The Media Odyssey

TMO - Pedro v3
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Pedro Pina: [00:00:00] This landscape is changing very quickly. You and I have been talking for a while. Six months ago, I would paint a picture, which is already different today, and the picture will be different in six months. So we can really see how a lot of broadcasters, IP owners, and studios are leaning in into YouTube more and more.

Marion Ranchet: Welcome to the Media Odyssey podcast. This is Evan Shapiro,

Evan Shapiro: and that is Marion Ranchet.

Marion Ranchet: We have an amazing guest with us today because it's great to talk about YouTube. It's even better to do that with YouTube. Welcome, Pedro.

Pedro Pina: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Evan Shapiro: So Pedro Pina. Who runs all of EMEA for YouTube.

What does that entail? What kind of job is that?

Pedro Pina: So I'm responsible for to make sure that we have the [00:01:00] best content on YouTube across the region. And what that means is looking after all the creators and partners that upload content on YouTube, it starts from the kid on the bedroom who starts their first video, uploading their first video, and all the journey as they grow through our system and become big partners.

Some of them become huge creators, but there are other, also other partners like Broadcasters Studios and other content producers who want to use the platform across the region and really across the world.

So I'm responsible to take care of all these people that want to find a voice on the platform that, and then I also bring together all the teams that make it, make that true from a business standpoint. So the monetization teams, so coordination with our sales team, the commercial frontline for other broadcasters. All our PR efforts, engagement with government officials, regulators across [00:02:00] these vast region. So the whole.

I'm also, me and my teams are also the point people for all things YouTube across the

Evan Shapiro: Basically all the operational elements.

Pedro Pina: The entire operation. That's right.

Evan Shapiro: Europe and the Middle East.

Pedro Pina: That's right.

Marion Ranchet: So you've been in Cannes for a few days. What's in it for you to be here in Cannes?

Pedro Pina: Oh my God. What's not?

So the on the very basic side, everyone knows our monetization, our main monetization engine is advertising. So if we are not in Cannes, where should we, where else should we be? This is where all the big brand advertisers come to. This is where all the agencies come to. They've been coming here for years. I've been coming here for years before I joined Google and now at Google.

So this is the place where everyone comes together to have a good conversation about where the industry is going, what the innovation should we expect in the industry. So we have to be here.

We have to be here because the advertisers that make our monetization engine work, they're here. The agencies that allow that to happen, they're here. So we are here as well.

This year was, is actually [00:03:00] very different for a list of reasons, number one, we are celebrating 20 years, so we are super excited. Thank you. We've been celebrating the entire year, so it's been fun.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah. You've been on a lot of pictures all around Europe.

Pedro Pina: I know, I know.

Marion Ranchet: With that sign. We're kind of jealous.

Pedro Pina: I know. And we use all sorts of excuses to celebrate it. So it was the day when we registered youtube.com, so as we do a party. There's the day when the first video was uploaded, we do a party, so we keep doing parties around.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, you do like parties.

Pedro Pina: We, we are doing 20 year anniversary celebrations every time YouTube opens in a country. So it's been fun. So it's special today and that's why Neil came, Neil Mohan, our CEO came to Cannes as well because he wanted clearly to send a signal this matters. And we are here to celebrate the 20th anniversary with everybody. So it's fun.

Number two, it's very different because this year, Cannes is swarming with creators. Creators are lifeblood. It's really what makes YouTube work. And YouTube in this last 20 years, creators had, they've made a [00:04:00] journey from being kids on skateboards, doing funky videos that, they were just funny, no one really paid attention, to becoming huge forces in the entertainment entertainment economy, and the entertainment landscape.

So it is a big moment for advertisers who are eager to connect with those creators, to really understand how to connect to the creator economy and make it work for their brands.

It is a, it's a very special moment in that sense.

Just two years ago, I've been coming here every year, so two years ago, or even last year, we brought some creators. It was fun. It was good. He was not the centerpiece. And now it is the thing that is happening and makes it feel very special actually.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Last year you brought Collin and Samir, which I love. Yeah. And they did a bit of a postmortem after can, and they were still saying how much they needed to educate big media, the rest of the industry. So you feel this has changed? How come?

