozen? Are they, are they evaporating? Like are they, are they lost? Like what's going, what's driving that disconnect?
- [06:18]
A
The biggest challenge I see is that they're just not making into the ecosystem because advertisers and brands are trying to overlay because now these formats and these places that kids are and their parents are digital environments. Buyers are trying to apply digital logic to them. And that just doesn't work in kids media. It's just a completely different model. We don't have cookies conversion pixels. There's no multi touch attribution. You can't drive back to sales and retail. And that's not because the made for kids environment's broken. It's actually doing exactly what it's supposed to do. And that's, you know, protection of children. So my Challenge to advertisers is we need to think differently about this environment. It doesn't mean that it's less effective, it just needs to be valued differently. So success has to come from the alignment with family safe premium environments. Exactly how it was on linear tv. But we need to think in context, not tracking. We need to think about trust, not targeting. And I think that's quite uncomfortable for an industry that has grown completely used to dashboards full of data, outcomes and
- [07:31]
B
hyper targeting now exactly the stupid question. Because I, I have, I understand enough about COPA to be dangerous and I understand like historically you can't do baby or targeting with kids. They, they've, I think they've raised the age now where you can do the kind of things. What about when you are doing the co viewing targeting? Can these brands simply target parents with all those bells and whistles you're talking about or are they just, do they kind of just stay away from those tactics entirely? Because it's just a red flag in kids programming.
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A
I'll start with how prevalent co viewing is for families. We actually call it shared screen time because I think it's an evolution of co viewing. We see that 99% of wild brain parents say they enjoyed shared screen time at least once a week and over half are saying they do it multiple times a day. Co viewing, shared screen time really sits at the heart of that kind of family moment. Family bonding. It's really, really important for families. It's there, it's happening. But from a measurement and being able to report on it, I can't tell you if that impression definitely reached the parent or if that one didn't. You know, that's one of the limitations of measurement in the space. I would argue that linear TV can do that either.
- [08:47]
B
Yeah. And that's always been a challenge and there was not a lot of, there weren't a lot of specialty research products for that kind of thing. What about this? You know, there was a narrative last couple years. I don't know the kids, you know, the Jen's Alpha doesn't. They obviously care about. Creators and brands are trying to figure that out but they almost like don't care about narrative storytelling anymore. They're not going to watch full shows. Like they don't have the attention span. I'm assuming that the co viewing thing is going to be driven by families wanting to share moments together. But are we, are you seeing franchises and matter to this generation in a different way? And how do you get that? How do you get in front of them when there's so much competition.
- [09:24]
A
Yeah. So the biggest use case I can give for this is fast. And what we are seeing from an audience point of view on fast, we operate over 200 channels globally. We represent about 50% of the kids, fast real estate. So of all the channels we operate about 50% of them, those are our own channels as well as third parties that we represent like Pokemon, Sonic. We are seeing such huge audience growth there. And I think it's because it is that lean back experience, it's a trusted environment and it is driving that co viewing experience for families. We're also seeing that our model of FAST channels is really, really successful. We have single IP channels. So they really are about the home of fandom. So much so that I'm on a mission to rename FAST to fans and super targeted. Like that doesn't work for all FAST channels.
- [10:22]
B
I like that. But the kinds that you're talking about, it's, it's not just thrown on the background kind of thing.
- [10:28]
A
It's exactly. You know, kids are notorious for getting hooked on their favorite shows or franchises. They watch them, they rewatch them, they memorize them, they immerse themselves in them. So I think FAST is the really big use case for this because we're seeing the audience growth 50% year over year. We're seeing it as a place where parents are going because it's a very trusted environment. They know that they can put on Pokemon. It's curated in terms of the programming, but it's Pokemon after Pokemon after Pokemon.
- [10:59]
B
You've kind of, maybe, you've kind of maybe led us here already. But I would, I would. Why bother with fast? Theoretically everyone's on YouTube. You could find all these shows on YouTube, just throw your, your programming there and call it a day. Because I would think it's hard to get people to find these, these channels on fast. But what about FAST works for this audience, for you, for your company?
