The Media Odyssey

Marion Ranchet: [00:00:00] But we spoke about Tube, to me, to me Tubi. Ooh, that's a hard one to say.

Evan Shapiro: Me to be, to me, Tubi.

Marion Ranchet: Tubi, to me is

Evan Shapiro: Or not Tubi.

Welcome back to the Media Odyssey podcast. That is Marion Ranchet.

Marion Ranchet: And this is Evan Shapiro.

Evan Shapiro: And this week we are discussing something that's, I'm very nerdy about, the user interface, the user experience of the entertainment ecosystem when consumers turn on their connected television or any other device.

Isn't that right? We, you are accommodating me. I wanted to nerd out about this topic. Thank you very much, Marion.

Marion Ranchet: You did the same for me on bundles, so I owed you one right.

Evan Shapiro: There you go. And we have a special guest to talk about the user interface of search in entertainment and [00:01:00] specifically streaming media here on the media Odyssey this week.

But let's get into the topic. So I did a panel at South By, called the product is the message Now.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah.

Evan Shapiro: And it identifies a problem, which is ostensibly the interface is just not very usable for the consumer. And I have data around that. But ostensibly this is, I, this to me personifies the problem.

More than half of consumers who stream, say the user interface determines if they use a service or not. The average consumer is now spending 110 hours a year on search, which isn't that much when you think about it, but it is a lot of time. And then, to me this is the byproduct of it. So this is the, this is a recent release by Antenna.

And I've been waiting for 2024 churn numbers, and this is what they were. 174 million added, 148 million lost. You can see where the retention is over the last three years. It's not headed in the right direction. And then this is relatively new data as well. When you add up the various entertainment parts of the entertainment [00:02:00] ecosystem, the average consumer cut back 6% on their average hours per day, or 37 minutes a day.

This is the second year in a row from, so from 22 to 23. It was a 4% drop, about a half an hour a day. And from 23 to 24, very much post covid, 37 minutes a day. So that's, that is to me, the story that is the problematic interface consumers have when they come to the product, which is entertainment.

Let's be honest, when you go on a screen, whether it's your phone or your TV, you're going to a product which is media and entertainment. The consumer understands there are different services, but we just talked to Bango about how much the consumer wants convenience in bundling, and so the interface that they face when they have to skip between all these services is very frustrating and friction filled.

And to me, that's the thing we have to solve. I throw it to you, [00:03:00] Marion. How would you fix it? How would you approach tackling what is very obviously the data, the audience telling us, screaming at us. This is frustrating us. I can't, I log onto a streaming service, I can't find something to watch.

I log onto another streaming service. I can't find something to watch. I log onto a third service. I can't find something to watch. I get stoned and I just watch Friends. That is the user case now, how do we fix that?

Marion Ranchet: So there's two things, right? Because you had the service level, but there's the platform as well, right?

So there, there's that initial decision that you are gonna switch your TV on, and you'll be presented with a UI that's gonna be this master, aggregator. Number one, do you know where to go? That's where, so which app are you going to? And actually Samsung every year they release data. On, they have around 41 million active devices in EU five markets. EU five, UK, Germany.

Evan Shapiro: So these are these are connected [00:04:00] televisions? Yeah. Active in the EU market. Okay.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, so that's UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, and France. And what they're saying is that 85% of people split their time across different apps. That's great. 15% always go to the same app and I have a bit of an idea on who that, which app that is.

And then 95% of time spent is for the same top 10 apps, so that's frightening because that means that there's that discoverability challenge the minute you switch your TV on. And people were creature of habit, so who do we go first? They have data as well around the number of apps that we play with, and it's four or five.

Evan Shapiro: So you said that they're the same 10 apps take up 90% of the usage, but then for the average consumer, it's four or five apps that they use most often. Correct?