Pedro Pina: It is very funny because last year and the years before was all about the why.

And this year is about the how. They just [00:05:00] wanna say what I like how quickly, how can I, what's the fastest way? Can you help us? How quickly can you help us? So it's a very different mind. There's not even a question mark as to if they should be considering or not.

Evan Shapiro: You threw an event the other night. I think it was Creator Collective.

Pedro Pina: Yeah. Creator Collective. Yeah. Yeah.

Evan Shapiro: And you've been doing them, where you gather, you basically convene creators around the world, right?

Pedro Pina: That's right.

Evan Shapiro: And Neil talked about this the other night. But this is the first time you brought the brands in to connect.

Pedro Pina: We brought the brand.

Evan Shapiro: And you encouraged them to collide and meet each other.

Pedro Pina: One hundred percent. We brought the brands, we brought the influential marketing agencies, which are up and rising. They're the rising force in the advertising industry. And we brought them all together. And the magic has to happen. We are facilitators, but the magic has to happen between these players, right?

The platform we are bringing with the reach, but also the creators and all their amazing fans and how they trust their voice. And then the influential marketing agencies, which are the ones to truly make those connections happen at scale. [00:06:00]

This has been the problem for the longest time is the fact that, some advertisers were already inclined to use some creators. They just, especially fast, forward leaning advertisers. Several come to my mind. I'm not gonna name names, otherwise my inbox gets filled.

But, but some of them are really progressive, really like to try but they always told us it's such a heavy lift, we have to sit down with those creators. We have to sign specific contracts one by one.

Then we need to, check their assets and we're not sure. And the language and the brand, it is just it's a very, and legals. So it's a really cumbersome process. But in the meantime, those influential marketing agencies as well as the platforms have evolved very quickly to develop solutions for that, to come up with a solution where they can do this at scale.

So instead of making a contract with three creators, you can make a contract with a thousand creators for one special brief, or for one product launch. And this is really transforming the industry. And you can, and this is happening in the last what say 18 months and came to [00:07:00] exploding Cannes this year. So we can clearly see everywhere you turn, this is exactly what's happening.

That and AI, but AI has always been like, since the last two years have been like in the background that's running. The AI became a how as well, funny enough, right? And this year the theme is clearly how can, how then, how can the creator be at the center of that connection or the advertising industry, and therefore the connection between brands and consumers.

Evan Shapiro: So, I was lucky enough earlier today at lunch, at your Google Beach to interview Neil and I talked to him about it, but he didn't let me bring cameras. So I'm gonna ask you about this. So you see, I did a landscape analysis about YouTube. I used tube filter data a couple weeks ago, and one of the interesting things was that of the 50 top channels on YouTube, 34, so 68%, I'm sorry, yeah, no more than that, were creators.

You don't see, you do see exceptions. BBC studios who's sitting off here to the right. And is our audience today. But [00:08:00] I, we did a podcast with them the other day with Jasmine Dawson from BBC studios. And Amelia Dimoldenberg, who went through their Talent Works program.

They are very much leaning into big studio as creator. You see others. ITV just signed a deal with you to put up their content. We've talked about this Channel 4 we had on the podcast, CBCs on the podcast, but they do still feel like the exception, not the rule.

What are creators getting? What are these studios getting that the big publishers and platforms are not getting about leaning into YouTube or leaning into the creator economy as a creator themselves?

Pedro Pina: Yeah, so I, I gotta say a couple things, and one is the this landscape is changing very quickly. If you and I, you and I have been talking for a while, six months ago I would paint a picture, which is already different today and the picture will be different in six months. So we can really see how a lot of broadcasters, IP owners, and studios are leaning in into YouTube more and more.

It's a mixture of the simple [00:09:00] facts that they look at the audiences and they understand where the audiences are and the facts don't lie, and they will tell you exactly where the audiences are or want to be. It is also a factor of some talent churn in some of these companies which allow for new voices coming in and bringing the truth to the boardroom and to say, look, we really need to find where the the eyeballs are.

