TheSoul Publishing's Victor Potrel

In this episode of TellyCast, host Justin Crosby sits down with Victor Potrol, SVP of Partnerships & Creator Services at TheSoul Publishing, one of the biggest players in digital-first content. With billions of views across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, TheSoul Publishing has mastered audience engagement at scale.

Victor shares insights into the company’s growth strategy, platform adaptability, and monetisation in an evolving digital ecosystem. They discuss the impact of AI on content creation, the importance of localisation, and how TheSoul Publishing maintains a competitive edge. Plus, with CPMs fluctuating, how is the company navigating the financial side of digital media?

Victor also shares his Story of the Week and picks his Hero of the Week and Who’s in the Bin!

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Transcript

Welcome to TellyCast, the content industry's podcast show. I'm Justin Crosby. Today we're diving into the world of digital first media with one of the biggest players in the space. The soul publishing is a global powerhouse in digital content creation with billions of views across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

They've mastered the art. of audience engagement at scale and built a business that thrives in an ever changing digital ecosystem. For more interviews with the movers and shakers of the content industry, why not subscribe to TellyCast on YouTube? Just search TellyCast TV and hit that subscribe button.

Joining me today is Victor Potrol, SVP of Partnerships and Creator Services at The Soul Publishing. We'll explore the strategies behind their sustained success. How they adapt to evolving platform algorithms and audience habits. What the future holds for digital first media businesses. We'll also discuss monetization in a fluctuating market, the role of AI in content creation, and how the sole publishing stays ahead in an increasingly competitive space.

Plus, With CPM shifting, how is the company navigating the financial side of digital content? Victor, welcome to TellyCast. How are you doing? I'm great. I'm very happy to be here. Big fan of the podcast and the show as well. Oh, great. Well, it was great to have you on the show. And we had one of your colleagues on about sort of a year or so ago, maybe a bit longer.

So it's great to have you in the in the studio this time to chat about the sole publishing. First of all, congratulations on your two nominations for the TellyCast Digital Videos. Three nominations, I should know that, shouldn't I? That's alright. Fantastic, yeah. We lost track as well. Yeah, so Studio of the Year and then there's a branded content category as well.

Yeah, and we also have like collaboration with Bunny J Kids. Probably talk about it as yes. Yeah. So yeah, three nomination. I hope some of them turn into actual awards, but all right. It'd be up to the judges. Well, we're going to find out in June anyway, we're going to be announcing our ceremony and everything else in the coming weeks.

So so we're looking forward to that. So anybody that doesn't know about the soul publishing just give us a bit of a a potted history of the business. Cool. Yeah. The origin story. So basically the soul publishing started funny enough as a website business. So it was a website that was kind of general entertainment talking about advertising.

And in order to drive more traffic to the website the company started to post videos on Facebook. It was like around 2016. So Facebook was pushing videos more than than it is now, even more than it is now. Yeah. And actually it was starting to make some simple crafting videos around the brand five minute craft.

Why was that? So was that, that, that was the, the first videos that you published was around crafting. What, what drove you to actually move into that specific niche? Yeah. It will be something that. Come, come up the layers later, but it was that focus on very visual content, but also that is universal and positive in general.

So it was something that everyone can understand across the globe as well. So that it would perform well on those global platforms. And it did actually. So five and craft became the number one DIY brand in the world. And you know. From there we expanded like from Facebook to other platforms over time.

Today we have more than 50 platforms and also like we launched new brands and new IPs because we have a team that is very creative and we make full use of the digital tools that exist in terms of launching new brands, new IPs, testing them. Stopping them or scaling them if they work well. So over time, so we continue to, to scale the business.

We have a strong foundation in tech as well. So we build the technology that to support our growth. And today we have combined more than 2 billion subscribers followers. That's right. Yeah, 25 billion monthly views or something. Yeah, actually it's. It's around 250 billion 250 billion, everything.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So yeah, it's a, it's a lot of views. And you know, that's across all the different brands that we have. So we have Faminecraft, we have Brightside, we have some kids entertainment content as well. We have different animated content. We have some live action also. So we have a lot of digital first IPs that we've built over the years, but also we localize them you know, whether we've text metadata or voiceover.

And those, so that gives us an additional reach. So we cover more than 20 languages. So all your content, 20 languages, not all our content, but the one, the one that makes sense across this language, we can go as up as I think it's 23 or 24 languages. And of course that helps with the scale of what we build.