Which by the way let's remember when you go back to [00:05:00] cable, pay tv, whatever, the traditional television ecosystem you came from, infinite number of channels available, but it came down to four or five max, six or seven channels that you went to. Now it's the same thing, except now it's apps versus channels.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, absolutely. And in one environment you're just flicking through and then you are being, you are watching what's being served to you, so to say, curated programs. Whereas that app environment, depending on the app store, on the whole coup, you have 15K apps in the US. 10k maybe in other markets, similar numbers across most of these guys. And yet only a very small portion of that is actually being opened.

And then comes the second portion of the content discovery challenge that you were mentioning. What will I watch next? And this is why I think there's a major comeback of a linear and lean back experience. You're [00:06:00] sick of choosing.

So you either go to the same on demand program.

Evan Shapiro: We should debate that because I don't think there is as much of a lean back. I, yes, there is more lean back in digital linear than there has been previously because FAST is a relatively new product to the ecosystem. But generally speaking, if you look at the direction of linear versus on demand viewing, the trend is towards and increasingly towards on demand over linear, no?

Marion Ranchet: Well, the thing is that

Evan Shapiro: You talked about a renaissance, and many people talk about a renaissance and I was just on a panel. Yeah. Where actually I think it was Rob Caruso from Google said, no, there's, there is actually more, even more, lean back now. But I don't think that's actually the case.

I think more people, especially younger consumers, are leaning into on demand and Tubi was on stage with us at MIPCOM saying 95% of their usage is on demand versus linear.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah. 90 or, yeah, but we spoke about Tubi, to me, Tube [00:07:00] to me Tubi. Ooh. That's a hard one to say.

Evan Shapiro: To me, Tubi, to me, to be. Or not Tubi.

Marion Ranchet: To me, Tubi is a very on demand first platform.

They've been around the block for 10 years pushing on demand. They have, I think, close to, is it a hundred K or 200k titles. So yes, it's,

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, they have one of the largest titles out there. Yeah. But they,

Marion Ranchet: It's one of the largest libraries.

Evan Shapiro: They started as an ad tech product and then they turned into an on demand interface, white label, and then they turned into a product.

But yes, they're on demand first, but so is the largest channel on in the US and the largest channel in many territories, which is YouTube is primarily. Yes, there is YouTube TV here in the us but that is primarily both as a premium product and as an ad supported product, primarily an on-demand product, not a linear product,

Marion Ranchet: I think, I think the lines are blurring, honestly, and I'm coming at a point where, I'm thinking about time spent and whether that's [00:08:00] on demand or linear. I think consumers wanna have that option between the two, and I think they fix different problems, so to say.

So you've spoken about how difficult it is to know what to watch next. I would say that depending on the time of the day and maybe even the time of the week actually, maybe during the week you wanna, you want a quick decision, you would something, easy for you versus the weekend where you know you are gonna spend time watching. You mentioned Flow a couple of weeks ago. You are gonna watch something that's a little bit more demanding, right? And then you have the option, right?

So I don't think it really matters to bring one against the other. And if you look at what European broadcasters are doing, yes, they're seeing their traditional linear viewership, decreasing.

So that's why they're doing previews, right? So you can actually watch on demand something that's gonna be in the next few days available live. That's why they do replay, right? So the minute the live has started, you can [00:09:00] actually watch that on demand, or you can even watch that whenever you want. I don't think it really matters.

I think it serves different purposes, different type of content.

Evan Shapiro: So let's go, let's move the format. I agree with you, although I do think that the use case is gonna be increasingly on demand except for live products, I think it's gonna be increasingly on demand over linear. But let's table that for a second and let's look for data.

By the way, anybody out there who has specific comparative data on this, we should and we do in Barb we'll look in it and we'll come back to it. Secondarily let's talk about the interface problem. So the consumer is telling us they're cutting back and they're not just going out and touching grass and putting down glass.

They're actually cutting back on services. People are churning in and out of services very quickly. We showed the data there primarily. They'll binge something and then leave and they're not discovering new stuff. We talk about Flow. The use case for me there is, I went on looking for that film and I found myself in Apple and I bought the film.

