You’ll shortly find out how to negotiate for better App and title placements, but why is this important?
As an Account Manager, I’m sure you’re fully aware that only 5% of a platform’s content is visible to viewers. With that in mind, how do you ensure your Apps and Titles are seen?
Even if your content is lucky enough to be within that top 5% of visible content, are you truly able to understand the value of these placements?
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, without a smart, automated solution in place, you have no hope of knowing your digital merchandising performance across major platforms such as Apple TV, Google TV and Fire TV (to name but a few). And why is that? Take it from me (as a previous intern for a major hollywood film studio); tracking content promotion across the digital platforms gets left to the likes of interns, interns that are only a couple of months into their new jobs and can barely remember the names of the top 100 films, let alone the thousands of catalogue Titles and Apps that your company owns. Human error is inevitable, and what a waste of an intern’s talent too! They’ll be spending their time taking screenshots of digital storefronts rather than figuring out how they can inspire your business with a fresh set of ideas. And let’s face it, nobody wants an inbox filled with a thousand images of content promotion, nor 1 hour meetings with no form of a proven means to optimising your placements, backed by real data. It just isn’t scalable in this climate, with over 800 new release films alone making their way to the digital platforms each year in the US. You need tons of accurate, consumable performance data in one place to even have a chance of building a placement winning strategy. For argument’s sake, let’s say you have a keyboard warrior of an intern that gets what you “think” is a thorough job done… you’re still wasting your time because you don’t even understand what you’re looking at…
User Interfaces on all of the digital platforms are constantly changing, because the world is changing! We are not an easy bunch to please and it’s only getting more difficult to grab us by the eyeballs. This means the digital platforms have to constantly adapt to make sure we’re buying, subscribing and viewing. You may think you have an idea as to what is the most valuable placement on each store in order to get the biggest ROI, but then it will change the next day. We’re talking 100’s of platforms here, in multiple territories. By using a Media Placement Value score you can track merchandising performance and compare this across different Titles, from launch date and beyond. By tracking every placement for each Title over time, and comparing it to your performance data, we can show you the value of specific earned and paid placements. This means you can maximise planning for new release Titles across multiple global and local platforms, and ensure compliance for negotiated placement, paid or editorial. This sort of job can only be left up to some major technology.
Knowing how well your own content is performing is one thing, but without a view on what your competitors are doing across the digital storefronts, you won’t be armed for battle when it comes to discussions with the various platform providers. With a better understanding on where your content is placed in relation to your competitors, and the relative value of these placements, you’ll have the data to back up your case and can then negotiate better positioning and promotional campaigns with your platform partners.
At Looper Insights, tracking digital storefronts is our bread and butter, and we can tell you that this arena – although it has always been competitive – is becoming increasingly aggressive. It is now not only about how often you are seen, or how easily, but what you do with those 5 seconds in the spotlight with your potential consumer. Do you know why your competitors launch for similar content managed to blow your performance numbers out of the water? You need full visibility where it counts to negotiate for better App and title placements, which means consistent tracking across all of the platforms and territories where your content is available.
We can help you with all of this, just get in touch with the team here.
