The Media Odyssey

TMO - Media Summit v2
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Evan Shapiro: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Media Odyssey Podcast at the Media Universe Summit at Stream TV.

I welcome to the stage my partner in pod, my co-host and my friend Marion Ranchet. Woo.

All right. Thank our guest, Matthew Henick, who heads Ventura for the Trade Desk, and I wanna thank our second guest, Alan

Alan d'Escragnolle: d'Escragnolle.

Evan Shapiro: From Filmhub. Let's get started

With that, I wanna bring my co-host for The Media Odyssey Podcast to the stage, ladies and gentlemen, Mademoiselle [00:01:00] Marion Ranchet.

Marion Ranchet: I'm married.

Hi everyone.

Evan Shapiro: Take a seat.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, you said it. Streaming Made easy. That's my brand.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. That is your brand.

Marion Ranchet: It is protected. Huh? It's copyrighted.

Evan Shapiro: So Streaming Made Easy is your newsletter. It's a Substack newsletter. And you can subscribe to it now. So if you were here for the debate, you know we get points for shameless plugs.

So what do you write about on your media newsletter.

Marion Ranchet: I mostly work about the European markets. I think, again, you've said it there's a lot of differences between the two and I think there's a lot of, what's happening in one region. People tend to copy and paste. So, I'm bringing a bit of that European touch, so to say.

Evan Shapiro: And who here has heard of The Media Odyssey Podcast? Clap your hands. Okay.

Marion Ranchet: Yeehaw.

Evan Shapiro: Thank you very much.

Marion Ranchet: Thank you guys.

Evan Shapiro: And, I like to call us the Media Insiders Insider Podcast, a little Chapel Roan reference there. And I approached you late last year to join me and make this [00:02:00] podcast happen.

We've been doing it for over 20 episodes now.

Marion Ranchet: I think this is, we're recording with you guys, episode 25?

Evan Shapiro: 25. Quarter century. Thank you very much. And again, you can like and subscribe and right now on your phones, we will wait. No, I'm kidding.

Marion Ranchet: It doesn't work, you gotta stop with this one.

Evan Shapiro: Say again.

Marion Ranchet: You gotta stop with this one. No one does that.

Evan Shapiro: You don't like my joke.

Marion Ranchet: So you're doing it every time?

Evan Shapiro: I do it every time because that never works. So you're having a good time? Have you had a good time?

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, I've had a good time.

Evan Shapiro: You've been very busy here at Stream TV. What? You've moderated a panel?

Marion Ranchet: So I'm actually moderating a panel tomorrow, but this afternoon I spend time with women in streaming media.

Evan Shapiro: Oh cool. Love that organization.

Marion Ranchet: I'm, yes. We're talking about personal branding. And we need to be louder. And it's paying off when we are.

Evan Shapiro: I think that's an expertise of yours is personal branding. I think you're really good at it. It's why I wanted you as my co-host on this podcast.

Marion Ranchet: You're not too bad yourself.

Evan Shapiro: Thank you very much. And what'd you think of the content you've seen at Stream TV so far?

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, it's been amazing. I have to [00:03:00] say there's a lot going on around YouTube. And to me YouTube is not TV. Yes, I'm putting it out there. I do not agree with my co-host on that. YouTube is maybe trying to be TV but I don't agree on that.

And what's been interesting is seeing how also, folks have been doing an amazing job on more traditional platforms, right? So may that be broadcast, folks like Freely. A lot of streamers, we've heard a lot about folks within the ad-supported streaming world.

Evan Shapiro: Like who, gimme an example.

Marion Ranchet: We've heard folks from Tubi yesterday focusing about,

Evan Shapiro: Sam was just here. I think his team won the debate.

Marion Ranchet: Sam was here, but it was Adam. I think Adam spoke about how Tubi is niche tv. Is that the right?

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. They see themselves as a se very nichey. They dig deep into different niches and it's worked.

Marion Ranchet: Nostalgia.

Evan Shapiro: Nostalgia is one, black cinema is another.

Marion Ranchet: Horror.

Evan Shapiro: Horror. It was big for them. Gen Z. Comedy is another. Sam plugged all their shows during his debate. It was miraculous. I've never seen [00:04:00] somebody plug so hard in my life, but that was part of the contest. I'm gonna go back at you on YouTube.

So who here watches YouTube on television? Raise your hand.

A sizeable chunk of the room, and this, I'm gonna say there's not a lot of Gen Zs in the room. These are more millennials and older I would say. So there it is a big habit here who watches some programming over 20 minutes at a time on television, on YouTube.

Raise your hand.

Now I'm gonna ask you, do you think that's television? Raise your hand.