Turns out I could have watched it on a platform that I [00:10:00] paid for I think Netflix or HBO Max. One of the two. Yeah. Already had it. So why, what, and then you talk about the super apping of the television experience.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah.

Evan Shapiro: As a way or as a, as a use case for consumers. Increasingly, I cut down to so many apps and many of them are super apps.

How do we solve this? Discuss the discoverability problem. How does my television tell me that these are the shows that you have that you might wanna watch across all the services that you pay for or you typically use? Where's the breakdown there? Because it does feel that there's an information sharing breakdown amongst all the people who provide the interface that is entertainment to the consumers.

What would be your approach?

Marion Ranchet: So, you know I was at Roku, right?

Evan Shapiro: Yes, I do. And and that would be a super app on television. Roku is a super app.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, that's a super app. And when I look at Roku and to some extent the Roku channel and which is their app within their super app, so to say what, where I see they put [00:11:00] focus and what I witnessed, where they were putting focus to make sure that again, you were, as quickly as possible to content and what they're doing, anyone could do it within a Netflix, within a Max, et cetera.

Number one, I would say search. If you were on your TV looking for Flow, you should be able to type it and then, find it across the number of devices that you have. That's what you know a TV time does. Just watch. Essentially you are putting all of your services together, you're typing for a title. I do that every week now. I actually use Apple to do that. And then it says where that piece of content is. I think they, these guys need to work on search big time. And it needs to be not just having to type, Ugh. With the remotes.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, that's a, that's actually a pain in the ass. A lot of them do voice now.

Marion Ranchet: This is a pain. Yes, I agree.

Evan Shapiro: The typing, just the search interface itself is pretty clunky and across all a lot of this universe.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, I think we, they should, honestly, I'm sure I have voice command. I've never [00:12:00] used it, so they should push consumers to use that.

Evan Shapiro: Okay Boomer.

Marion Ranchet: Whenever I'm being offered a demo. They're doing the voice use case and then I realized that I've never thought of doing it right. So

Evan Shapiro: It is very and it's getting better. It is sometimes very inaccurate, but it is the intelligence is getting better for the voice. I will give it a try.

Marion Ranchet: You know what happened last week at Barcelona, you had another former employer of mine, Orange, they showcase the use of, I don't know in the background if it was ChatGPT.

Evan Shapiro: That was Mobile World Congress?

Marion Ranchet: Yeah in Barcelona. So very much focused on connectivity, but there's, a video portion of it and all the big telcos that's their big big event and they showcased and I'll put a link in the show note because I saw a video of the demo and I don't know if it was just GPT or maybe something they've built internally.

You actually were, speaking to the setup box or the TV interface and they were helping you make that decision. And I've actually seen my husband use [00:13:00] ChatGPT some more to say, what should I have tonight? I have this and this in my fridge. I should be making,

Evan Shapiro: Really, you see your husband do that? That's fascinating. So I do think if there is a, if there is a tremendous use case for AI in media, this is it.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah.

Evan Shapiro: Both ends of the spectrum, which is on the provider end integrating machine learning and artificial intelligence to use the data in real time. So behavioral usage data from the consumer to reschedule and resurface content based on general usage.

I don't believe any of the platforms are at that process yet. I did talk to somebody who provides a tremendous amount of the backend of streaming, and that is one of the things that they're working on. They have a software and a interface that enables using data that the company has for human steering of these processes of scheduling and surfacing content.

But the, I think the more we can [00:14:00] accelerate the integration of real-time data into those things, the better the interface will be. On the flip end, the consumer's ability to use bots and other to search for the content for them will probably accelerate the time to view.

But, one of, I think, the problems is the super apps have, so again, Rob Caruso on on this panel at South by Southwest said one of the problems of the interface, the search for the consumer is that business goals make companies behave irrationally or ask the consumer to do things that are not necessarily in the consumer's best interest, but are actually in the best interest, business interests of the platform itself.