And then also we have a strategy to go to as many platforms as we can. So. Yeah. I mean, it's still a remarkable to have reached this, you know, to be reaching this numbers. Extraordinary. I mean, you talk about how many platforms did you say again? More than 50 today. More than 50. And is that including things like fast channels?

Yeah, exactly. So like, that's been like a big development area. Yeah. In the last well, since fast started to be a thing. So last three, four years. And yeah, we've grown there. So we on you know, Samsung. When Rakuten and Roku, so it has been like focus. And we, what we see is that our brands, they perform really well there because we have that share of voice within digital platforms like YouTube, social media.

And when we move there without any marketing, we can, we reach billions of views just because people gravitate toward our content. And also they really like our content. So then, you know, they stay and they watch it. So, so yeah, it's been definitely like an expansion area for us to reach this longer form.

Platforms. Yeah. And presumably the States is the biggest market for, for, for you on fast. Yeah. Fast, you know, it's quite big, I would say quite mature in the U S. So what we see is platforms, some of them, they are, you know, the quality of the content there is like amazing. So, you know, it's great to see five and craft alongside some shows, you know, that are being made for TV and like has this very high bar.

And we can see the performance is on par. And then there's also some opportunities in Europe as well. We see again, we have different languages. So same in Latin America. You know, there's a big market. It's a bit more growing there. So there's some opportunities as well. Well, it's, it's a really substantial business.

And, and thinking of, you know, the number of years that you've built the business up, I mean, to get to that scale, what's, what's the secret to building and maintaining that sort of engagement? That massive engagement and reach that you have. Yeah, I would say that there are two main thing. One is about the risk that we take and we try to be very flexible in digital.

Things change really quickly. So when we see new trends on the market, we make sure that we jump on them. So one of them, for instance, short form content, and now it's a couple of years. But back in 2019, we started to move to TikTok and adapt our content in short formats. And then in 2021, when YouTube Shorts launched, actually it Launched first in India.

I don't know if you remember. Yeah, that's right. It was for a couple of months only available there for different reasons. So because we had this content localized for this market, we started to launch it there as well. And we could test rapidly even though at the point at the time, we didn't know if it would become like a massive thing, but we knew.

YouTube was pushing behind it and it was going to be an area of investment. So also that relationship and understanding the direction of our distribution platform is very important. I think for anyone who is interested in digital. There's a number of different platforms. You're on Instagram, obviously TikTok, YouTube and short form as well.

I mean, how do you tailor your. Content strategies then for each platform. I mean because it's an Give us a sense of how much content you're publishing a week actually don't know the number brought out of my head, but we allow videos because if you think about the 50 platforms and the different languages already, so probably in the thousands and tens of thousands so, and then the different formats as well.

So I would say one thing that we are really focusing on is that efficiency. So we have built this. Tool internally called a soul which started together with the company. And it really helps us from production to distribution to go through different stages and stay efficient and make sure our teams are focused as well.

So script writers can only focus on script writing. Editors can only focus on editing. Actors, when we have them or animators can focus on that. And then it moved to different stages and the distribution as well, like it's supported by different tools so that we can be efficient. Because if you publish thousands of videos, But you have to pay certain cost for each distribution and you spend too much time, you know, manually editing and things like that.

Of course, it's going to be very difficult to make it work. So we have different set of tools, you know, which add the subtitles which change the format, which might So you said the AI tools, AI driven tools. Some of, yeah, it's, you know, AI tools. I should say AI, I guess. Some of them is not even that AI, but, you know, I guess some of them do generate also like yeah, elements.

So, so we have this, this tools that helps this adaptation across platforms. So I think that's the first thing, you know, you got to do it in an efficient way if you're going to publish across different platform. And the second one is of course we put some also ownership within the hands of the team that work with different platforms because they are.

Two different flow of content. In a way, there's the new content that we produce there. It's important to adapt it so we can try it on different platforms. We can always predict 100 percent if it's going to be successful on the platform or not, but we'd rather have it there and then see if it does well, especially if it's a incremental small cost to get there.

And the second thing is we make sure that the team are able to go back to our archive of content, which over the years has grown a lot and are able to pick the things that might be relevant for their specific platform audiences. So going back to the archive and curating content as well. And again, we make this archive very accessible on our site so that they could go back to different videos.

They can find where it's been posted before they can adapt it maybe differently, change the music add some elements and post it so they can react quickly on trends. And I think it's very important because from what I see, you know, I worked at a Lego before and YouTube as well. And sometimes like there's this.

underutilization of assets that might sit somewhere in the past. So it's very important to empower the team, make it easy for them to go back because sometimes things are trending. I mean, there's the regular things like Valentine's day, you know, you can always take your 2014 content, you know, it's probably relevant, but then there are things that you cannot predict and then it's good to have that flexibility and be reactive.

