In an effort to boost transparency, Netflix have been releasing their bi-annual ‘What We Watched’ reports, which is lovely. The problem is their data is presented in a rather unwieldy 7000 line excel sheet it’s pretty hard to navigate. So I thought I’d help out…
With a bit of spare time free last week, I compiled the 3 reports currently available (1, 2, 3) and then added some custom processing to enhance them. I ran a cleaning script to aggregate data up to Series level (rather than Season), and then aligned Series up to the open source TheTVDB.com database, leveraging a Python script to start to pull and match data from their API to embellish the data with additional info such as genres.
I have focused on Hours Viewed as the key metric, largely dropping their Views data with it’s unconventional calculation — dividing the Hours Viewed by the total Runtime of the content in question. Many platforms have their own interpretation of views (min 2″ viewed / 30″ viewed etc..) but this is a new one on me! The result only restates the Hours Viewed as a function of Runtime and isn’t much use in understanding consumer behaviour on the platform. Interestingly, it also tends to downplay the importance of large catalog series to the platform which you can see comparing the Series Performance tab to the Season Performance tab.
For now, I focused on TV Series, as they account for around 70% of all viewing. I also haven’t yet finished cleaning all of the Series data but the biggest ones that cover over 80% of all TV viewing are covered. I’ll continue working through the rest of the Series and Movies over the coming weeks.
It’s also worth noting that whilst most of the cleaning has been automated, some manual work was still necessary. I relied on TheTVDB.com, which is open source and may contain some inaccuracies. IMDB was an alternative but it’s terribly expensive. If you spot any errors or have suggestions for additional views or insights, feel free to drop me an email (info@mattrennie.com). Now I’ve laid the groundwork, updates will be relatively easy for new views or incorporating data such as from their next bi-annual report.
I built this chart by combining the following two charts in Ofcom‘s Media Nations and filling in the blanks from the underlying data. It’s an interesting comparison, despite the B or S (BS??) variance in VOD type. Though it’s odd to me to have excluded YouTube which also sat in the same dataset.
A couple of thoughts..
This multiple app route is going to start creating issues as users get tired of switching apps and using various machinations of recommendations and search funcitons to find something to watch,
I’ve now settled on two or three services which i’ll browse for and generally find something that i’m happy to watch,
Without a common discovery UI (like the EPG) this will start creating challenges for new entrants to make a successful entry and then grow,
Freely is clearly a potential answer here depending on how and how far it rolls out. It does make me think of what a short-sighted decision it was to kill Kangaroo all that time ago!
You can see why YouTube is posing such a threat to TV attention with high satisfaction scores across product and content metrics. Whether it’s ‘broadcast quality’ content or not, audiences are clearly satisfied with it and score it particularly highly for programmes that are relevant to me and featuring people like me.
But for me, one outstanding stat was that 8% of the 12.1m people (yes that’s nearly a million people!) watching the New Year’s fireworks are doing so 1-7 days after New Years Eve! Call me a party pooper 🎉 but i can’t watch fireworks live in person, let alone on telly and absolutely not as catch up! #mindblown 🎇
Not much evidence of any sluggishness in the ad market in YouTube numbers reported this week with a forth sequential quarter of double digit growth. At this rate they’re on target for their first 10Bn quarter by the end of the year.
Note: these numbers don’t include YouTube premium which in my experience is somewhere between 10% and 20% of total revenues, which would peg it in the 1Bn to 2Bn range (it’s reported separately alongside other sub (e.g. Music) device and platform revenue).
YouTube are still circumspect on the revenue contribution from Shorts, usage yes but its impact as a direct revenue driver is yet to be seen. CTV still super important and growing (30% YoY).
At the risk of stating the obvious, for any premium streamer or broadcaster, this is your #1 competitor! And anyone who continues to use the term ‘broadcast quality’ in the context of being a competitive advantage, from now on i’m just going to assume that you’re struggling to monetise it 😬
Two multinational streamers reported their half-year results yesterday with diverging fortunes.