In my mind, statistically speaking, in the eyes of the viewer, it is television and I like my data over your feelings.

Marion Ranchet: I will challenge you on the fact that we're in the US and it's not because it's happening in the US that the same goes in Europe.

Actually, RTL.

Evan Shapiro: There are a couple, I will say, just for the record, 'cause we are recording this for audio and for video, just for the record, there are a number of Europeans in here who also raised their hands who are also on the older side of Gen Z.

Marion Ranchet: They did. But [00:05:00] let me, so I see Jonas there and RTL actually put out data a few months ago. They surveyed European across Europe and the biggest size of people. I'm sorry that doesn't count. That's not big enough to me. But, and the first you could see the difference. Americans thought YouTube was TV Europeans, no. Their first day.

Evan Shapiro: All right. That's fair enough.

Marion Ranchet: To them, TV is podcast, but I think the debate is moot, if I can be honest. I'm not sure it's useful. So who do you think this debate about YouTube being TV yes or no is useful?

Evan Shapiro: Raise your hand if you think it's useful.

Marion Ranchet: Okay. So for those who are listening in, there's only five people.

Evan Shapiro: Okay. There you go. Fair enough.

Marion Ranchet: So did I win this one though? Did I win this one?

Evan Shapiro: So let's go to the, let's go to the other debate. You did win that. Congratulations. I

Marion Ranchet: Thank you.

Evan Shapiro: For the record, but you crushed me. So let's go to the other debate that happened, which is Discovery, and I think that's what we're gonna talk about here. We have two guests who are experts at Discovery.

One is right in the center of your nerdom. Which is,

Marion Ranchet: I have a lot of those.

Evan Shapiro: You do have a [00:06:00] lot of, a collection of nerdoms.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah.

Evan Shapiro: Tubi is niche television. You are nerd TV I think. So one of your big nerdoms though is connected television operating systems. 'cause you worked at Roku famously.

Marion Ranchet: Yep.

Evan Shapiro: Shout out to all our friends at Roku. And so do you,

Marion Ranchet: There's no one at Roku, from Roku in the room . So we can go at it.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, we can go at that.

Marion Ranchet: So he is one person? Yeah.

Evan Shapiro: For the record, one person. So do you wanna introduce our first guest?

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, absolutely. Matthew coming up?

Evan Shapiro: Matthew Henick.

Marion Ranchet: From the Trade Desk.

Matthew Henick: Hello. I come bearing gifts though. I wanted, I know Evan is into mugs and I know Marion, you had a quote about us. This is a Ventura mug

Marion Ranchet: Oh my God.

Matthew Henick: Marion, would you wanna read your quote

Marion Ranchet: For you guys, it says

Evan Shapiro: Go ahead.

Marion Ranchet: It made no sense. The Media Odyssey with Ventura. So we're gonna explain, but essentially.

Evan Shapiro: Go for it.

Marion Ranchet: The first question I have for Matthew is why, when you have [00:07:00] a thriving advertising business, why would you wanna go into the most fragmented ecosystem in the world? We're talking about 20 plus different OS, fighting for what? 500 brands. How many TVs are we selling every year? Do you guys know?

I think it's 100

Matthew Henick: 50 million in the US.

Marion Ranchet: So why would you do that to yourself? Why are you getting in this business? Tell us.

Matthew Henick: I just wanted to expense a trip to the Lazy River over here.

Evan Shapiro: There's a plug.

Matthew Henick: Look we think, based on our business and its strength, that we have a unique position to improve how the money flows through the CTV ecosystem. And we, before we made this commitment, we looked at basically every segment of it. So for OEMs and retailers, the people who are making and selling televisions, there's an incredibly hard standalone business. It's low margin, it's single digit margins, if not a loss leader.

And what we've seen is that in order to make that sustainable, you need to move into an ads business. Or a content business at the very least. And then [00:08:00] when you realize that you have two choices, really you have to develop your own in-house OS, which to your point is not easy. And not only do you need to develop it, you need to maintain it and work with thousands of publishers and make sure that it's a robust, enjoyable user experience.

So you can build your own engineering team and build your own ads team, or you can mortgage your future to the big tech companies and let them handle it for you and maybe you get a bounty. And that's pretty much it.

So we think there's a better way there. And we think there's a way for us to bring our expertise in software and our expertise in advertising to help OEMs have a better choice than those two.

And then we look at advertisers, which are our core clients at the Trade Desk. And they wanna spend more in CTV, but they need access to better data, better transparency, to feel like they're getting more for their dollars. Publishers want to optimize the monetization of their media and are increasingly having to pay larger and larger tolls to the platform, either in, in the form of revenue shares or just inventory shares where they're handing over their [00:09:00] inventory and their content that they paid for. And then that inventory is being represented by multiple partners in the ecosystem, so they're competing against the platforms they have.