Yeah. So we've seen a whole load of. You know, shifts in digital content over the last year specifically, and I mean, it's always changing, shifting and and consumption habits are always changing as well. I mean, how do you maintain that leadership role? I mean, how, how do you, how do you adapt to these changes?

I mean, is that, is that your role specifically, you know, to, to, to see what trends are happening? And how do you do that? Are there certain tools that you use to identify different changes in consumption habits? Yeah, so it's, you know, it's part of my team responsibility. My team works very closely with our distribution partners, and also with some creators that we provide services with.

Yeah. It means that again, we are trying to understand where those platforms want to go. What's the roadmap what are the things they're launching? Because usually when platform launches and pushes a feature, it's a good thing to understand it and see if it can make sense. There's certain element of pushing that they might do in the beginning to try it.

So a good example of that is maybe the ultra long form, like three hour long videos, which I've heard from a couple of other Publishers that maybe they're not pushing that as much as they used to but I don't know if you're finding that I mean Definitely, there's been that time where it felt like it was a little secret that, you know, TV content is being watched on YouTube.

And even though we probably go out and repeat it to people that didn't believe of us somehow, and then, you know, people that did have, and we created like longer formats of our shows as well to be consumed on TV. And we saw like a lot of success on this, whether it's yeah, like maybe background content, but not even like, you know, just people want to binge watch something.

So. And now I think it's getting more competitive, so that may be why like it's, you know, it's seen as not working as well, but you know, there's probably more people that are switched to that approach. I think one, like again, another interesting example of like seeing what the platforms are doing is like a YouTube with the dubbed.

So it's something, you know, that existed for a year or a year and a half and we tested it when it was launched actually. And we can see that on some programs we can grow, like for instance, our Portuguese audience. By like 30, 40% which this is the auto dubbing. Yeah, not auto. Yeah. Even just normal dubbing because we translate and localize our content.

So we were able to use just localizations on the content and tests. If people prefer to watch just a pure Portuguese channel. This was, this was the ability not to have to launch a new separate channel. Yeah, it's like an audio track, basically. Yeah. It's just, in a way, it's like something that existed for a while, but not on YouTube.

Yeah. And I think it was something that people were asking a lot about. And then they launched it. And now they're pushing it even more as well. Yeah. We can see that, yeah, it does help to find new audiences because it's a use case that makes sense as well and you can aggregate your audience.

Doesn't make sense in all the scenarios but yeah, in some cases it's actually something that, again, we tried and we saw some uplift in certain countries where we can see that traffic from the language that we add in the audio track is higher than what it would be normally. Yeah, and I've, I've seen some news or some rumors that YouTube's going to be rolling out auto Dubbing, international dubbing at some point, AI driven.

I mean they're talking about that coming at this, this year sometime. I think they've been testing it with some, some users and yeah, I think we'll monitor that. We, we do try work with AI tools as well for localization. Yeah. I think we make sure that the quality is good and we have teams that compare like the performance.

Yeah. For now, it doesn't work with all the formats but yeah, of course, something we are monitoring and, and, and seeing how it will evolve. But yeah, it will be interesting. I think, you know, we'll have to see the adoption and how it improves and See if it's better than actually manually. doing it, which, which, you know, which is more hands on and obviously more time consuming.

But so, so let's talk about, you know, disruption within YouTube, for example. I mean, we've seen CPMs fluctuating quite significantly and we've seen platform algorithms changing as well. For a company like yours, you know, those changes must be hugely impactful, right? I mean, how do you create? A sustainable business with digital media when you have, you know, a lot of focus on digital publishing.

And then all of a sudden the CPMs dropped by 20 percent and that's why I'm here again I'm hearing that from a lot of publishers that the CPMs dropped around the US elections. Okay. Well, first of all, are you seeing that? You haven't really experienced that. I mean, yeah in general The end of last year was quite strong and beginning of this year is actually like, you know, it's always January is not the best month in digital media.

Yeah, it was actually okay to some aspect and you know, YouTube announced the results. I think they crossed 10 billion revenue for the first time in a quarter in Q4. So it's at least Overall, the platform seems to be growing. So again, there might be differences in different categories. And then, yeah, to answer your question, I think for us you know, I think it's kind of, let's say common answer, but how you execute it is important is diversification.