𝗡𝗲𝘁𝗳𝗹𝗶𝘅: 𝗚𝗹𝗼𝗯𝗮𝗹 𝗣𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗲 Netflix continues to demonstrate remarkable profitability and a massive subscriber base, now 278m. Growth is slowing, and ARPU falling (possibly due to the impact of the ad tier, which is growing but slowly), but with $7Bn cash in the bank, I’m thinking they’re going to be fine. Ted Sarandos spoke about the significant amount of quality local content Netflix is producing, which is key to their success. It’s a privileged position to be in.
𝗩𝗶𝗮𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘆: 𝗡𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗴𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮 𝗧𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗣𝗮𝘁𝗵 Viaplay, fresh from a recent retreat and refocus into their core Nordic and Dutch markets, has a rockier path. They aim to carve more profitable path within a concentrated footprint focusing on local content and sports. Interestingly, Viaplay ARPU is much higher ($20.78) than Netflix ($10.87 in EMEA), I assume driven by premium sports being a core part of their mix. But without the economies of scale that 278m subs offer, profitability remains challenging. However, they are making progress.
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗼𝗻 𝗙𝗮𝗰𝗲𝘁: 𝗟𝗼𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 Key to both strategies is local content. Other major ‘global’ streamers (read: major US streamers) face challenges fully engaging diverse local audiences (without Netflix’s deep pockets). I’m not even convinced Disney has enough content to stand alone internationally (I recently churned off myself) nor do I think a bundled Paramount and Peacock (e.g.) would stand up.
Perhaps more innovative structures are needed, pushing these mega (‘global’) studio brands back a touch (if they’re able to swallow that much pride) and relying on local streamers with longstanding customer relationships and deep local understanding. In many EMEA markets, free-to-air broadcasters lead in local content provision, perhaps there are opportunities like Paramount falling behind Channel 5 in the UK (e.g.) – Netflix did speak of how important the ad tier was for new subscriber growth (engagement at a much lower price).
With US capital markets and the bargain basement price of some of these assets, partnering or purchasing more international brands could be an opportunity rather than these studios who are seemingly only intent on swallowing up each other. Though if treading this path perhaps don’t take a typical US approach. Ellison apparently wants his merged Paramount/Skydance business to come up with a new relationship with tech, perhaps he has the vision to come up with a new relationship with how they deal with International too!
By the Numbers
𝗡𝗲𝘁𝗳𝗹𝗶𝘅 𝗛1 2024: Revenue: $18,929m Net Income: $4,479m (24%) Subscribers: 278m ARPU: $11.36 Mar Cap: $277.09B Mar Cap per Sub: $988
𝗩𝗶𝗮𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘆 𝗛1 2024: Revenue: 9,241m SEK | $869m Net Income: 485m SEK | $45m (5%) Subscribers: 6.9m ARPU: 222 SEK | $20.89 Mar Cap: 4.76B SEK | $448m Mar Cap per Sub: 687 SEK | $64
Last week when looking at ITV’s annual report I suggested that News could be an opportunity for them based on what I perceived to be a relatively insular (ITVX focussed) strategy. It got me thinking about how much of a greenfield opportunity News is on new digital and social platforms. So I’ve spent the last week or so looking at the various iterations of legacy news operations and how they’ve been applied on these platforms. This all in advance of Ofcom‘s new News Consumption Survey which is due next month (May).
Some headlines…
As it stands, The Daily Mail has the most effective overall social digital media strategy, although it feels quite disjointed and leads to a confusing brand picture.
I find BBC News’s performance particularly lacklustre given their position as the UK’s number 1 media brand and the global influence they aspire to exert.
The philosophical approach by our PSBs and some legacy media risks ceding control of the social news agenda to new entrants (GB News) whilst it’s importance continues to grow.
There’s a significant upside opportunity for mainstream news brands to engage an already huge and growing audience.
