While short-form content is typically associated with mobile phones, YouTube executives have said that short-form is increasingly being watched on connected TVs. Keith Bedford, General Manager EMEA at Wurl, believes there’s a place for short-form more broadly in streaming, both as a new source of ad inventory, and as a way to help solve some of the discoverability issues facing sell-side players in CTV and free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST).
VideoWeek spoke with Bedford about the opportunities for short-form content in FAST, as well as how performance marketing in CTV is developing, and the evolution of the CTV markets in Europe and the US.
How do you see the FAST market evolving in Europe, and how does it compare with the US?
I come from a traditional linear TV background, and when we talk about free ad-supported streaming television, it’s been around in a sense for a long time in Europe, in terms of how we receive our television. The difference is really around ads. On linear TV, ads were traditionally pre-sold in upfront deals, in big packages with the major broadcasters covering very few channels. Obviously with the move to streaming environments, everything has changed. There are more channels, there are more ways we watch TV, there’s short-form, there’s YouTube — the whole sphere of content has completely opened up.
We launched our first CTV channel in 2018 with Samsung, and we were the first providers of FAST channels in Samsung TV Plus. Where has the growth come from since then? Obviously the US is a lot larger than Europe. And don’t forget that in streaming we’re competing with the Googles, the Apples, the Metas, we’re competing with the web, and we are seeing a shift where money is moving, but there are a lot of differences between the US and Europe.
If we take the UK for example, we have a lot more privacy laws compared with the US, and the Media Bill which will mean streaming services are regulated by Ofcom. In the wider European market, you’ve got challenges like translation and localisation of content, and all of these things slow down growth. Plus, a big difference is that Europeans are used to having free television, though of course with the shift to streaming, there are a lot more models now for how we get content.
How do you see performance advertising developing in FAST (and CTV more broadly)?
Ultimately, the question with FAST is who is able to do the best job of making money from advertising.
Wurl is part of AppLovin, and that’s been an exciting journey over the past couple of years. The growth in their mobile advertising business has been immense, and the key to their business is performance marketing. That means targeting the right ads to the right users, tracking whether it has been viewed, and tracking an outcome. All of those things in mobile are easier using AI technology to do attribution. That’s really how they’ve been successful, because they work with brands to increase their revenues, with measurable returns on ad spend. And when advertisers see a return on ad spend, they keep spending.
If we look at the market of data around streaming, it’s a lot better than what you get from linear, where you primarily have panel data. In streaming, we do see some walled gardens where people want to hold onto their own data, but overall a market is going to work better where there’s more data, and that is available in streaming. We know how well channels are performing, we know how well programmes are performing.
The key for the future is how we use that data for performance marketing, with targeting and attribution on CTV. That’s where Wurl and AppLovin come together, bringing what AppLovin are doing so well in mobile over to CTV.
It’s a journey to get there. There’s a lot of technology we can get from our parent company in terms of AI, targeting and attribution technologies. But it’s not the same device. There are tough problems to solve, with the call to action as an example. We’ve seen QR codes used, but it’s still questionable whether you’re going to pause a programme, scan a code, and make a purchase.
So there are things we still need to crack, but I think it will happen. It’s just a question of who’s going to crack it. And I would say AppLovin and Wurl have as good a chance as anybody to do it.
What sort of profile of advertisers are you seeing investing in FAST at the moment?
If you look at what’s happened on YouTube, as an example of a streaming platform, you’ve seen the growth of big brands using that platform. And we’re seeing the same in CTV too. On the performance front, it comes back to those potential issues for CTV in terms of targeting and attribution.
That’s where we’re up against companies like Meta and Google, where you can build profiles and target specific audiences, which is harder in CTV. So we need to take some of those barriers away.
Looking at the types of brands using FAST, there’s a wide range. In the US market, there are big brands running ads, because the growth is there and distribution is much higher. In Europe we’re still building that market.
One of the things AppLovin brings to the market is unique demand. They have their own demand, and Wurl (or an SSP working on behalf of AppLovin) provides access to streaming platforms, so AppLovin can then build CTV ads with their partners for their mobile apps. We’re seeing a lot more of those ads coming into the marketplace.
In the US we’ve got ad relationships with all the major streaming platforms, while in Europe, it’s still a bit of a chicken and egg situation. We’re doing more deals with the major streamers in Europe to get their ad supply, and that’s going to help bring more advertisers into the space.
How are you seeing the content side of FAST develop in Europe? And how is data informing that conversation?
In the US we’ve definitely seen a big change. The early adopters of FAST used archive catalogues of content which has been sitting around not being distributed on linear, but with all the digital rights available. That’s really how the FAST market started. But we’re now seeing major brands, companies like A+E, AMC, and BBC Studios, launching FAST channels in the US and being successful.
It’s the decision of the streaming platforms to choose how many channels they want to max out at, but we are seeing channels being removed where they’re not performing well. We’re seeing really good brands with really good content getting viewership, which in turn drives advertising revenue, and the fill rates on those channels and programmes are higher. So companies are cutting channels which aren’t performing, to make room for more premium channels.
A bit of that is now happening in Europe. We’re seeing the BBC and ITV launching FAST channels, and the content is only going to grow.
We’re also seeing a lot more sports content on FAST. If you look at Samsung TV Plus in Spain, they show the Six Nations, they show football games. We’ve been working with FIFA+ for nearly two years now, they’re on all platforms in all markets. They showed the Women’s World Cup live on FAST channels in two territories where the distribution rights weren’t sold, and it got some fantastic viewership. I spent some time at Sportel earlier this year and did a panel with the European Broadcasting Union, and everyone is seeing a big opportunity in FAST to distribute sport directly to people who can’t pick it up from pay TV.
So I think that shift will continue, but it’ll happen in conjunction with sports companies’ OTT platforms. FAST will be another potential outlet for them. And I think they should all have a joined up approach with their content.
What’s the opportunity for short-form content on FAST?
I think there are a couple of issues which short-form can help crack.
On all platforms, there are a lot of channels and lots of content, so content discovery is difficult. I think you could potentially use short-form to drive viewers to channels. You could have a solution where you have short-form clips of all the content available on a platform’s FAST channels, and you use those clips to drive viewers to long-form content — or to more short-form. So that could be a personalised stream of short-form content which is tailored to the viewer, and you use that to then drive them to an endpoint, whether that’s a linear channel, or whether it’s more of that type of short-form content.
It takes viewers an average of eight minutes to find something to watch while streaming, so it’s important that we build technologies which help guide people to content they want to watch. So content discovery is one angle.
There’s also an opportunity with short-form in terms of creating more supply for businesses to put ads into. You see all the OEMs adopting their own OS models, and they all need more supply. Short-form creates another opportunity for advertising, and it can also help those companies learn more about their users. What sort of content do they like? Is it sports, is it entertainment? That data can shape the types of content they invest in going forward.