Also, the publishers are competing against the apps that are now owned by all the big OSs as well.

And so if you put all this together, it leads to a slightly in, depending on which integration it is a compromised user experience too, as it relates to discovery, as it relates to recommendations, as it relates to, as a user trusting a hundred percent of the pixels on your screen that they're there for you and trying to get you connected to the thing you wanted to watch when you turned on the television, or the thing that, you'll discover as you go.

And so we think we're one of the only partners who can look at that supply chain from beginning to end and provide a better option.

Marion Ranchet: So this is essentially in two minutes the disease of CTV the lack of transparency, the fact that it's in the hands of a few. You're not making any money on hardware.

I agree with all of that, but you're not the only ones who are trying to have this [00:10:00] value proposition where essentially you are enabling the ecosystem without dipping your toes in being in content or in device, et cetera. So how are you different than what's happening in the markets?

And more importantly, you are coming from advertisers and that you, advertising, sorry. And one thing is that you need scale. And so you're gonna have to build that scale from the ground up.

Matthew Henick: Yeah. So you know what we highlight as our differentiator flexes depending on which partner segment we're talking about.

For the OEMs, the ability, again, to turn on an ads product virtually overnight is very appealing for them. For advertisers who connect the publishers, OEMs, and the users the fact that we are already one of the largest players in the CTV realtime bidding programmatic space allows us a lot of transparency there to help improve both sides of that equation.

Because when Proctor and Gamble decides to spend a dollar on a Disney Plus show, that whole dollar doesn't get there. There's a lot of nibbling that happens along the way. The [00:11:00] average publisher has 141 different supply paths for the same exact ad that fires on there. That doesn't have to be that way, or at least has to be transparent on what the taxes are in each of those paths.

So that you can decide whether or not you wanna send your dollar down there and the publisher could decide whether or not they want to capture it that way. So for that segment, again, allowing OEMs to own their customer base, allowing retailers not to hand over their customers to one of the world's largest retailers and put them in their living room instead of them maintaining that connection, that's a huge differentiator for them.

And then on the publisher side and the user side, the differentiator is, you talk about fragmentation and I agree, but I see that as competition. I just want that competition to be as healthy as possible. Like we saw this morning, there's more and more media sources the younger you get, and those, all those media sources should have an equal shot at serving and recommending content to you.

And that's not what's happening on the platforms today.

Marion Ranchet: And so how are you building that tech stack? Are you building it from the ground up? I know you poach people from [00:12:00] Roku.

Matthew Henick: We hired them. They, we didn't force them.

Evan Shapiro: That's that technical term here. Just be careful.

Matthew Henick: My lawyer's not here.

But no we

Evan Shapiro: Scrub that from the pod.

Matthew Henick: We hired people with ex- to your point, this is a highly specialized space and we're entering a mature market. So we wanted to hire the best and brightest and the most expert in this space. So we have people from Roku, Fire TV, Google TV. All over the place so that we make sure that number one, we're learning the lessons way faster than anybody else. And now that we have this ability to start from scratch, we can move a lot faster as well.

Marion Ranchet: And so are you building the content lineup also from the ground up, or are you relying, 'cause that's a lot of content to bring, right? So the Netflix and Disneys of the world.

Matthew Henick: So in order to get up and running quickly, but also with empathy for our publishing partners, we are building on the Android open source project so that we can help publishers get onboarded as quickly as possible before then trying to customize it for our platform. So we, any publisher that has an APK file can run on Ventura pretty [00:13:00] much from scratch. But we'll obviously test it and certify and go from there.

Marion Ranchet: And ETA wise, what are we looking at? When are you launching with the first OEM partner?

Matthew Henick: As part of being as good a partner to OEMs as we can, I want them to control that, especially in a time of a lot of instability. The nice thing about our tech stack as we've built it to be as flexible as possible.

So we have our backend, we have our front end, we have a full reference product that we can customize for any OEM's brand, any other services that they have. Or if they have a UI that we can stitch it on there. So all that to say I'm gonna leave the OEMs to announce when they're gonna hit their shelves 'cause they have to manufacture them, they gotta deal with tariffs, they gotta sell it through to retailers and we'll be with them every step of the way. But that's their story to tell.

Marion Ranchet: Super interesting. Anything that comes to mind?

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, absolutely. When we first met you were at Buzzfeed.

Matthew Henick: Yes.

Evan Shapiro: Is that correct?

I was at NBCU, building Seeso. Shout out to Seeso. RIP. One of the many projects I've been to early on. And you were at Buzzfeed building a [00:14:00] content machine there. And then you went to Facebook or Meta?