And at the end, look, it's, it has to do with where the audience is. You see the creators. They are successful on YouTube because they never had anything else to look for than to please their users. There was nothing else than looking for the audience.

Evan Shapiro: You're obsessed with it a way that

Pedro Pina: It's the only, it's the only thing they have from the moment. They never, they had to, I always say the magic of YouTube is if you have an idea, if you have a brilliant idea, if you have a camera, that's it. That's the only thing you need. There's no, there's no cost of entry for this market. We made a creator says the cost of entry is to, to press the upload [00:10:00] button.

That is the big, that's the big hurdle. Which takes a lot of courage, in fact. Yeah. If you talk to creators, it takes a lot. Yeah. You should have. Yeah.

Marion Ranchet: We, we have a YouTube channel for the podcast.

Pedro Pina: Yeah.

Marion Ranchet: And it's the easiest thing. And we're both coming from a world where there's gatekeepers.

Pedro Pina: That's right.

Marion Ranchet; And you are talking about six, 12, 18 months and all of the technical hurdles to actually get in on it.

Pedro Pina: So, none of that existed. And so the creators, the only thing they had between themselves and their audience was just one button for the upload of the video. And that, so they get it because they get it.

And the people that are getting it are the ones that understand that actually, as long as you, if your job is to service your audience, just follow your audience. And those who are getting it, including a lot of IP owners and and broadcasters, they understand the audience sits with YouTube. And the reason why is because we are a platform that distributes content everywhere. That gives people that content when they want, how they want, with a [00:11:00] format that they want because the users are, at the, in the driving seat of this. They are the ones who are saying, I, give me the content the way I want when I want, anytime.

There's a ton of technology that is required for that people forget. But walking on the street and looking at a 4K video full HD on your phone with great audio takes a lot of technology. Not every, there are not a lot of players around the world that actually can do this on an ongoing basis, and so therefore we were able to focus on that. We never focused on developing content.

We've focused on distributing content very well, delivering on the format and devices anytime, everywhere users want it and we let the content producers focus on the audience and producing the content the audience wants and moreover, us as a platform are able to give that information back to the content producers.

We can tell them second by second, minute by minute what works and what doesn't work with that content. Creators love it. And a lot of, just this morning I was with a wonderful creator. [00:12:00] She's a, she's a model and she's a makeup. She does a ton on makeup and beauty.

Evan Shapiro: Like me.

Pedro Pina: The moment the camera is off, she's a data scientist. She's not a model.

Evan Shapiro: No, absolutely.

Pedro Pina: And she will have a conversation with you about retention rates of her videos. She'll have a conversation about reach. She will have a conversation about a drop watch time. She will have a conversation about monetization. She'll have a conversation.

These creators are deeply embedded in understanding what is required technically to service the users that they so want and what's amazing is that we created a system where they can do that. They can feed their passion because at the end of the day, it's their passion, their voice, and they can make a living out of it.

The ones to answer, this is a long winded answer. The ones that don't get it are the ones that are focused on, I would argue, maybe not the right thing. They're focusing on keeping the cost they always had, keeping overhead that they should be revisiting, keeping the

Evan Shapiro: Keeping their jobs [00:13:00] safe.

Pedro Pina: And forgetting, or keeping models of monetization that could be revisited and should be revisited. And that doesn't mean dropping revenue.

In fact, we have plenty of evidence that a lot of the, let's call it legacy partners that engage with YouTube, some of them see their revenues going up. Not going down.

So it's not as if you're losing your winning. And the reason why it's because we bring a brand new audience who's in love with that content, but would like to see the content in the platform that they carry with themselves all the time.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. I mean, I do think the ones who don't get it are, I have this phrase, fear of finding out. They're afraid to find out how reliant they are on an audience they can't reach on traditional media. They're afraid to find out how hard it is.