YouTube
YouTube views, last 30 days, courtesy of Social Blade
On YouTube, brands tended to follow one of two paths. Of the top performers, Sky News, BBC News and GB News employ an approach faithful to their overall editorial. Whereas the Telegraph’s and Daily Mail’s YouTube channels seem to bear little resemblance to any cohesive editorial strategy. That’s not to say they’re not engaging, but I struggle to see how generic syndicated news clips deliver any real value to their brand.
Sky was most impactful, delivering a high volume of content, including live-streams of their linear output, although I still feel there’s a HUGE opportunity in creating bespoke platform specific content tailored for this audience rather than simply clipping traditional linear output. We always found there was huge upside in leveraging the intelligence from usage data to optimise content with the specific platforms and audiences in mind. The BBC has some nice bespoke content on their ‘Shorts’ page but generally just post clipped content from their linear feed.
Overall, I found GB News’ approach to be the most adapted to the platform with a specific thumbnail strategy, some bespoke content, super high volume and use of live and a extremely faithful editorial output (if somewhat predictable and click-baity).
I guess YouTube uses red too?
The Sun has built some bespoke content although rather than lean into audience and platform specific trends, they’ve taken a very traditional / formal ‘suits behind a desk’ approach presenting an audio visual case study of why you shouldn’t allow marketing or brand people to design sets.
Overall I find the YouTube numbers underwhelming. Despite the BBC being one of the best known English language news services in the world and allegedly being the most visited English language website, it’s only 197th in Social Blades list of YouTube’s impactful news channels (only 6 of the legacy UK services I reviewed appear at all in the top 500!). With the amount of content and resources at their disposal the BBC should be aiming north of 500m monthly views and could probably get closer to 1Bn.
Facebook
Facebook, People Talking About This, courtesy of Social Blade
On Facebook I used their ‘People Talking About This’ stat as a comparative measure of currency and impact. Almost exclusively, News brands are using Facebook as a discussion board and link farm to drive people back to their owned websites and apps.
The Daily Mail are stand out leaders with a strategy of ridiculously high post volume (close to 10 every hour). Unlike their YouTube, it’s really faithful to their core digital editorial output and given the tabloid nature of the content, seems to generate a fair amount of discussion amongst the Facebook-crowd. Perhaps unsurprisingly, other tabloid titles dominate the top performers with all employing a slightly less effective version of the Mail’s strategy.
Instagram
Insta followers, last 30 days and total, courtesy of Social Blade
I personally struggle to recognise Instagram’s suitability as a viable news platform, but it’s mass media scale dictates audiences will consume it there regardless. The stats are difficult to interpret and the strategies quite unique. My analysis was centered around the main pages for legacy brands although brands (e.g. BBC News) often employ tens of different Insta accounts, a varying mix of images and reels, some video focused, whilst others clearly using picture editors to focus on image quality. I’ve considered multiple benchmarks.
Instagram average likes per post, courtesy of Social Blade
BBC News is the stand out leader with a massive 27m followers, 320k incremental followers within the last 30 days and 46.4k avg. likes per post. The Guardian and FT have impactful strategies leaning into the aesthetical nature of the platform. They have large follower numbers (5.8m & 3.4m) and are gaining large amounts of likes per post (16.1k and 7.8k) but they’re not posting very much (maybe once a day) and so any follower movement in the last 30 days is muted. Sky have a mixed picture editor / video strategy, are quite active in posting and generating significant engagement (likes per post) evident not only large in total follower numbers (1.9m) but also in terms of last 30 day movement (116k). GB News’ data is broken (via Social Blade) for the last 30 days and massively overstates their recent impact, they have 193k followers who aren’t particularly engaged (400 likes per post). Whilst extremely active, they’re basically using it as a video distribution platform.
I quite like what ITV and the Metro are doing. ITV has bespoke content (via Reels), although I’d like to see them fully adapt and replace the clipped linear content on the main feed. Metro have also developed quite a nice style leaning into platform functionality to mix the use of images, text and video quite effectively. Both strategies seem to be working with decent follower movement in the last 30 days.