Matthew Henick: Yep. Death Star. That's what we call it.

Evan Shapiro: And anywhere, where else? Death Star. That's exactly right.

Thank you for the reference. I love all the references. Where, anywhere else in between here and?

Matthew Henick: After that I went to Epic Games and worked with the Fortnite Metaverse.

Evan Shapiro: I forgot that. Yeah. Yeah. And so you've done, this is not like your fifth job in CTV Os, right? You've worked in a lot of interesting things on the content side.

This is far less, it may be on the side of content per your

Matthew Henick: No, but I'm never gonna spend a dollar on content in this job. It's pretty nice.

Evan Shapiro: Exactly. So, it's a little far afield from certain other areas you've had. Why? You, she, Marion asked you about why Trade Desk is going into Ventura. Why did you do this?

This, for the same exact reason she said, it seems like a risk, to be honest with you even at a company whose valuation is very high. It did drop earlier this year. And minds change change quickly in corporate environments. See me here on the outside for many years.

So why?

Matthew Henick: [00:15:00] I wish I can claim all of this was intentional. So maybe the quote also applies to my career path. But what I've discovered in each sort of step is when I was at Buzzfeed, I was so interested on what the future of media looked like, particularly in the digital space, and Buzzfeed was at the forefront of that, and we did a lot of publishing on every platform that would take us.

And from there we would learn the limitations of that. Why couldn't we get the monetization we wanted on Facebook? Why couldn't we get the monetization on YouTube? And so the best way to answer that question was to go to Facebook and do that and advocate for media partners.

And at Facebook I had one of the most amazing jobs of all time, which was, deploying their content budget across the world and across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. And that gave me such a deep understanding of even if well intended the incentive mismatch between large platforms, big tech or otherwise, and the media industry.

Because at a certain point, they have a higher order sort of mission or incentive that is different. And so I just became really [00:16:00] obsessed with trying to understand these global ecosystems and what the next version of media consumption will look like. When that took me from Facebook, to Epic to build the Fortnite creator ecosystem and then worked in AI and all that type of stuff.

And I would sit down with media companies, music, movies, televisions, whatever it was, and trying to talk to them about five and 10 year horizons. And they wanted to, but they had to solve the problems of today. And the problems of today are about going to direct to consumer and how we make that work sustainably.

So when I got a call about this, it was, it felt perfect. So I was happy to dive in there and happy to try and, again, build the proper way we think the money should flow so that these companies can now focus on the 5, 10, 15 year horizon.

Evan Shapiro: That's amazing.

Marion Ranchet: He's convincing. I'm a annoyed.

Evan Shapiro: Isn't he? I know. I told you. He, I told you he would charm you.

Marion Ranchet: So I'm gonna have to rip this off and it does make sense.

Matthew Henick: We'll get you a new one.

Evan Shapiro: Toast later.

Marion Ranchet: No, get me a new one.

Evan Shapiro: At cocktails. Keep that discovery in mind. Keep that problem solving in mind. I wanna bring our next guest and I, this, man's name is extremely [00:17:00] fucking French, so I may need some assistance.

Marion Ranchet: Maybe I can do it.

Evan Shapiro: I'm gonna get, do you wanna try it? Yes, please

Marion Ranchet: Try it. I'm French.

Evan Shapiro: Go for. Okay. Can you bring up Yeah. The the one of the founders and CEO of Filmhub

Marion Ranchet: Alan. I have to read it. d'Escragnolle

Alan d'Escragnolle: Good. You got it right.

Evan Shapiro: Thank you very much.

Alan d'Escragnolle: We needed a native French speaker here. That was very helpful.

I can't even do it.

Marion Ranchet: Even I messed it up.

Evan Shapiro: It sounds like the snails, so Matthew attacks the discovery end of the ecosystem. From one end of it, the operating system end of it. You come to the discovery end of content from the publisher, from the creator, from the rights holder end of the ecosystem.

Filmhub is, specializes in basically connecting specialized content via various different portals. Some paid, some free, some ad-supported, some not with audiences and creating economics of scale around certain content. Did I capture that correctly?

Alan d'Escragnolle: Do you wanna join my [00:18:00] marketing team?

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. So you can leave now.

But in your own words, you're, this is one of the most, I spent a very drunken night at a sushi bar with this man. And I curated and you paid, so thank you.

But why this company? Why Filmhub? Where do you think it fills in the white space? What does it do in the, if everything is the creator economy now, as I said earlier today, what services is it providing to whom and why?

Alan d'Escragnolle: Yeah. So if we look at the world of content. There are 10 million pieces of content on IMDB alone, and that's a gross undercounting of what's available to actually license in the industry. And let's look at, we talked a little bit about YouTube earlier, winning the space. Why are they winning the space? Massive amounts of volume and personalization.