Neil called both on stage earlier today and then with during our conversation in your beach. He called creators, the Hollywood startups, the new Hollywood startups. And I was talking to someone on the street, doing an interview with them. And I said, I think there's this mythology that creators don't work hard. And he laughed his head off because they actually work harder per audience member, I think, than a lot of other [00:14:00] outlets do.

We were talking to Jasmine Dawson from BBC studios the other day, and it's clear that they get it. They changed their entire business model to KPIs driven around love, passion, engagement, the things that the creator economy demand. A creator first mindset. This is a big step, one of the oldest media companies in the world, they've transformed.

But she also talked about hiring a team of salespeople internally there who know how to sell their inventory on YouTube and package it with other media.

Let's talk about that for a second. 'cause while I was with Neil, I chastised 'em, I said sometimes. I don't feel you're great at explaining your Partner's Program, specifically the part where that allows the big studios and platforms to sell their inventory.

Pedro Pina: Yeah.

Evan Shapiro: Can you talk, we have a very specific listenership. We are creators. We know our fans. They're very interested in this. And every time we talk about YouTube, they yell at me. It's it's not real money. Or, they don't let you sell. Or,

Marion Ranchet: Because we're still hearing a lot of so we're gonna say it as, as [00:15:00] well, legacy players saying, an hour, with our own and operated and an hour with YouTube, not the same value.

So despite the fact that you're bringing audiences at scale and it's, in most cases incremental and folks that they can't reach, they're still very much looking at this as, what's in it for me in the long run? Where's the money?

Evan Shapiro: Does it replace what I'm losing from television?

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, exactly.

Evan Shapiro: But again, I think it looks at it the wrong way. So how you describe it?

Pedro Pina: Yeah. So the and I think Neil mentioned this today, so the partner,

Evan Shapiro: But they weren't here.

Pedro Pina: Yeah. Where were you people?

Marion Ranchet: They weren't invited

Evan Shapiro: By they, the audio audience.

Pedro Pina: So the partner sales program philosophically is, has the heart in the right place. Let's put it this way, the objective is to say, if you are a partner that has specific inventory, which you believe should have a specific CPM, you can, you should absolutely be able to identify that inventory which you upload on YouTube and we'll give you the possibility of selling that event at the [00:16:00] CPM you believe you should be.

Evan Shapiro: Whatever cost you believe, right?

Pedro Pina: Whatever. We, and actually we don't look at that price. We don't. We define church and state, and we believe that, quite frankly, your inventory, you sell it to your clients at the price that you want.

Neil went further today and even said, we've just learned basically over the last 20 years, we've learned that we are not great at selling that inventory. The people that produce this content are the best at selling their inventory. They know the inventory really well. They know it from the inside. They can tell the story of it.

We can't, we are selling at scale. It's, it is just a different model.

Evan Shapiro: You're not selling their channels in particular. Not selling.

Pedro Pina: We're not. And we are not selling. Exactly. So we're selling a different proposition and we should not be selling that way.

So content producers, when they go to partner sales, they should be able to have their inventory and sell it at the CPM that they don't, they believe it's the right CPM for them.

And the agreement is any inventory that you don't sell, you just push it to YouTube and then YouTube just [00:17:00] sells it at whatever CPM we do. So if you think about this, the way I just described it, it totally makes sense.

Now the reality on the ground is the product needs, has some friction. There's operational friction, there's financial friction, there is, there is lack of on our, and that's on our side. There's lack of investment in spending enough time with our partners to really understand how to sell inventory on YouTube. There is an assumption of the partners that although they understand the content very well, selling adventure on YouTube requires new skills that they probably don't have, and they overestimate their ability to sell their vendors.

So they bias towards the content per se. They don't understand that selling YouTube requires other skills on top of understanding your content. So by the time, and we haven't been investing in that product for a long time. Let's face it, we've been having, the product has been going on for this program has been established for a long [00:18:00] time and we haven't touched it as, yeah so the answer is yes and no.