That is where we get into this, which is the advertising. So we talk about those opening screens. And that being valuable, the time to search is an opportunity to generate revenue for these platforms. And so this is [00:15:00] another element of it. How do you make the search both good for the consumer and good for the platform and good for the publishers and good for the advertisers all at once because we need all of them to be happy here.

Marion Ranchet: There's that friction for sure. And I don't know exactly, so I'm assuming he was speaking about himself or his company, right?. Because a big example of

Evan Shapiro: He was talking about the ecosystem writ large actually.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Yeah. But if you look at the connected TV on screen, right? The fact that when you wanna go from one app to the other, you are always coming back to the home screen to the point you were making because they want to monetize that minute of attention where you'll be searching for the next app.

And they don't allow what is called deep linking. So you look at, any Google or Roku, any of these guys, they don't wanna have the consumer have a frictionless experience exactly for that. They want people to spend time on the home screen. So Absolutely. I agree. They only, the only challenge is

Evan Shapiro: [00:16:00] That's the economics. And increasingly. I had a conversation with a, with an MVPD recently, a cable provider, a pay TV provider who I again said to them, same thing. If you look at what the OEMs are doing, you have to monetize. You have to get time on that home screen.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah.

Evan Shapiro: And you have to monetize that home screen, if you're going to truly grow this business over the next 10 years. That's retail media. There's a shit ton of money that's gonna come to television from retail media. That opening screen is gonna be the most valuable advertising space.

Marion Ranchet: It's a real estate.

Evan Shapiro: I think you and I agree on this in media.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah. No, absolutely. So that's that tension. And, but I would say if you look at a Netflix, for example, I think when the numbers from the latest data dump shows that the number of minutes spent per subscriber is going down. Of course, they're growing the overall number of subscribers, et cetera. They've also tackled password hiking. So perhaps this has an impact as well, [00:17:00] but you don't want to lower the time spent.

So I understand why you want people to spend time looking at this and being pushed X, Y, Z because you wanna make money except it's a real, if you are a turning people away and they wanna spend less time with you because it's a hassle to find something to watch and have a nice experience, you're missing the point.

So that's just like the discussion we had a few weeks ago with Tony from LG Ad Solution that find balance at us finding, right? So he knows that onscreen is a very important piece of real estate, but he's very careful as to what's be, what's being shown there.

So it could be putting advertising for airlines, e-commerce, you name it, and only that. But he knows that it's gonna be to the detriment of the experience, the viewing experience, and therefore the time spent. So he needs to find that balance between selling that real estate to content providers and selling it to, pure advertisers.

Evan, you wanna introduce our guest for today?

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. We're talking about how to fix the user interface of entertainment, and we've [00:18:00] got Calle Sjönell from Swipefinder, who founded a company that helps consumers search more easily for the stuff they wanna watch while helping platforms monetize the search time consumers are spending.

We're fortunate to have a guest on the Media Odyssey podcast. This week, Calle Sjönell the founder of a really cool company called Swipefinder. Welcome to the pod.

Calle Sjönell: Thank you. Good to be here.

Evan Shapiro: Question for you what the fuck is Swipefinder and what was the impetus behind creating it?

Calle Sjönell: Yeah, so my advertising background, I always wanted to make kind of ads being useful and kind of something that people could actually find enjoying not just irritating and in the way of the actual content.

And we saw this really important problem that happens in most people's lives. Trying to find something to watch every night it's. We've all been there, right? Yeah. Like you probably have been like, okay God, again, I need to find something. [00:19:00] At research actually says 10 and a half minutes of finding for each show on broadcast channels, it's up to

Evan Shapiro: Ten and a half minutes?

Calle Sjönell: It's up to 20 minutes on streaming services.

Marion Ranchet: Oh, wow.