And so if you're gonna build a streaming service in today's modern era, that is going to win and is going to compete, you have to be ingesting 10 million titles. And there's no distributor in the world that is trying [00:19:00] to bring all those together and make it possible for streaming channels, broadcasters, whoever, to license those.

And we saw that opportunity and we're on a race to bringing the 10 million titles available in the world to license.

Evan Shapiro: And so there, there have been actually a couple other folks on here who maximize the reach of individual pieces of IP to the end user. What, we talked about this and the m the machine that you've built there is very unique. Why?

It's bond villain. Explain what it does, how it was built, why it exists, what, yeah what is it set loose in the world to do?

Alan d'Escragnolle: So I think it, you gotta understand where we come from. I come from a technology background. My co-founder Klaus, is a world non composer behind Pirates of the Caribbean, Gladiator, Thin Red Line.

And in the sales and distribution world, there have always been sales and distribution companies. They're amazing at selling, amazing at getting content in places, but they've never had the technology to help them scale. And so we paired up ultimately to bring the two together to build the world's largest distributor.[00:20:00]

And within that, what you have to do is you have to build a fully vertically integrated distributor, asset ingestion, royalties, contracting, asset management, delivery, analytics, insights. Everything that major studios somewhat have and have cobbled together tools and solutions we built in one platform that is used solely by our team.

We don't license it out. It's proprietary to us and allows us to scale faster than any other distributor. Give you an idea. Most distributors probably work with a couple hundred rights holders max. We have over 6,300 rights holders. Everything from digital first creators through major studios.

Evan Shapiro: And it's, you're monetizing I, I talked about this earlier. So if one of the key watch three watchwords of the current user-centric era are fragmentation, right? And it's all the creator economy now. And so you work with both ends of the spectrum.

And we can talk about a couple of different case studies there, but you also, I said at the same time, the rules [00:21:00] of the creator economy have greatly, greatly changed. It's not just getting clicks and selling ads and hoping the best works out or even doing brand deals and videos anymore. It's now much more a complicated, nuanced mix of models, and that's where your machine works.

The end points for the distribution are incredibly multifaceted and changing all the time. But for example, talk about the spectrum. You're one of the biggest suppliers to Amazon, am I getting that correct?

Alan d'Escragnolle: Biggest suppliers to Amazon preferred providers to Apple. Preferred providers to

Evan Shapiro: Say that again? You're the one, you're one of the biggest suppliers to Amazon.

Alan d'Escragnolle: Yeah. Correct.

Evan Shapiro: Explain that.

Alan d'Escragnolle: Ultimately you have Amazon, they recently shut down their Prime Video direct upload portal, right? They need content providers to get content into them. And, we've acquired rights from 6,300 rights holders.

We have thousands of titles live with Amazon. And we make it happen super simple, fast, quick, all in one click.

Evan Shapiro: And you just do this

Alan d'Escragnolle: Repeatedly across every provider.

Evan Shapiro: This is a machine that, and then another provider who you might

Alan d'Escragnolle: Take Roku channel, right? [00:22:00] Another part of earn that we work with.

Also same thing. They need to ingest large volumes of content, right? That's one of the very important Reel Short and vertical video, right?

Evan Shapiro: Stop, go right there for a second. So Reel have, who here has heard of Reel Short. Raise your hand high. The rest of you go fucking learn about Reel Short, it's a hot thing right now.

So explain what Reel Short is really quickly.

Alan d'Escragnolle: Yeah, so Reel Short is vertical video serialized in short, instant content. So think take a full length feature film and sell it as 80 episodes and they are geniuses in terms of monetization and eking people out to pay more and more money. And so when you look at our friends running advertising services, no offense, but the amount you make per view is probably 10, 20 cents.

Maybe they're getting up to $20.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, so vertical drama, serialized dramas of a couple minutes length, but really a movie verticalized and cut into shorts. I have gotten five [00:23:00] calls by, from reporters wanting quotes on that alone in the last two weeks. So if you wanna buy a futures thing, go look into that.

I also argue it will spill into things like serialized nonfiction reality as well 'cause they're basically the same thing. They're soap operas at the end of the day. Yeah. Anyway, the big thing is cliffhangers in them.

Alan d'Escragnolle: Cliffhangers, it, they have to be cut. They have to be shot in a certain way.

But at the same time, this is a new platform and it's honestly, I hate to say it, but it's sad that, only half of this room has heard of them. They're one of the largest distributors of content in the world.