The philosophy is right, the heart is in the right place. Could we have done more better training and more onboarding of some partners? Yes. Could the partners also do a better job at really understanding whether they do have the skill set that is required, and could we have taught them to do a good auditing internally to find out whether they're ready or not for the program? Probably should. So as usual in life, it's messy and the truth is somewhere in the middle.

But the good news is that we really believe that partner sales can really be a lever a point of leverage we should use in the future. And we are gonna be putting a lot of attention to make sure that we evolve the partner sales program to a place where it becomes an active and productive way to give the value of the inventory that is required to the partners who are really investing on that content.

So expect more news and in that front.

Marion Ranchet: You did make an announcement this week about Open Call. That is a product feature?

Pedro Pina: It's exciting. [00:19:00] Oh, it's amazing.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Tell us about it.

Pedro Pina: It's amazing. So it's so remember what I mentioned before that, brands are

Marion Ranchet: The tedious part between bridging creators and brands.

Pedro Pina: Totally. So if you ask a brand, any brand person right now to do a program with creators, they just want, they wanna put a bullet through their brand because it's just, it is a very heavy lift.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Very manual, right?

Pedro Pina: No, it's just hard. And so we developed with Open Call, we developed a way for you as a brand. Let's say you have something you want to launch. You go on open call and you put on a briefing as complete as possible. Say, look I'm launching this lipstick and it's gonna be in October, and these are the characteristics you put on the briefing whatever you want. The more information as you can imagine, the more information, the better.

We'll, we will give you ability to select the verticals and the type of creators, which we believe are probably the best to answer to your briefing. And the briefing is then broadcast to the studios of creators. So creators will have a tab that will have, oops, there's a briefing from a brand. So they go in and [00:20:00] they find out that you're launching this thing, you're paying X amount of money for that. And you want a X amount of seconds, an asset where you want and you describe what you want.

Can you, and here we give freedom to the brands. So as you know, some brands are more prescriptive, some brands will be less prescriptive. So they'll say, I want you to use your do a get ready with me video where you use this lipstick.

Or other people will say, put yourself in front of a mirror and tell how beautiful, whatever it is these are the talking points you should use. And then you as a creator, you produce the video and you upload the video for submission. The brands will then do, we'll, there's a, there's gonna be a filtering capability for better quality because one of the dangers you can produce a piece of crap.

Marion Ranchet: Well then, what you were saying exactly. It's a very open platform. So essentially anyone could submit.

Pedro Pina: So we'll apply AI, we'll apply AI to help you out. And to surface those we, which we believe are going to be a better answer to your briefing.

And then you'll say yes. You can put some comments in and say, okay, perfect video. Can you please just repeat it and don't [00:21:00] use the, or, take the towel behind you on the bathroom or whatever, and then people will redo the videos. We'll post it again. Get, they'll get charged.

So they will get the money through their assets account. So it'll go through the usual monetization money that we we put out. And the brands will have a ton of assets. With a level of different assets produced by different creators with their authenticity, with their voice using their product.

And they can use it with paid media or if they will give the possibility at some point as well to negotiate with a, with the creators if they want to put it on their own channels and use the, their fans to, as one of the channels and extra reach.

Marion Ranchet: Interesting.

Pedro Pina: And this addresses a lot of the issues that we talked about before and answer, it's one of our answers to the how. When brands are saying How can I, we use creators. This is a very great way.

Evan Shapiro: So more and more billion hours of YouTube is watched on TV per day. It's a stat I feel like I always have to repeat a billion hours a day of YouTube just [00:22:00] on the television. That doesn't include phones, tablets, laptops. But even when YouTube plays on TV, it's priced more as social video than it a is as premium video.

And I think that's one of the reasons why the big publishers and brands are having, Marion said it beautifully and someone said it to me earlier, an hour of TV time, this is the revenue per minute, an hour of YouTube time. This is the revenue per minute. And I think one, I think that's a legacy of where the platform came from.

But two, I also think it's a fault of the seller. Because if the brand is selling their own inventory, they should be able to, as you said, for all the reasons be able to get a better CPM.