- [11:19]
A
Yeah. So you can definitely get lost on fast. But I also think it's one of the most misunderstood environments. And definitely from the outside, you know, it looks easy. We have, we have people that come to us and they're like, oh no, we'll launch our own FAST channel. And then two years later they're coming back to us saying, can we have your help fast? We noticed two shifts that were really happening. First, the audience audience fragmentation that we talked about a little bit earlier, but also subscription fatigue really settling in. Families, you know, they're gravitating towards free ad supported content because of the strain on their wallets. So fast sits at the intersection of those two trends. So we made a very deliberate strategic move into it back in 2019 when it was still really early in the market, because we knew, being, you know, from our linear TV days, that we had the ingredients to actually be really successful in this space. And that's about a really deep library of content globally loved IP and the programming expertise to be able to turn it into a real channel experience. So I think a lot of people miss the point with FAST that you've got to have a clear promise to families. It needs to be a franchise that they trust consistent viewing, but also programming that feels curated and isn't just kind of flung together.
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B
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- [13:15]
A
Yes. And that goes, that comes from our linear TV days. You know, operating all the family TV channels we did in Canada for the last couple of decades. We have that expertise built into our organization.
- [13:26]
B
And what's key, I mean you saw by this probably predates you, but is it getting the right distribution with the big TV manufacturers, with the, the, the, the fast aggregators? Like how do you get out there and make sure you are in the consideration set on and on a lineup. Is it, is it about promotion? Like how do you get people to fast?
- [13:44]
A
Because for us getting the distribution because we were early adopters, we were first movers, we've built up the credibility within the space. So when a Roku or any of the other platforms want a fast channel in the kids space, they tend to come to us and ask us to help create that for them. I think in terms of discovery it is a bit wonky on fast. There's so much choice. So that really comes back down to being trusted IP that parents recognize and how we see a huge phenomenon around nostalgia and the importance of nostalgia and the role it plays in bringing key kids and parents together. You know, this new generation of parents, they grew up on RIP so It's a really deliberate decision for them to choose RIP rather than to go to IP that they don't necessarily.
- [14:41]
B
They feel good about their old. Their old favorite.
- [14:44]
A
Exactly. Like fundamentally, nostalgia is an emotional connector. It invokes all these feelings of like joy, happiness, you know, good times that you remember from your childhood. So we see it playing a really, really important role in the choice parents are making around content with their own kids. And there's something really special about being able to sit there with your kid and say, oh, I used to watch this, you know, is that again back to that really emotional connection in that bonding moment.
- [15:14]
B
But I think. Are there some good examples of that?
- [15:16]
A
Yeah, I mean just in terms of research, we see that 77% of wild brain parents say favorite characters influence their purchase decision. Interestingly, 87% say that characters help teach important life lessons. And when you think around the child development years and finance is a great example, financial habits start to develop in kids as young as six years old. And sometimes topics like that can be quite difficult for parents to navigate because maybe their financial habits aren't that brilliant. So, so the trusted characters and the nostalgia of that can help parents a lot in some of the lessons that they're trying to teach their kids. And it does translate towards advertising as well. And for advertisers, Think Think with Google did a study that nostalgia boosts brand recall by 30% and purchase intent by 23%. So for brands associating themselves and putting them around nostalgic trusted content, it then does translate to, you know, brand awareness, brand favorability, purchase intent.
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B
You mentioned the in a perfect world you'd have measurement that really captures co viewing better. What about this is a two part question. Who can is are there efforts in the way underway to try and help improve upon that? And then what about measurement for fast? Overall I've heard mixed things about whether we're able to really capture how big those audiences are in an inconsistent way with existing, existing options out there.
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A
Yeah. So in terms of fast, I mean they're all walled gardens. Right. So but you've got to assume that if they're watching on one TV device, the likelihood of them having, you know, watching on another is limited. Maybe a second screen in the bedroom. So we, we get very detailed viewership data from each of the platforms so we can see how big our audience is by ip, by platform. So we can see. When I talked earlier about the 50% growth that we're seeing year over year, we do get that data.
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B
What are some shows that are Popping these days. That might be surprising.