Evan Shapiro: They're now, to be fair, they're in China and so they have a huge install base who's captive? So the you have, they have a huge audience there, and that's a mobile first. And the competition isn't that big either as well, but they're also I think, the fastest growing app in the United States right now as well. Is that true?

Alan d'Escragnolle: If you log into your app store and look at top entertainment apps, they're probably at least one or two right now.

Evan Shapiro: Correct. So you're, so if you're own one [00:24:00] film or you own a thousand films, right? What you would tell someone, if you were giving advice right now and they didn't wanna work with you and they said they want to go out on your own and they're your friend, what you would say to them is, you would have to learn how to, you need to learn how to manage all of these various platforms.

Correct, correct. And know how to market on all these platforms too. Correct? Correct. And when they say that sounds hard, you're gonna say. It's really hard. It's really fucking hard, right? Yeah. And so that is it, that is part of it. It isn't just go up on YouTube.

I talked a lot about YouTube. You just complained out loud on a podcast about me talking too much about YouTube. I hear you, mom. But that's a therapy session for another day.

But the key element of it's not just as easy as that. If you want to produce your own films or you wanna monetize your own library, it's this complicated, nuanced, multi levered flywheel that is operationalized and AB testing all the time.

Alan d'Escragnolle: Yeah, and also don't create it like it's not just end points, right? It's still relationships, you still have to sell into these folks, right? That's true. You still have true to maintain the [00:25:00] relationships. My team's here at Stream TV talking to every single buyer that's here and you still have to build the relationships.

But the key is if you wanted to go do a deal for your film across 30 different services, good luck. You're gonna be here for years.

Evan Shapiro: And the, you're absolutely, where the relationships matter. You can't get the distribution without it, but because you reach such scale, that's why you are plugged in at all these various endpoints, right?

You do it thousands of times and no single IP holder can hope to reach that scale and they can, but do they wanna build that infrastructure to the point where they're always improving every day? The technology and the machine learning that they're working with.

Alan d'Escragnolle: When I say that, like our team does scale, we've sold 320,000 licenses to films and delivered and fulfilled those assets in the last couple years.

Evan Shapiro: In the last couple, 320,000. So talk about one of them. Bounce Patrol. This is a creator-bound creator-led project. Yeah. It's, what is it?

Alan d'Escragnolle: It is so for these of you that have [00:26:00] kids, you may have been subjected kids animated YouTube channel, 30 million subscribers, and they were jailed to YouTube and their content was solely on YouTube.

It was on their own channel, and they realized, hey, we need to diversify. We need to get out to all these other endpoints. We need to get everywhere. We need to be discoverable on XYZ AVOD service. We need to be in libraries. We need DVDs purchasable. That's one of the things that we focus on for them.

And so we took their content that was in one location, even other areas of YouTube that they can't access, right? So many of you may not understand, but YouTube is actually for professional film and TV is broken up into two sections. UGC upload as well as free with ads transactional section. As well.

And so you can't get to those sections which actually where content monetizes even more without a distributor relationship. And there's very few select few distributors that have the, that relationship. We are one of them because of the volume that we have. And even getting them there, even though they have a 30 [00:27:00] million subscriber channel on YouTube, YouTube wouldn't do a deal with them.

And that's one of the areas where we've helped them get now in 114 different territories across 30 different exhibitors. And generated them over six figures of revenue.

Evan Shapiro: How many hours of content do they have?

Alan d'Escragnolle: With us? Probably about 20 hours.

Evan Shapiro: That's it? Yeah. Wow. And you're doing all those things.

Did you have a question that you wanted to determine?

Marion Ranchet: So how does that actually work? Did you, how do the platform choose the content? Because it's I'm gonna be the devil's advocate for a second, but it's great to have the platforms on one side and the content on the other, but how do you make sure if you have so much content, that you are super serving everyone, right? Are the platforms not playing picky so to say and therefore there's a portion of your catalog that doesn't get picked. How does that work?

Alan d'Escragnolle: We all know we have curators at each of the platforms that are very excellent at their jobs, at curating and are very good about picking exactly what their users wanna watch, even though they don't know me and know that I like weird Brazilian documentaries.

[00:28:00] And guess what? That means that they're missing out on opportunities there. And so yes, they're playing picky. Yes, we do have an AI data engine that creates and figures out which titles might be right paired for them. We have a team though, that takes that data and then pitches it to them. And it is a mixture of human in the loop with AI to help make sure we curate what's needed for each and every person.

And yes, there is stuff of course that sits at the bottom. There is stuff though that sits at the top. We're excellent at finding out stuff that was sitting at the bottom that happened to do, happened to make successful.

Marion Ranchet: Do you also work, 'cause we talked about content discovery and it's one thing to be live on the platform, it's another to be discovered.