How do we convince the olds that when someone's watching something on television, especially if it's an hour long show that it should be appreciated. If the audience appreciates it as long form, sight, sound in motion as television, it should be priced accordingly.

Because a fan of somebody who's watching a long form [00:23:00] documentary or television show on YouTube is no less valuable. One would argue maybe even a little bit more valuable than on television.

So how does the price differentiation between the impressions that are being generated on YouTube get shortened.

Pedro Pina: I think there's a bit of myth busting that we could do here. So our CTV CPMs in a lot of countries, especially the most sophisticated digital con digital countries are getting significantly high.

Evan Shapiro: They are they're raising up to the?

Pedro Pina: They are getting up to levels that are very comparable to the top CPMs of

Evan Shapiro: Cable TV.

Pedro Pina: Of cable TV. And I would argue there has been, there are cases with some of our top creators where the CPMs go higher. The wonderful thing about pricing on YouTube, as everybody knows, is that the majority of our inventory CPM gets determined by auction. So it gets determined by the value that advertisers put on the audience that they're getting.

So advertisers themselves are in, [00:24:00] at scale, they will be intelligent enough to price it the way they should, and they could because the auction has that beauty, right? If the auction allows you to get to the level of value that's, that that thing that is being auctioned has.

And so we believe we have fine tuned a really good system, CTV CPMs have been lower in the past because we were building the audience. We were, and quite frankly, we did not have the content ready. The content was not probably with a quality that is should required, but I would urge, and I've had several conversations including today with some of the legacy players, I would urge them to go and check where the living room CTV prices are because they really are getting very close, if not higher sometimes than the classic TV pricing that is happening in most countries.

So it's a long winded answer to, I would check those facts again, it varies country by country and of course varies vertical by vertical. But that's not [00:25:00] new.

Evan Shapiro: No, it's TV too.

Pedro Pina: We know sports, very premium, et cetera, so we could go on and on and on. And pretty much, really faster than anyone expected, our CTV pricing is getting very comparable with the market. So I, and I think that if we are fast forward 12 months from now, I think we are not having this conversation.

Evan Shapiro: If you fast forward, if you fast forward five years, do you, I know.

Pedro Pina: Next question.

Evan Shapiro: It's impossible. Please tell me we'll be in a better place. So if we fast forward five years, do you feel that the ratio of creators to big publisher brands in the top 50 will shift? I feel, I make, I made a prediction on stage the other day that it'll be equal.

That the big studio brands will finally come to realize the value of this audience in particular, and the value of the platform. And that of the top 50, 25 will be big brands. Do you feel like that's a goal or?

Pedro Pina: I don't, I don't know. And I don't care. And let me tell you why.

Evan Shapiro: Why? Yeah.

Pedro Pina: Because the viewers [00:26:00] will determine that. The viewers, the same rule for creators apply to content producers. Produce amazing content and trust you, me, if you produce amazing content, the viewers are gonna be there and they will want to see it and they will pay for it.

Evan Shapiro: But you gotta put the content there before you.

Pedro Pina: But you have, right. So if the producers of the IP don't put the content there, then shame on them because the viewers, that's what the viewers are. I mean it the rule that you should follow the users applies to everyone. So when I say I don't care, I'm being flippant on purpose, of course I care, and of course I want the best content to come to YouTube.

But what's really critical for me is that I am not the one who decides what's the best content. So I want the best content, but I'm not the one who says that is the best content. The users will say, and we have plenty of evidence, they know exactly what they want to see. And actually the audience behavior of the last 10 years have proven that.

And that's why we're here [00:27:00] having this conversation in fact. So it doesn't really matter. You will have, what I can guarantee you, in five years is that the content that is gonna be on YouTube is the content that the viewers of YouTube want to see. That's for sure. It's up for content producers from the creator on his bedroom, all the way up to big studios to determine what content should that be and why. And in what format should it be at YouTube.

Marion Ranchet: I think there's one thing that I see happening in the next few years, and you have a good example, and it's a French example. I know. It's annoying. But there's the question of, 'cause we've been talking about where you fit in the advertising ecosystem, the monetization.