TikTok
TikTok, likes in the last 30 days, courtesy of Social Blade
The Daily Mail has the largest and most engaged base on TikTok, but again has a unique editorial for this individual platform (this time a US-centric celebrity gossip focus). I’m sure there must be logic in their overarching strategy (they won’t cannibalise each other?) but it doesn’t feel additive to a consistent brand message from where I’m sat. You can’t deny they’ve achieved success and scale, although I note their digital revenues seemed to have flatlined last year and it will be interesting to see how they react to this. ITV are posting some of the bespoke content seen on their Insta, but again I’d like to see them take a wholly bespoke approach, engaging the audiences they’ve started to build. Metro are also making bespoke content but have a much lighter posting schedule, delivering the same impact (in likes) with only 10% – 20% (2/3 post per day) of the content output of the Mail, ITV, Sky or the BBC. BBC and Sky are still largely just clipping linear content albeit with some light post-production customisation and would do well to experiment with more bespoke content.
Owned platforms vs Social Media
Many of the PSBs and legacy news brands opt to favour their own platforms as a focus for their digital efforts based on an ability to own the data and/or monetise them more effectively (and not share any of that revenue). Whilst I can understand that, I don’t believe the PSBs do news entirely for commercial reasons and certainly I find the BBC’s philosophical approach here slightly odd given they don’t have the same commercial restrictions. All that said, I don’t believe social content particularly cannibalises other consumption and so would recommend a more active and innovative strategy to engage this growing audience. In fact, when you have a cohort of the population growing up away from traditional media channels, active social content strategies could be an important route to seed and build relationships between consumers and legacy brands that blossom into deeper direct consumption relationships further down the road.
Methodology
I looked at various legacy broadcast and publishing news services across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok using Social Blade for my analysis trying to get reasonable metrics to assess currency and engagement. I pulled the data on the 3rd and 4th of April and so depending on lag of data feeds by platform the 30 day periods reviewed were consistent for comparative purposes and generally had most of March and possibly a few days of February. I reviewed The Independent, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Financial Times, Daily Mail, The Times, The Sun, BBC News, Channel 4 News, Channel 5 News, ITV News, Sky News, STV Group plc News, Euronews , Daily Mirror, Metro.co.uk, Global‘s LBC and GB News. To be clear, I’ve just been looking at the presentation of these services, not passing judgement on the status or quality of their journalism, nor have I tried to take a position on the bias of their output. I now need to go and purge my browsing history so I can get back to being fed golf clips rather than the various itterations of news the algorithms now think I’m interested in!
ITV’s annual report was released last week. I always find these interesting, often more for the information that’s not included, rather than the info that is!
Last year ITV very helpfully included data on linear advertising revenues (‘Linear Remains Resilient’). With declining resiliency, they’ve opted not to do that this year but we can still piece together the picture. Linear will have delivered nearly £1,363m in 2024, not far above 2020’s Covid ridden performance. Q1.24 is apparently better, 3% up YoY (although 23 is a shitty baseline). We won’t see their detailed quarterly phasing for a couple of months, but if they’re hitting their projected 15% increase in digital income, this would probably still see a marginal YoY decline in linear.
2024’s green bar of ‘Non-digital Advertising’ may include a 0% – 5% overcount in Other advertising which was apparent when they reported both linear and digital advertising in 21 & 22.
ITV Studios is without doubt a success story for ITV, growing substantially over recent years. They called out growth they needed with global streamers, and they’re hitting their target. They also produce a lot for their own internal channels but it was everything else they produce which I found interesting. 2023 saw a 17% decrease YoY in revenue from other (non-internal, non-streamer) broadcasters. From the chart it’s not a clear trend, at best you could call it ‘volatile’. But revenue diversity is important and it will be interesting to see how this develops.