So we've seen a lot of players that were digital first over the years that maybe focused all their energy and all their knowledge and everything into one platform. And of course, I mean, you know, Those platform, they have their own priorities and they compete in their own market, so they need to evolve as well.

And sometimes if you don't really follow that evolution or if you haven't keep track of it, then, you know, it can be damaging to your business. Well, we saw that with, with Facebook, Facebook, I think is the example of 2014 and, you know, there's been different iteration of, of changes. So if you, you know, if you were building a business that is just using Facebook as a.

platform to get links to your articles, then it can be difficult. So that's really like, you know, one of the thing when I started in 2019 that I took to heart is like, you know, let's expand our distribution avenues. Let's go on all those platforms, like, you know, even Pinterest TikTok fast AVO platform, SVOD platform on TV.

First grow your audience, grow our audience there because, you know, that's the first thing, like we have to find the right format. We have to create the right content or adapt in the right way. And then once we get that sizable audience which usually we are pretty good at, you know, using the tools like the analytics, all this great tools that each platform usually provides.

And then, then you find a way to, to generate the revenue. So of course there's the obvious programmatic advertising that platform share, but then you also open up opportunities for brand deals which is something we're doing as well. Yeah. Well, I wanted to talk to you about that actually.

But before we talk about brands, how about direct to consumer revenue models? Mm-hmm . Or memberships for example. Yeah. Is that something that you are, that, that, that you do and give us a Yeah, yeah. You know, talk us through that. I think it's super interesting actually. I was reading the Pat Reports, obviously they're pushing , this type of of revenue.

And I talk about it in a way that, you know, it's like a deep. type of interaction. So you have your fans in general, and you have your super core fans, and those are the ones that are willing to support you as well and become members and so on. We did some tests on some of our brands. I would say that sometimes the way that we distribute content and the way that our brands are very universal and global, it can be difficult to nail down to, like, a smaller community.

So some people you know, do actually follow our We have like a virtual influencer, for instance, baller. And you know, she's like kind of personality led and for her, like she was able to sell some dance moves in a concert in a virtual world. For instance, you know, one of this he was Avakin life.

So it's like a virtual world. And, you know, people were willing to, to to buy this like specific dance move that she does in her songs. So that, that was one of the engagement, but the, on the, on the membership, what we see is like, it's very strong with creators. So we have like part of the business that works with creators and support them in scaling their business.

Underscore talent. So us based company. And they're like, of course, like we see a lot of you know, product lines Kind of ramification of people becoming big on digital media, but then becoming real businesses, real world businesses, so merchandising and different products. Exactly. And you know, merchandise is something we've done as well with five minute craft, for instance, it was in Walmart.

Yeah. So yeah, over time we, we did test some, some of these approaches. I would say like one of the interesting approach that we have as well, working with brands, but also creators some of them, we. Because we have this experience in scaling a business on digital we actually work with them to help them, whether it's like content distribution generating revenue on new platforms or production services for some of them we, we are helping them and, you know, we have proven our expertise in a way.

And so then people are going to us to understand like how we can help them either produce or distribute more effectively. And that has become like a growing revenue as well line for us. Any conversation with a leader within the digital first. has got to touch on AI at some point. So let's, let's, let's look at that for a second.

Such a 2024 topic. Yes, well, it is. I think it will come into 2021. Well, I think, I think 2025 is where we're going to be by the end of the year and how AI is going to be influencing digital content production. I mean, obviously it's been used in dubbing and and clipping and editing everything else. And you talked about virtual influencers.

I mean, how are you? Adopting AI as the sole publishing and where do you see it becoming most useful to you? Yeah, so I see like the way that we've implemented it in there. I would say two ways one is within the production Process and distribution process you mentioned some of it So because we already have that set of tools and processes to help guide our production and distribution team Basically, we continue to improve those tools and some of those features are AI.

So to give you one example, we have created a lot of thumbnails, as you can imagine, over the years. And so we basically took that bank of thumbnails and we trained the AI to be able to understand the style of a specific brand. And then we can recreate. Thumbnails just by prompting our system.

So, that saves a lot of time. So you train it on the basic thumbnail that you know works, and then you can iterate on that basically for new episodes. Exactly, yeah, yeah. So it keeps the style, it retains the things, and it kind of suggests Potential ways that thumbnails can be interesting and on some platform is very important, obviously it's your packaging.

So so that has led that just one example where, you know, we kind of infused that but there's other parts as well in localization, you know, to help like transcript the text for instance and have a first draft for someone to review. So I think in that part of that production process and then, you know, in the distribution and clipping.