But from a content perspective, there's a topic of where the platform fits in terms of windowing. So are you there after broadcast, are you there at the same time as broadcast? And you've had that example with a French YouTuber Inoxtag. Where you actually were part of that story, that release.

It went to theaters. It went [00:28:00] to YouTube.

Evan Shapiro: It's Kaizen, the film that he made about climbing Everest.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, about climbing the Everest. So the theatrical, YouTube, now, this program is really having a life on Disney Plus, and apparently it's performing really well for them. Can you tell us a bit more about that?

Pedro Pina: Yeah, it was an incredible story where essentially the story is this amazing creator, which was already an amazing creator on YouTube, decided to do it, decided to climb the Everest and do a documentary around the climbing the Everest. Good on him and all that.

So he decided then to do a, to launch that documentary exclusively on movie theaters. Hello movie theaters. I, who, does anyone remember what that is? So movie theaters.

Marion Ranchet: I do. You don't go to the theater anymore?

Pedro Pina: I personally don't. Which is a shame. Long story. Yeah. Separate podcast. But the, people stop, they have to stop buying popcorn and, anyway, it's

Evan Shapiro: It's a whole other podcast.

Pedro Pina: And answering phone calls. It's a separate, yeah.

Evan Shapiro: The theater by Pedro.

Pedro Pina: But we know movie theaters in France, as in the rest of the world are, the audience is really [00:29:00] decreasing, the traffic is decreasing. So he decided to do something very innovative. He decided to launch documentary exclusively on movie theaters, sell tickets for the movie theater. So it's an important thing. So he made money out of it.

Evan Shapiro: 300,000 tickets in one day.

Pedro Pina: He sold it. He completely filled out all the theaters. The theaters were beaming with a new audience. A young audience?

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, a young audience. For a documentary film.

Pedro Pina: For a documentary film. A four hour, four hour documentary film.

Evan Shapiro: Goodness.

Pedro Pina: With the announcement that exclusive documentary was going to be free on YouTube the day after.

Evan Shapiro: The next day.

Pedro Pina: The next day.

Evan Shapiro: Everyone knew it and they still.

Marion Ranchet: It was a one off.

Pedro Pina: So what have you learned about this? Number one, there's a lot of mythology around young audiences. Young audiences have no span of attention. Well, four hours, think again.

Number two, young audiences don't go to movie theater. Think again. You maybe have the wrong content on.

Evan Shapiro: They don't pay for content. Wrong again.

Pedro Pina: Number three. So they paid 15 euros per ticket, by the way. [00:30:00] Should be said.

Number three, people crave to be in real life. They crave to be with each other. They crave to see,

Evan Shapiro: We were just talking about this the other day.

Pedro Pina: The reason why the fans went to the theater is because they wanted to see other people that love the same content. And they wanted to see, we see this with podcasters all the time. The most

Evan Shapiro: They show up for podcasters.

Pedro Pina: They are on tour. A politics podcaster Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart in BBC, they do tours on O2. They fill out entire stadiums, so people really actually want to spend time in real life.

Marion Ranchet: That life experience.

Pedro Pina: And that fandom that, the music industry has known this for a long time. Actually, we were distracted because they've been known this for the longest time. If when you go to a movie, when you go to a music concert, the worst thing that the music concert singer can tell you is now I'm gonna play a my new song. And it was like, oh, no one wants to hear a new song.

Everyone wants to be in a stadium singing the song that everybody knows.

Marion Ranchet: For sure.

Pedro Pina: So you wanna share that experience. And this is [00:31:00] exactly what happened in this case. The fans came together, they spend time together, they looked at each other. The buzz was before and after the documentary. The documentary was a huge success.

The day after, it was on, on YouTube. Present for everyone monetizing on YouTube.

Marion Ranchet: 35 million?

Evan Shapiro: 17 million views that one day. In one day.

Marion Ranchet: Oh yeah, in one day.

Pedro Pina: And then it was just really, and then it keeps monetizing in all sorts of different shows.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah. It went to TF1, which is the French free-to-air broadcaster.