Are you also helping on the marketing piece, meaning, providing assets and all of that promo right?

Evan Shapiro: Great question.

Alan d'Escragnolle: Yeah, so we're building a ton of tools right now that help with metadata creation, asset creation, AB testing of artwork as well is a [00:29:00] big thing that we're launching, that we're launching soon.

And all of those things are absolutely necessary, right? We're building paid media tools for our filmmakers. We offer standard marketing services that a distributor does. You have to be a full service place in order to actually do this well. And there's certain parts of it that scale. And there's certain parts of the business that don't scale, and you have to understand what those parts are.

And we live in industry of power laws. We all know that, right? The key is finding out what is the top 10%. It's a random few 10% right now based upon us selecting what people wanna watch. But guess what? We are constantly surprised when you actually get put a machine and let things go out in the world. No one's gonna predict things that are successful.

I'll give you a prime example. We were the distributor behind Hundreds of Beavers this past year. One of the darlings of the indie film world, and I'll tell you, I told the filmmaker, no. It's just like he wanted our marketing support. He wanted us to get, I was like, listen I'll put it out. We'll get it out there, but it's on you. K

urt proved us [00:30:00] wrong. He's like dude, this is gonna be big. That is now a title that is one of the, hit the number three on Letterbox this past year. It's on a theatrical road tour.

It's like going back into theaters again. And there are literally, if you search Hundreds of Beavers online, you'll be amazed at what it is wacky zany. I would've never picked it for a winner, but guess what? That's 'cause I'm me. And it's funny because we'll pitch this to buyers and they say Hey, there's something here.

We didn't believe it. They're like, oh yeah, we don't believe it either still. And I'm like, guys, the data shows it. And so it's, it's a constant game.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. And that gets to we had a debate here earlier about who's responsible for discovery and making the ease of use and less friction.

Is it the publisher, the rights holder, or the platform? And we have one of each of you. Ultimately, Alan, you represent the publisher, you represent the creator, you represent the IP, the rights holder, and you are actively engaged in getting the content discovered.

Matthew, you are the platform in this case. And you have said to me in the past that there are economic or business decisions that [00:31:00] kind of bias platforms, and you're dedicated to avoiding that. I would ask each of you, and I'll start with you, Matthew, what do you think, where do you think the responsibility lands with the publisher?

It does sound like, and regardless, even if there's an agnostic platform or a complicated platform, the rights holder has to be the marshal of their own engine. But, the platforms hold so much power. They decide who, you know as the emperor says, who lives and who dies. So where do you think it lies?

Matthew Henick: I think it has to lie with the platform. The operating systems, no matter which generation of computing we're talking about, always had this power, whether they wanted it or not. Usually it's been used not for great use sometimes. But we intend for it to be different. And so to your point, that's why objectivity is so important to us, right?

Because we know that when somebody turns on a television and our software comes up, we want everyone to have a fair shot for that. We're not we're not gonna have our own content service, anything like that. And so that's how we weigh our responsibility with objectivity. I think that means that the [00:32:00] platforms need to be content first, not necessarily app first all the time.

Because for a user having to surf from app to app is not an enjoyable experience.

Evan Shapiro: Shitty.

Matthew Henick: You give up and, Okay. And so I think I don't blame publishers in the current environment for not allowing the platforms to really do that and giving them access to their libraries in a certain way or to the metadata.

But we're seeing publishers for us willing to do that, and I think that's gonna lead to better honestly, acquisition and churn reduction for the publishers that are subscription. Better outcomes for the advertiser-supported ones as well.

Evan Shapiro: Marion, I'm in. I'm interested, where do you I don't know if you saw the debate, but you've heard Matthew's a very thoughtful answer there.

Where do you think?

Marion Ranchet: So I'm in between content and app. I feel there's space for both, right? What we've seen these last few years, Roku has leaned heavily app-first, when I was working with them, folks were saying, Marion, the UI is so awful. Like, why? But it was taking people to [00:33:00] content as fast as possible.

In the meantime, you had other platforms, I won't be naming who were making sure you were spending half an hour looking for content. So I think there's value in doing both content and app because sometimes, I don't wanna go through 20 pages of drama, whatever. I wanna go to Netflix and I wanna check out what's on Netflix.

So I think there's a lot of value in that. I will say, I think it will be hard for you guys, and it is hard for a lot of companies to take people as quickly as possible because they want you, as a viewer, to spend a bit of time. This is eyeballs, this is time that they're monetizing. So I don't know what you guys are planning to do, but what I've noticed is they like that I dwell on the own page because that placement, sometimes it's editorial, very often it's paid for.

And so I agree with you when you say that they have something in it that doesn't want, they don't want to fix that content discovery problem.