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A
Or Strawberry Shortcake. Yeah, we're seeing that viewership accelerate year over year. What's also interesting about Strawberry Shortcake is we did some research recently and 50% of our audience on fast is unique to YouTube.
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B
Meaning that they're. They're not, they're not watching. On you Watching other things. Oh, they're watching instead of watching it on YouTube. Got it.
- [17:52]
A
Exactly. They're only watching Strawberry Shortcake on fast. They're not watching it on YouTube.
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B
And I should, I should have asked this earlier. Are, are we talking for your. Are your shows primarily the younger end of the kids demographic or. Not necessarily.
- [18:05]
A
We span all child development years so we've got preschool at the younger end. We like the Teletubbies. But then we go up into like teens with. We launched a show called Finding Her Edge for Netflix and that's really at the teen end of it. So we, we work across all child demos. So we have our own ip, obviously our franchises that we build. But then we also work with a lot of third party like the biggest global entertainment companies. So Lego Spin Master, Pokemon, Grizzly and the Lemmings, where we operate their channels on YouTube as well as on fast. So growing their audience.
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B
How does this role contrast with your Moonbug life? Similar. Similar strategies or very different.
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A
Similar strategies for sure. I mean fundamentally, I think, you know, there's a lot of comparisons. We're both publisher direct and I think there's a lot of value in that. I don't know if we're going to come on and talk about COPPA 2.0, but when you're looking at not just brand safety but also how ad dollars are flowing into the kids ecosystem, there's a lot of value for brands. Working directly with the publisher, I can,
- [19:17]
B
yeah, let's talk about corporate 2.0. Like what has, what has give people the layman's understanding of what has changed and how has that affected the market?
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A
Yeah. So firstly, there's a couple of different parts to it. There's the impact of the new FTC on rule which went into effect last month and that has just introduced some an evolution to the rules. The copper rules that were already there opt in for targeted advertising for parents. There's things around personal data which includes biometrics, essentially that update, it takes it from being be careful with kids data to prove your. You don't monetize or use it at all. So that's the first part which is
- [20:02]
B
the burden is heavier.
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A
Yeah, the update to those rules, the Second part of it is what the impact of COPPA 2.0 would be should it pass. Because that law's not yet passed. It's still sat in Congress. But for what I understand that's the biggest implication of that is it takes COPPA protecting kids under 13 to extending that age to teens, so to under 17s. So what's interesting is when you look around the world, you know, markets like Australia and Europe have already enforced broader protections. You know, Australia was in the news recently because one of the biggest things they did was they termed YouTube as a social platform. But what's interesting about that though is it didn't include the YouTube Kids app, which is a walled garden environment restricted.
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B
Right?
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A
Yeah, it's exactly. Is highly regulated by YouTube. What we've seen off the back of that is that our YouTube Kids app in Australia, the audience has massively increased.
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B
Oh, so the, so the, the audience is shifting as a result of the law.
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A
Like they're Exactly.
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B
That makes sense. What about, you know, the only, I guess the only thing in your. That's buying us time here is we don't, we don't, we don't really pass laws in this country anymore. So the, the cobra thing might take a little while. But have, have marketers reacted as if it's already law yet in terms of the age range, are they, are they being uber cautious?
- [21:33]
A
I think it varies. Like the toy companies are very educated on it. I think the rest what I call non endemic. So family travel, family auto, they aren't as educated on COPA and the meanings of it and what the implications are. So for us it's really an educational job and it's around the fact that, you know, Wild Brain really does become the gold standard. We're not about reactive compliance. We're already about structural compliance. You know, our model, we are every video is human vetted. We upload every single video, whether it's on YouTube or it is on fast. We're publisher, direct control. We always do contextual. There's no behavioral targeting. So we are really the gold standard. I think there are people and especially resellers that need to think about their model. Especially as Copa 2.0 has a lot of language around AI and the role of AI and a lot of these businesses are built on an AI informed targeting model. So they need to think about how does that impact them or that that
- [22:47]
B
in the general market that's seen as sophisticated and forward thinking, but in kids that might be seen as like risky. Yeah, that's interesting.
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A
I think we all know that algorithms are not risk free, you know, they're not flawless.