Pedro Pina: It went to TF1, exactly.

Evan Shapiro: But crucially, and this is a kind of interesting new aspect of the creator economy. So it's all the creator economy now is my big watch phrase for right now. But also the rules of the creator economy have completely changed. It's not, he used YouTube to create this phenomenon.

Pedro Pina: A hundred percent. Yeah.

Evan Shapiro: And so he created an offline phenomenon using this online platform. And that's, to me, part of the new rules is it's not just about generating views and ads on YouTube. You have to think about your whole flywheel.

Pedro Pina: And by the way, this was close to no marketing.

Evan Shapiro: Right, except his own platform.

Pedro Pina: Because he basically announced his to his fandom.

Evan Shapiro: That's marketing.

Pedro Pina: Guys, I'm [00:32:00] gonna release my documentary. And everyone knew about that. It's gonna be in this day. You can buy the tickets through this line and da, da, da, da, da.

And I, the reason why I love this example is because it speaks about something you mentioned before, which is, how should legacy, legacy companies think about this?

Marion Ranchet: Embrace it.

Pedro Pina: So movie theaters are legacy. Legacy by definition. Look at that. This one, MK2 is led by an absolutely visionary guy who decided to say, you know what? I'm not gonna change where the audience, how what are you gonna do? Go around with guns to people to make them go to movie theaters.

There is an issue with movie going, there is an issue. That's not where the audience wants to go. It's not to watch maybe that content. They want to watch other type of experiences.

He was open to experiment with other types. Look at that. Just like that, he revitalized an industry, which was not in great shape.

Evan Shapiro: Documentary theatrical films.

Pedro Pina: He reintroduced movie theaters to a new generation just by embracing the [00:33:00] change and understanding, and really understanding where the audiences want and what, how the audiences behave.

And this is at the, this is at the core of it. And so going very back to one of the questions you asked is, what's the difference between the people that get it and don't get it? The ones that get it is the ones that forget about all the things that have inherited the systems that they have today. And to just look at the user and say, okay, what do we need to do in order to service the your audience?

And as long as you follow that basic rule, which can be tough and difficult and make you make really difficult choices, but if you follow that rule, it is what it is. I can I give you an example with YouTube.

We built a very successful business on long form, and all of a sudden we had to launch ourselves on short form without knowing how to monetize. We're gonna can- we are certainly going to cannibalize a part of our watch time by definition, because the same eyeballs cannot, we don't multiply. We did not have the monetization engine on shorts ready as we had [00:34:00] on long form.

But guess what? The most important thing is the user. We need to give the user, the business will get there that somehow, somewhere between advertisers and audience, and this will meet everyone where they have to be. And this is where we are today. Short is a huge

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. And now being monetized well.

Pedro Pina: They're being monetizing very well. They're incredibly successful because we just follow the basic rule.

And it's, it takes a jump to do this but we know it's the right jump.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah I, this is why I love talking to you so much is, and I don't think that people believe me when I talk about our conversations outside of them, which is, you're very honest about what YouTube doesn't do well.

Marion Ranchet: I agree.

Evan Shapiro: And then you're very frank about what the rest of us don't understand about YouTube. It was great talking to Neil today. It was great to get you on the record on a lot of stuff here for our camera and for our listeners.

And we would love to have you back. This is, I know I have to get you outta here 'cause

Pedro Pina: Anytime.

Evan Shapiro: It's Cannes, it's hot and you have to shuffle off to some fancy dinner somewhere. So thank you.

Pedro Pina: Thank you so much for thanks for having me here. Really appreciate it. Really appreciate it.

Marion Ranchet: Thank you for coming.

Evan Shapiro: Thank you very much for listening to the Media Odyssey [00:35:00] Podcast or watching, depending on what platform you're on like YouTube. I am Evan Shapiro. My Substack newsletter is called Media War and Peace. That is

Marion Ranchet: I'm Marion Ranchet. My substack is Streaming Made Easy.

Evan Shapiro: Thank you very much. We'll check you out next time.