Calle Sjönell: And 20% also abandon and do something else because there window or opportunity to watch is just decreasing. And they're like, I'm not gonna do this. They do something else. So it was that problem that we really wanted to solve.

Yeah. So when we looked at that problem and we were like trying to see if we can solve it, we basically identified four kind of like emotions or choices when you're trying to make up, if you wanna watch something. So one is no, I don't wanna watch that. The other one is, yes, I wanna watch it.

A lot of the times is maybe, we don't really, should I watch it? Maybe. And then I've seen this already. So those were the four kind of choices that we settled on on, on our interface and to really make it a [00:20:00] very kind of enjoyable full screen vertical video. That you make those choices.

So let me show you the experience.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah let's see how it works. 'cause you've identified the problem. I love the idea that you've segmented the mindsets of discovery. That's actually pretty cool. I've never heard that before, but yeah. Let's show us how you've solved this problem. How does Wwipefinder actually work?

Calle Sjönell: Yeah, so here it's how it's working. Here's the experience. You have the yes no, maybe seen kind of buttons on the right.

Evan Shapiro: Oh, cool.

Calle Sjönell: So then you'd be like, do I wanna watch this? And you go no, I swipe to the left.

Evan Shapiro: It's like Tinder.

Calle Sjönell: It's like Tinder. See if I wanna watch this one. Disclaimer. Ooh, I wanna watch that. I swipe left.

Evan Shapiro: It's a good show. You should watch it.

Calle Sjönell: I can click it and then I go directly to straight to wanna watch it in like a play link in this case over to to Apple.

Evan Shapiro: So how does that, so that's pulling footage from the actual show itself?

Calle Sjönell: Yeah, so we have we're working, we [00:21:00] have a huge trailer library where we have all of these things and we are working with the, with individual broadcasting companies to get these vertical videos that they usually have on social media or has done as ads.

And that's the interesting thing here. So if I continue here oh this is a maybe for me, I swipe up

Then, oh I've seen this. I swiped down. Here's an ad. I can save it, actually. And if it's an offer I want to go back to, or it'll be like, no, I don't wanna see this. I can also use the buttons if I want to.

Here is, or everything I swiped gets saved, like the yes no maybes in different lists. And here in the filter button, I can, choose or exclude. The different genres. I want to watch

Evan Shapiro: Now, but this is a bit, this is a white label product for streamers to utilize, to help navigate their own platforms, correct?

Calle Sjönell: Yes. This is [00:22:00] also, we can build this into an aggregator, like a telco or a TV guide.

Evan Shapiro: Huh.

Calle Sjönell: And then here comes the revenue like trick. All of these, trailers here could actually be advertising.

Evan Shapiro: Oh so let's say a Telco or Verizon or a an O2 wants to utilize this as a way to navigate all the platforms that are available on their system. They can aggregate all of the clips from all the various services and use this as an advertising tool as well.

Calle Sjönell: Yeah, because right now, all the the streaming companies and channels, they want to promote themselves, right? They have done these vertical trailers that they put across social media and other places, and on their own social media accounts.

So this is actually a perfect place to put their ads exactly when people are going to choose what they want to watch. And we call this kind of this area find-vertising. So you're actually like putting, find-vertising [00:23:00] on the front door and you're helping the users, finding your content at the same time.

So the ads become really useful.

Marion Ranchet: Nice. So just to understand, so you, as a user, you would be doing that during your downtime, right? Or it's, maybe it's 8:00 PM You are about to make a decision instead of having to go through services. You do that with the app that the third party is making available. How would that work?

Calle Sjönell: Yeah. So right now, for example we launched in the UK with a TV guide called TV Time. Yep. This like a film community app. And there on the, when you open it up, we have a window where it is open full screen and then you go into this the show finder experience and you're finding something and then it covers all of it.

But we also, of course, want to work with the broadcasters to build this functionality into their front doors on their apps.