Adapting a format and making sure it stay within the action. So there are companies that entirely, you know, distribution is like, basically this all take a long form making into shorts. We have this into our system basically. So there, it's like a lot of about efficiency, saving time and you know, being faster from production to distribution.

And then the other, I think it's almost really different did like this kind of pure AI content. We see there's so many like faceless channels on YouTube that are purely AI driven, AI created. And I mean, do you, do you run any faceless channels? We tried some like animation you know, we have like yeah, we have some little characters for kids you know, that we tried.

It's like supported by AI. And then we have like some teams that try like pure AI creation. Yeah. For now, what I see, you know, things might evolve later on. And when people listen to this podcast in 2016 or 26 but what, what I see is that for now it's almost like a category on its own. So of course you get the obvious, like, you know, this is not a label as AI, but we're not doing that, but this is actually AI.

And I think a lot of the time people can tell, I mean, it's, it's, you know, I don't think we're at that point yet. And then there's the quite interesting, I think like category of, you know, this is AI content. I watch it. And he has a specific field to it. And I see what people are able to come up with. And you know, there are even some platforms that are just AI video platform, right?

You just go to watch that. You have some award shows for AI fields. So I think it will become a category on its own and people will continue to experiment within that. So there we always testing and seeing if we can come up with interesting stories just with, you know, purely AI tools and AI concept. But I think again, for now, it's probably just like this its own category.

Yeah. I don't think as a consumer, as a viewer myself, like I want to, you know, I want to decide when I watch AI content or I want to decide when I don't watch AI content. And I think it will be like this for a while. So I think the platform will reflect that, you know, Oh, you want to watch AI. So we have this section and this is, you know, you know, it's going to be that.

And then maybe the section is like, you know, it's made by human, you know, and it's like the organic section or something like that. Again you know, conversations that I've had with businesses that are publishing digital first video, they say that, you know, now it's, it's difficult to grow a channel as fast as what, you know, you used to be able to do to say five years ago.

Is that something that you're seeing? Are you, because obviously there is so much content being published and so much choice, you know, is, is that something that you're seeing? It's, it's maybe. Five years ago, six years ago, it was, you could grow a channel at a certain sort of speed. And maybe there's a bit more difficult to do that these days.

Do you, do you see that? I think it has changed the way that you can grow. Like first now there's short form. Obviously it's, it's not so much that it's short form. It's the way that it's discovered by your user. Yeah. So it's algorithm based, usually feed based discovery. And so You know, you have a, you have a chance with this kind of format, let's say, but you need to then stand out and build the brand over time.

So that's a different type of challenge than maybe before. It was more of a slow grind but now it's like, okay, you're going to, you're going to be seen by a certain amount of people. Like usually that's how this platform works. Like they, they do like a little test on maybe thousand viewers and if no one really liked it then they're not going to like promote it.

You know, they try to find the right people to. So you have your chance. So I think. You know, it's different type of discovery. Like we see like almost short form, like a trailer and you know, you can build your consistency over time and then you can expand into longer form going straight to long form.

I think it can work as well, but it depends what kind of niche you're talking about. If you are very broad, of course there's a lot of competition and also things have been done a lot. Like it's been 20 years of YouTube. So. Yeah. It's, you know, it's maybe more difficult sometimes to come up with a brand new long form concept that is not already done.

But you know, if you have like something that is very niche, I think you can easily find your audience and that's the beauty of it as well. And I think there's still some unexplored niche, whether it, I don't know if you're a fan of accounting. There are fans of accounting or people studying for it.

Like you have like a niche, you know, in the UK or in the US of like people going deep into these topics. There's even an elevator channel on YouTube dedicated to review different elevators. One of my favorites. I think about it every time I take an elevator that is a bit special. But yeah, anyway, so like those are very niche topics.

Maybe there's this guy somewhere that loves elevator and then, you know, you can find that actually there are. You know, potentially tens of thousands of fans like him, but you know, he wouldn't be able to find them before. So there, I think, you know, again, don't say people to start elevator channels, but I think there are opportunities within certain niche and when you, when you start it's good to find that niche and not think too broad.

Yeah. Yeah. Just double down on your niche and maybe stay away from the elevator. It's already taken. It's not my channel. Yeah. You know, and that's, that brings me back to the soul publishings, you know, breakout success is probably due to the fact that you talked right at the beginning about it being universal content, craft content, for example, being something that can resonate with everybody.