ITVX growth has also been impressive. Growing to 12.5m monthly active users with each user watching incrementally more! Sadly I don’t have full access to BARB anymore but you can pull together a reasonable proxy for linear from publicly available data. By my reckoning, ITV’s linear Monthly Active Users (or reach) in 2023 was 45m and they streamed a total of nearly 8Bn hours, or the equivalent of 14 hours per user per month. Compared against the 12.5m MAUs streaming 10 hours a month on their digital service.
ITVX User base and consumption
I have 2 perspectives on this..
If you consider how much revenue is generated for each platform, that makes a digital hour (£0.33) nearly twice as valuable as a linear hour (£0.17). This is impressive and makes sense, with a more engaged and younger audience switching to digital first, coupled with an enhanced ad product. You would expect this differential to reduce as reach expands but I don’t think you’ll lose it all! There is also a potential Newtonian impact to consider, with linear audiences devaluing as higher value (engaged / younger) audiences migrate online
Secondly, ever since i can remember, ITV has been a massive and ubiquitous media presence; 45m (70%+) monthly reach . As the move to digital accelerates what will be the impact on the brand and particularly their ad business as they transition to become one of many niche (is that too harsh?) suppliers of admittedly excellent long-form content. How large can a walled garden owned platform grow on a £1.3Bn content spend?
So what would I do?
Honestly, i think ITV are doing a really good job but this is where i’d look to enhance their plan…
I’m not sure there’s anything you can do about linear, there’s only so much you can do within a market that’s turned. If they can continue to replace linear with more effective digital revenues then shareholders should be happy.
The growth in Studios has been really impressive, but if you dig in to an average consumers viewing day (4hrs 28 of video mins consumed daily), ITV Studios is only addressing 74% of the market (52% looking at 1634s). Video sharing platforms are becoming increasingly dominant and any major supplier of content should be figuring out how to supply content into that space too. There should be (maybe there already is tbh) a target on non-longform, potentially non-video content production. Whilst naturally easier to monetise audiences effectively on ITVX I would set targets and budgets to create bespoke scripted and non-scripted content for social platforms to learn how to deliver compelling stories in new ways, how to monetise them effectively, and also to up-skill Studios and create a calling card for more non-traditional 3rd party service work.
It’s great they called out the News experience on mobile, this feels like a real opportunity! There’s some bespoke presentation on TikTok, but it leans towards to the more pop-culture end of the news. ‘Proper’ news still seems to be mostly grey suits behind a desk, clipped from the linear programme. It’s time to lean into their established quality journalism, and really play with presentation of news across new platforms to adapt it for new and younger audiences (I don’t mean just having a presenter with scruffy jeans!).
Content is always king, but i’m afraid an Oscars live event and Celebrity Big Brother don’t cut it as tent pole events to ‘supercharge streaming’. M&E EBITDA margins may be challenged (<10% in 2023) but they need to capitalise on the momentum they have with ITVX. Interestingly both Netflix and Amazon having been diving into sport as a important genre for streamers and it scratches an itch for many that can’t easily be replaced with other forms of content. ITV have a strong sporting heritage and I would be looking to potentially invest in this as a route to drive more viewers into ITVX.
I’m a Reddit, Inc. fan. It’s one of only two social media apps that’s earnt front page privileges on my phone – a core procrastination tool! Nearly 20 years old, they’re now filing for IPO but at 281 pages it’s a hefty read so I thought I’d try to summarise. Views are my own and are certainly not intended as investment advice.
– $804m revenue in 2023, up 21% YoY. – Still loss making $(90)m in 2023, improved from $(159)m in 2022. – Model still highly dependent (98%) on hashtag#advertising. – Unaudited accounts do show a small profit in q4.23, but this is likely due to the cyclical nature of the ad market (revenue) whereas costs (R&D, sales, marketing, overheads) are relatively flat throughout the year. – 73m daily users or 267m weekly. – Roughly half of daily users are logged in. – Roughly half of daily and weekly users are in the US. They don’t disclose how many weekly users are logged in (?). – Users grew in q3 / q4 23, but so did ‘Research and Development’ costs, by c.$80m. – Quarterly ARPU is currently heavily weighted toward the US ($5.51) vs Int’l ($1.34). – Growth opportunities stated broadly as 1. Advertising, 2. Data & licensing, 3. User Economy.