Evan Shapiro: But the key element here, ultimately [00:24:00] with the partners that you're working with, whether it's a broadcaster or an aggregator, a mobile company or a pay TV provider is the idea that consumers are actually, this is how last night I wanted to watch Flow, which was the Academy Award-winning animated film from Latvia, I think, and brilliant film by the way, definitely worth watching.

But I couldn't, I didn't know where to get it, so I went, I didn't go to my television set, I went to my phone. And that I think is becoming an increasing use case, is where do I find this piece of programming? And this, and your app is meant to help and white labeling it help the providers provide a search mechanism where people can curate their own viewing habits on their own, with their own swipes of their own fingers.

Calle Sjönell: Yeah, absolutely. And another interesting thing here. It's also that we are helping with the churn. From what we have learned, and you, our guys are the experts on this. We have heard that the single [00:25:00] most important reason for changing your streaming provider is the perceived view that you've watched everything that they have.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, that's exactly right.

Calle Sjönell: Because you're skim, you're skimming around on the top of the iceberg of the content library. And when we spoke to SVT, the Swedish public broadcaster who we're all gonna be part of the Swedish launch of TV time. It was like, yeah, people are gonna go deep into the libraries because you're swiping left and right and you go straight down, which is for a public broadcaster, that's their what their part of the mission statement.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. The research shows that the long tail is actually the much larger use case for a lot of these platform. But the navigability and the discoverability of what to actually watch is the chief blocker to monetizing or merchandising. The long tail as well as it needs to in order to satisfy the viewers' needs.

Calle Sjönell: Yeah, and we also, calculations on this, it's like it could add up to 10% [00:26:00] extra revenue or total digital revenue for a broadcaster that's actually just sitting there waiting to be explored. But while it's actually helping people, finding things, so it's a true win-win here.

Marion Ranchet: I wanted to ask you about the business model, because honestly we spoke to this at the top. I think everyone has a discovery challenge. So, whether you using, TV time, Real Goal, all of these guys who are actually themselves trying to fix discovery. So this is very meta you're going to.

First platform is trying to fix discovery, maybe they haven't succeeded, you are bringing that extra layer to to fix that. But so yeah, everyone needs to fix that. So I really see use cases across the board. I will say the business model will be important, right? So how easy is it to integrate? And you've said,

Evan Shapiro: Do I have to create my own content for vertical situations in order to make this work?

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, if you've never done that before? [00:27:00] Yeah.

Calle Sjönell: Yeah. It's the famous, it's a one line of code, but it is one line of code that opens up this window inside the like we have with TV time.

It's an app integration which opens up. Now it gets a little bit tiny bit technical. It opens up an iframe, but there's several other ways of solving that. And the content is usually already produced. They've done all of these vertical videos and they put them up on their social media platforms for years and they use them in advertising.

And here, all of those can help advertisers to actually monetize that content that they already made, but now they can monetize it on their own platforms.

Evan Shapiro: And this is, you talked about this as retail media. Yeah. Which I, I'm obsessed with retail media, as Marion will tell you. And it seems to me, so right now this is retail media inside the programming environment, but this seems to have extensions into other types of merchandising opportunities like food and travel and commerce as well.

Calle Sjönell: Yes, [00:28:00] absolutely. The second kind of thing that people told us oh, I love this idea, finding something. I have even way, terrible problem finding something to eat. What am I gonna cook every night? Oh my God. So we actually created the Food Finder. So it, it's the same premise.

There's a fantastic recipe videos made in vertical video across a lot of platforms.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah.

Calle Sjönell: So gathering those together with like big grocery retailers who can again create a retail media space. 'cause there's so many brands who make recipe videos that they put up, right? So here again, the ads becomes really useful and people are swiping these recipes, and maybe even half of them are actually ads for the the grocery recipes that they're selling.

And the individual brands like, Philadelphia or Helmen's, et cetera. And then it's okay, finding somewhere to go for vacation. The Travel Finder. [00:29:00] Finding something to buy e-Comm Finder. So it, we are extending it in lots of different other ways to do the to do it. And it's also just a important to mention, we have a patent pending on our force swipe moves and the recommendation well in it.