Matthew Henick: Yeah, no I agree. I just, I think there's, [00:34:00] whether we like it or not, there's just an order to it, right? Just based technically. And so what we're trying to figure out is not just the content first stuff, but how can we give publishers control over a certain element of our home screen too, right?

Because they ultimately want people in their app they want, 'cause that usually correlates with churn reduction and that type of stuff. And so we'll find that balance as well. And each person may want to do it differently, but I think ultimately, especially for the broader ecosystem, the more that we can bring everything together in one unified home screen, the more everything has a chance.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. And I think that's right. But what's interesting is you say the platform should have, it's their responsibility to a certain extent, but then you want to give the publisher control over certain parts of the area. And I think it's, to your point it's a marriage of the two without question.

Because if they don't bring the content. Alan, I'm gonna ask you the same question. Who do you think bears the responsibility? I think I know your answer for it.

Alan d'Escragnolle: Ultimately it's the platform, right? It really is the platform that really, from a curation,

Evan Shapiro: Not the publisher, not the IP? Y

Marion Ranchet: You're surprised, you thought he would say content.

Matthew Henick: I'm building true believers.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. Because that's your business sides.

Alan d'Escragnolle: Yeah. But at the same time, the biggest [00:35:00] services will be the ones that aggregate everything and curate and personalize the best with their services.

Marion Ranchet: I second that. I think that's where Tubi is amazing. They have the biggest library and yet people are spending insane amount of time with them watching content. I think they've figured it out.

Evan Shapiro: It's very tailored to a very specific audience. Yeah.

Alan d'Escragnolle: I think, I, there are many services that are, that got their, that are semi trying to do that opportunity. Really the only one that is actually pursuing that strategy in today's world is still YouTube. We need to, and this is where you realize platforms complain about churn every day. It's self-inflicted. It's, if you are a platform and you don't have Bounce Patrol or you don't have Hundreds of Beavers and that thing has generated millions of dollars.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. You're fucked. Absolutely.

Alan d'Escragnolle: You're screwed. And so it's like completely self inflicted.

Evan Shapiro: But on the other side of that, for the pub, from the publisher's standpoint, because of that fragmentation, because of the control of the platforms and YouTube, yes. The top 20% of [00:36:00] YouTube channels drives 98% of viewing.

Alan d'Escragnolle: That's the entire industry though. It's not just YouTube. That's the entirety of the industry operates in that power law.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, that's right. But that's a million channels and so that's fragmentation on fragmentation on fragmentation. In that case, if you don't know your audience, if you're not finding, if you're not seeking out the audience, the platform's not necessarily gonna help you find your audience.

Alan d'Escragnolle: A hundred percent.

Evan Shapiro: If you're NBC Universal or Disco Bros, or the Mouse House. Yes, because you've got the greatest IP in the history of the world. And wherever you go, audiences will follow. But if you have a film made for $65,000, which is one of the things you specialize in, finding audiences for those types of films, it's up to you as a creator or as a IP holder.

Or if you have a library of a thousand hours and that's all, or 20 hours and that's all you have, it's up to you.

Alan d'Escragnolle: So I think we're talking about separate things in some ways, right? I fully agree with you, right? Like Hundreds of Beavers example is that example where like finding his audience is up to them. That's where like finding your audience is up to them.

The platform's job is to continue finding more people like [00:37:00] that audience.

Evan Shapiro: New audiences.

Alan d'Escragnolle: Yes, new audiences. It's finding the lookalikes, it's finding the next group of people that are gonna like that. It's like realizing oh, if I like UFO documentaries, I might like Bigfoot documentaries.

Who knows, right? That's where I think it comes into. It's like up to you to figure out and identify who your initial audience is and then utilize the platforms

Evan Shapiro: And the real answer at the end of the day, I think that we lead to, and the reason I do these silly debates in the first place is it's both of them responsibilities, right?

Marion Ranchet: It's partnership, right.

Evan Shapiro: It has to be between the content because the platforms will ultimately use the content to sell the platforms themselves. This was a great conversation. We're gonna continue it at the bar right after this.

But first I wanna thank you Marion for joining, being on stage at the First Media Universe Summit.

Let's have a hand for my co-host, Marion Ranchet. Thank you Matthew Henick, who runs Ventura at Trade Desk. Thank you. Best of luck on that.

Thank you, Alan d'Escragnolle, that's as good as you're gonna get it. You wanted to say it again? [00:38:00] No, I thank you very much.

Marion Ranchet: Alan d'Escragnolle. And is it okay?

Evan Shapiro: So thank you Alan again from Filmhub for being here.

Thank you very much audience for being here. This has been the Media Odyssey Podcast at Media Universe Summit at Stream tv.