So… – I’d be concerned that after 20 years, I’m still trying to find a way to scale the business. – At constant metrics, breakeven should be possible at c.100m users, but with US fairly saturated, growth will need to come from Int’l with much lower ARPU and pesky things like local languages and sub-scale advertising markets. Growth always costs too! – There is an opportunity to enhance US engagement and to improve the efficacy of their ad product. – They have recently done a $60m (annual) deal with Google (https://lnkd.in/e_eUNVqK), allowing them to train AI models. Interesting given the wealth of detailed online discussion contained in 100k subreddits. Though I find it interesting for a tech company to create value by selling to a 3rd party in this way. – Opportunities around any User Economy are potentially interesting but aspirational rather than based on anything concrete at this stage. With that many users there should be some potential but how meaningful or scalable it is remains to be seen
In summary.. I remain a Reddit fan and will continue to use it. It’s a great service and decent business, it can certainly be profitable. But it’ll be a grind and I’m not sure I see a route to any exponential growth. It will be interesting to see how this is received and ultimately how it’s valued by the market. 🤞
In an ideal world, everyone would play nice and I love Rory McIlroy‘s idea that this could be an IPL-style comp in the off-season, taking golf to new markets and new audiences. But we are where we are. And though I love much of what they’re doing, there are a few opportunities which could dramatically accelerate LIV Golf‘s journey and deliver the potential I believe they have. As a fully confessed golf-nerd, it was this graphic that really drew me in. Say what you like about some of the personalities in here, the team structure or the fact that it’s a different format, I just love watching really great golfers play competitive golf!
LIV clearly has some reputation issues. Some of this is fair, but much of it is not. Golf fans can be loyal, somewhat traditional and generally don’t like change. From my POV, LIV should embrace the disruption they’re causing and emphasise the positive aspects of their league in front of as many golf fans as possible.
Two of the features about the format I hear most from fellow golf fans are the shotgun start and the team structure. Yes, golf courses may have been designed in a certain order, but they’re often played the wrong way round and the players are already actively thinking about this (who’s going to start or finish on easier holes etc..). This doesn’t really come across in the broadcast and by highlighting action from different parts of the course simultaneously and some of these nuances, it would enhance viewer engagement and acceptance of the format.
From a team POV, it works in every other sport and it works on the Ryder Cup so why not here? But it’s going to take time to deepen fans connections with the teams and there’s potentially a strong seam of digital content that could play a role here. It’s just a shame the team names sound like they’ve come straight out of a marketing brainstorm.
On the whole, I really like the overall look and feel of the graphics package. It’s loud, on brand and used really effectively in interstitials and promos. But I would look to roll their usage back 10% to 15% on screen. I’ve always had a rule that any on-screen graphics need to enhance the viewer experience. Too much information is impossible to take in whilst simultaneously trying to view the action on screen and certainly doesn’t need to live there permanently.
Circled duplicated info. In fact, the lower graphics bar doesn’t offer anything additional, it’s cool that you can put up a map of the hole, but can the viewer actually see anything, does it enhance the experience?
I love some of the new and fresh voices they’re using. As an emerging brand driving hard to appeal to a broader audience, I would think carefully about some of the more ‘experienced’ voices being used to ensure it doesn’t feel too traditional.
Though they have a few broadcast deals (e.g. US, Spain) around the world, there’s significant opportunity in the extensive presence they’ve built on the largest video platform in the world, YouTube. They’re currently sat at around 150k views per day but competition weekends push that up to 700k or 800k daily views whereas the intervening week or weeks run at sub 100k. None ‘live’ or ‘main highlights’ videos generally deliver <10k views and they really should be at 10x – 20x that.