Anyone wants to it's oh, that's a good idea. I'm gonna do myself idea. You can't do that. I won't suggest doing that. It's much more fun to collaborate and do it together.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, that's right.

And I think one of the things that people, I think one of the elements of the Internet society is we've given people access to all information and all ideas on the planet Earth, on these devices that they can fit into their pocket. But the result of that is we've created this paralyzing paradox of choice, and that's really what you're looking to cure.

Calle Sjönell: Yeah, because like even if you wanna type in something in the search engine like you, or like an AI, you need to form the prompt. It's actually a mentally taxing thing to start doing that. But just [00:30:00] reacting to a video. Yes, no, maybe, I cooked that or I've seen that. I've been there. Like it's you are reacting to this grid and it's actually makes the whole thing so much more fun.

Looking at links. It's not a fun experience. But seeing these, when you're gonna try the food finder, I guarantee you're gonna be hungry within 10 minutes.

Evan Shapiro: There's a reason why this works for dating, 'cause it is a bit of a gamification and it gives you a much better idea of what you're buying into or who you're buying into in that case.

But in this case, what you're buying into.

Calle Sjönell: Absolutely.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, I love it. Of course, Marian and I don't know that 'cause we've been married so long.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah. We've never used those, so thank you.

Evan Shapiro: I've never used one of those, so now I get the exact Yeah. So I can finally get to swipe right?

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, I can tell the cool kids that I know how to swipe, but for content and food how boring of me, but it was awesome having you. Thank you so much for sharing that. That was our first live demo. Ultimately, we wanna do [00:31:00] more of those, right? Because even if we're very media content focused, we all know that, in the background we need the technology and

Evan Shapiro: And we want people to watch our YouTube channel too.

Marion Ranchet: yeah. And we love technology people trying to solve a problem. So thank you so much your time.

Calle Sjönell: Absolutely. Yeah. So the final thing I just wanna say help your users find things, both the users and your CFOs will absolutely love it.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, that's the number one constituent now in these decisions is typically the CFO.

So here's an opportunity to merchandise the stuff that you already have and create new revenue streams while keeping people on the service longer. I think it's quite brilliant.

Calle Sjönell: Thank you so much.

Evan Shapiro: Awesome.

Marion Ranchet: Thanks Calle. Thanks for coming. And now back to the episode.

Evan Shapiro: I guess the last question I would have for you is, given all of this input and given this competitive nature for this home screen, which are the super apps, do you think that are best positioned to solve the consumer and advertiser problem [00:32:00] of discovery and ease of use and friction-free environment?

Marion Ranchet: So I'm gonna be called bias, but to me, in the CTV space today, it's Roku.

Evan Shapiro: I agree.

Marion Ranchet: What's quite fascinating is I was there and I went to companies in Europe to convince them to onboard the platform when I joined a company five years ago and people were saying, Marion this UI, it's so ugly. But it's really,

Evan Shapiro: Very user friendly. Yeah.

Marion Ranchet: But it's extremely user friendly.

And actually at the time when I was there, they did a bit of an AB tasting, because they've been app-based, from day one, very app first. You were starting to see others doing content first. A mix of both. And this is where we're today. And honestly, they all look the same as is.

I wouldn't know if it's, one brand or another. And they did some testing to see if they should be moving into that content first approach. And the numbers were no. I think they had, we haven't seen data for quite some time, but [00:33:00] Conviva was putting data on engagement and they had the highest number because they were taking you as quickly as possible to content.

And they've made a lot of progresses. Historically, they wanted nothing in the left nav. They've built a lot of different new hubs. The Roku channel, the Live Sports Hub, all of those things, again, to facilitate. They have a huge number of amazing ad formats. They're, I think they're ahead of the game, even in terms of monetizing that a lot of people are using that playbook.