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B
So yeah, right, we're in may, I believe. Tell me, like, what does the kids upfront look like compared to the. Is it still as significant in terms of like a heated marketplace in a certain period of time or is it. Was that really changed?
- [23:13]
A
I think it's really, really changed. I obviously don't really have a in depth view of what's happening within the big networks and how they're trying to package it up. My assumption would be that they're trying to pull it into broader upfronts to make sure that they are still monetizing it and they have the luxury of being able to do that. For us, an upfront is about education. It's about, you know, explaining to advertisers that you really, really bought into this audience segment when it was in linear tv. The audience segment is still there. The environment, the premise of it, the shared screen time, the moment is still there. It's just in a different place. As I said earlier, you know, it comes back to measurement and challenging advertisers on why we need to think about this as a different type of, of space. Because fundamentally, like the biggest challenge here is that, you know, the sustainability of kids content is, is genuinely at risk. Kids content today has been funded either by public broadcasters or ad funded.
- [24:21]
B
Both. Both are under fire.
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A
Yeah, exactly. So if, if we're not getting money into the ecosystem, if ads, if advertisers aren't supporting it, then how do we continue to fund premium kids content? So that's kind of one part of it, but the second part of it, as well as the flow of ad dollars, when investment is rooted through third party resellers, less value actually reaches the
- [24:49]
B
publisher, which we've seen in display advertising in a big way and we've tried to avoid that in television, but it's happening here.
- [24:57]
A
Exactly. When you, when you work directly with the publisher, you know that money gets reinvested into content creation, safety standards. I think it's really, really important in the Made for Kids space because, you know, stories are what shape kids as they're growing up. Right. A lot of premium content that has educational value to it, you know, helps build curiosity, empathy, joy in kids, like proper life skills that they need. So when I talk to advertisers and this is very, this is very punchy, but it's, it's not just a media decision I talk about, it's a, there's
- [25:38]
B
a lot more at stake here.
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A
There's a future of Society decision like how we fund kids content today shapes the adults we get tomorrow. And that is something that, you know, in upfront season and as I talk to talk to people is something I'm really passionate about and something that I'm really trying to, to push so people understand not just that ad revenue needs to help support this industry, but it needs to be funneled in the right way.
- [26:01]
B
Right. If you don't spend with us, you are going to ruin a generation of college.
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A
It's going to strike in like that
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B
one, one more thing you had so many kids brands are going to. They're trying to find kids viewers in the way based on their different consumption habits. They're also wrestling with what do I do with things like Roblox and Fortnite and gaming platforms. Do they come to you and say how do we do not just CTV, not just YouTube, but all those pieces they do.
- [26:30]
A
We are very trusted in the kids and family space. You know, we've been around for decades. So we have that, you know, trusted advisor status with a lot of clients. So they will come to us asking us how they should approach different platforms, different formats, how they should be thinking long term about the short term ROI and the long term ROI of this audience. Because you have the dynamic of, you know, reaching a family in that moment. It ignites conversation. It gets them talking. You know, we literally see in research that we do that they'll see an ad and then they're like talking about it and then they go out and purchase it or they, they go on vacation to that place because they saw it and they want to, they want to do it. So there's the short term roi, but then there's also the long term roi. You're investing in the next generation of people with the wallets. We work with Roblox, we work with all the big gaming platforms as well to be able to bring 360 campaign executions to our clients because we see a huge correlation between families watching content together but gaming together as well.
- [27:39]
B
Yeah. And they want to. The brands want to feel like they have a trusted partner in doing that.
- [27:42]
A
Exactly.
- [27:43]
B
Emma. Fascinating stuff. I love this category. Thanks for sharing your expertise and let's hopefully chat again down the road.
- [27:49]
A
I really appreciate it. Thank you so much.
- [27:52]
B
Thank you. A big thanks to my guest this week, Wild Brain's Emma Witkowski. And my partner's an intent IQ and go addressable. If you like this week's episode, please take a moment to rate and leave a review. We have lots more to bring you so please hit that subscribe button and we'll see you next time for more on what's Next in Media. Thanks for listening.