A lot of content is being produced and so it shouldn’t be too difficult to rebalance the schedule away from competition weekends so they can maintain consistent upload momentum (every other day?) which will be essential to growing the channel. Currently c. 40 videos are published over competition weekend with just 2 being published in the 2 weeks between Las Vegas and Jeddah.
Publishing across YouTube Shorts and TikTok is a little better but still could be ratcheted up a notch, TikTok is even hungrier than YouTube (and rewards accordingly). TikTok content should be more if a conversation (less ‘broadcasty’): ‘How Many Times Will Niemann Win This Year?‘, ‘Could you make this putt?‘, get playful and really try to drive interactivity.
Make sure comments are responded to, give the fans something back and let them know that they’re being heard. Make them advocates to spread the word and also get them to help curate the strategy for the kind of content they want and will respond to.
Content partnerships with YouTube Golfers should be critical to help create relevant content and bring new subscribers to the channel. I’ll go out on a limb and suggest LIV are not short of a bob or two but increased performance will help generate a decent income to cover more investment. Get a few YouTubers (e.g. Rick Shiels , Good Good, Bob Does Sports, or Grant Horvat) down to play in the pro-am on Thursdays or doing course previews (etc..). Let them come up with a bunch of their own content ideas too.
Content needs to be repurposed and optimised for the platform with the understanding content will be there forever (e.g. take time to recut presser interviews). LIV has access to incredible talent and can use their extensive analytics to identify the types of content that’s performing for other golf brands. Why can’t I see ‘every shot from Niemann’s stunning 59 shot round’, or ‘this is how Bryson plans to play every hole at Jeddah’.
PLEASE(!) start to experiment and formulate a decent thumbnail strategy (look at Rich Shiels or Bryson for tips on where to start). Get a graphic designer and start to use a service like TubeBuddy so you can A/B test the thumbnails and optimise them for your audience.
And some fundamentals (don’t use effectively the same thumbnail for two different videos).
When the strategy has been polished and updated, start to use Paid Media to get key content in front of your potential audience. There’s a huge audience of golf fans on YouTube and given the regular and hi-quality content available from LIV, this really should be punching A LOT harder!
So there’s a lot to love here. There could be even more! And if you’re in the UK it’s all free on YouTube! Sadly, I’m not sure my shaky 13 handicap has registered with Greg Norman yet, but if you need any help with your content and digital strategy, I’m available (to be clear I’m also available for golf if you need me!)
Some observations from Paramount’s Q4.23 earnings call on Wednesday…
1. TV Media revenues are stagnant… Massive, but stagnant. Ads down 15%, licensing down 9%. I love their strong focus on content post-strikes but licensing will take a little while to claw back. 2. Predicting “low to mid teens” growth in advertising. Digital ads were up 17% YoY and will grow along with their digital footprint, but expecting a turnaround on linear feels against the market (I’ve seen between -9% & 0% est.). 3. D2C & Paramount+ (P+) growth is impressive. 61% YoY revenue growth (P+), driven by subs (21%) and ARPU (33%). Further price increases are anticipated but expected to slow, ARPU (max) 20% and subs (max) 79m thru 24. By my calcs, this would cap P+ revenue at a $2.3Bn increase, $6.8Bn FY24. 4. They’re nearing profitability for P+, currently spending $1.25 (23) for every dollar earnt (21: $1.30, 22: $1.37) – Warner Bros. Discovery needed c.100m subs to break even so 2025 probably sounds about right. 5. I’m not a fan of the ‘global’ digital strategy, pulling back from local content and marketing, relying on domestic US hits to drive growth. Given it’s 1 of 3 corporate priorities, in such a competitive market, this feels counterintuitive. 6. Lastly, they seem pretty focused on cost savings, another $1Bn restructuring charge expected early this year. The way they quickly brushed off any M&A questions on the call suggest these are active considerations.
So, all considered, upside could look like $2.0Bn to $3.5Bn, if all goes well, and closer to flat (digital replacing falling TV income) if it doesn’t. A lot will depend on execution and the continuing shift of core market dynamics. That or finding the right buyer!