So to me that's, it's them. Maybe if I had worked somewhere else, I would see something different.

Evan Shapiro: I think as far as television platforms go, they set the standard.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah.

Evan Shapiro: Roku does. I think though, when you look at the pure super app environment from an entertainment home experience. I think it's gonna be hard to beat Amazon long term because they make televisions, they have a very good interface for TV or a decent interface for tv.

They have a major programming entity, but they are going to be increasingly where you buy your other channels from. They are [00:34:00] really fast growing with regards to the super bundling that we talked to Anil about on a previous episode. They are really good at selling other people's channels, Paramount+, Max, now Apple TV+.

And then they are one step, one click away from true shopping cart experience in a way that I think is gonna be increasingly important over the next half decade.

Marion Ranchet: They have a lot of assets, but I completely disagree, at least today, to me, I'm gonna say it. Sorry guys, don't hate me for it. This is the worst UI UX I've experienced. It's a mess. I don't get it.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, no, you're not wrong with the other assets there. From an advertising standpoint and from a reach stand, from a global reach standpoint. And then the bundling, the aggregator philosophy that is for sure that they're taking. I think they're gonna wind up.

Marion Ranchet: That is for sure.

Evan Shapiro: Now Roku's very good at aggregating subscriptions as well. They are very good at it. Both have, by the way, lower churn. So for subscriptions sold through their platforms, both Roku and Amazon and the data I've seen have [00:35:00] lower churn than when those platforms sell direct to consumer themselves.

There are exceptions. Netflix obviously being the exception and the Disney bundle being exception. But for other players, the comparison is there.

This has been a really great conversation. I think we've solved, we haven't solved anything or we have solved everything.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, we haven't solved it, but honestly, again, it starts with the metadata. You need to have amazing search. It needs to be universal. I think you need to educate people in using alternative ways. Is that this, is that a better remote, a simple remote? Is it voice? Is it having chat GPT in there? I don't know. There's a lot of things, but I think this should be their number one priority.

Evan Shapiro: I think the most important thing is that the data is usually staring you in the face. I think there is a tremendous amount of information in the first three seconds that a consumer touches your product. Is it buffering too long?

Marion Ranchet: No.

Evan Shapiro: And then in the minutes afterwards, how long does it take to search?

And I know all the platforms are very much focused on this, but. [00:36:00] There is a discovery and navigability crisis in our ecosystem as far as the UX UI of entertainment, and I think you're right. We should prioritize it as a group.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Honestly, I use outside sources to see what I'm gonna watch next. And I think maybe there's something

Evan Shapiro: That is the, that's the embarrassing thing is you go to a dinky third party provider to figure out how to, what to watch on Netflix and Disney and all these big,

Marion Ranchet: it's not a TV provider, it's a me.

So where they should be working in building bridges with media outlets. And so I have a couple of go-tos. I trust, their opinion on pieces of content, and then I go search that piece of content. And I've, that's how I've watched things that I would never have seen because it wasn't even surfaced.

So I think, it's also maybe we can't just fix that on our own and we need to work with others.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. And so collaboration, I do think us sharing the metadata together, but also us collaborating, [00:37:00] understanding the consumer sees entertainment as one interface. The more we collaborate, the OEMs, the platforms, the publishers together, the better off we're all gonna be.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, I agree.

Evan Shapiro: Thank you for entertaining this conversation. You know I nerded out about this stuff and I appreciate the back and forth. That is Marion Ranchet.

Marion Ranchet: and this is Evan Shapiro.

Evan Shapiro: What's your newsletter?

Marion Ranchet: Streaming Made Easy on Substack.

Evan Shapiro: You wanna ask me? Mine?

Marion Ranchet: No.

Evan Shapiro: Mine is Media War Peace.

Marion Ranchet: Sorry, no, I'm kidding.

Evan Shapiro: No, mine is Media War Peace. That's fine. That's as it should be. That's our relationship right there.