And it can cut across cultural barriers. Is that one of the key aspects of your success? Do you think that it's, it's absolutely niche, but it's a big niche and it's universal? I mean, is that, is that why you think that you're still having this sustained success? I think, I mean, it's part of the reason that was concert's choice.

Of course, there are other reasons in the way that we use first we set up as digital media from the start. We don't have to deal with maybe a legacy business and try to transfer it or change the way we are built for that. So, We are wearable in the beginning to create content, you know, in a week from ideation to distribution.

Now we shorten it sometimes to two days, you know, for shorts or even less. So of course that has been a big advantage, but then yeah, the, the universal content, I think it helps a lot in terms of discovery and because those platforms are global. And, you know, some other publishers or content creators might think more on a local scape, but like you have access to that audience across borders.

And actually we see, it's not just us we see if the biggest tick tocker in term of followers, it's gotta be lame. I don't know if you know about him. He's like, he's making skits where he doesn't talk like that's his thing. It's like, yeah. Yeah. And when you see him talk, it's like surprising because he never talks in his videos but everyone across like.

Yeah, all the countries resonate with that, you know, because it's like humor where you don't need to know the specificities of what he says. So it's like the global picture in a sense. So, so yeah, of course that helps to, to open this This yeah, this, this potential audience but I think also, we also made conscious choice to localize, translate our content for the ones that have, you know, that are shows that where, where there's voice and where you might yeah, you, you might need to understand it in specific language, but we try to not make it local specific.

So we never done things like news or even like super localized sports content, for instance. Because then, you know, you're talking more to the, the local audience also, it can be divisive and we try to stay positive overall. Yeah, okay. So looking forward to 2025. We're already two months in. What do you see the key opportunities for 2025?

I mean, it comes to, you know, digital. First publishing. I mean, do you Do you see any trends or opportunities that are particularly exciting to you? Yeah, I think I mean, obviously will continue to capitalize on the short form trend. The super long form trend like you mentioned, and the fact that now more and more of our audience is on is watching our programs on TV already.

And like support that distribution further. I think one interesting trend that we've seen last year and we're doing some experiment in that area is this serialized short form content. So I don't know if you remember Quibi which was company that maybe came at the wrong time or in the wrong way.

But basically they were creating some short form shows or vertical shows in their case. But that would be like scripted shows. Super premium. And two premium one might say it didn't work, but anyway, now what we're seeing is like, there are. Even on the platform themselves or specific platforms that distribute content that are this mini series And you can watch it either like one by one Or like as a as a whole on the platform on specific platforms, but they are like vertical content.

They are like kind of interesting TV. Some, some of it is a bit like telenovelas so it's like overdramatic sometimes topics, but we see that people actually love to consume content in this way. So, you know, they might either watch it as a short form or they might start to watch it as a series of things.

And last year there was a couple of Of content of videos, channels that went viral on TikTok, kind of following this, even though it was not exactly necessarily scripted, a lot of it, but it was that serialized aspect of people going back every day to watch a short form. So I think it, yeah, we are trying something into this.

So I would say if there's like interesting trend, maybe that for this year, that is not the broad ones that would be one. That's interesting. And the, and so do you do any scripted content? So far. I mean, is that, is that something that you've tested, you know, because I always think of your content as all unscripted and, you know, all factual, but, Oh, we did, we did a little bit yeah, of like, you know, translating our fun content into different series.

So yeah, we, we did experimented with some of this but yeah, always trying to, to, to keep our, our core yeah, values in, in the content as well. Okay. Talking about the digital first industry as a whole and, and perhaps producers. There may be crossing over from the TV industry who are taking their first steps in digital first.

Could you give some advice to them? I mean, a lot of people think, oh, it's too late. You know, they're, they're, they're too late to the game. When you've got many companies like yours have been in existence for a decade or longer and having real success within, within digital first. I mean, What sort of advice would you give to a TV production business that maybe has some catalogue, their own rights in, you know, maybe a couple of hundred hours of TV content?

What, what advice would you give them setting out on their digital first path? Yeah, I mean, I would say to going back to the point I was making before on the niche. So of course it depends on the kind of catalogue it is, but try to find like. Niche content and not be too broad to start with because it can be just more difficult to compete for attention, frankly, if it's a very broad topic.

So I think if you can nail it down to like specific topic and then try to push within that niche, then you will have more success, especially in the early stages to grow to certain size, because then your audience will be much more targeted and much more engaged. So I would say that's probably the first yeah, the first content.

And then the first sorry, advice. And I would say second thing, it's maybe a relevant as well to content creators in general to, it's to find like delegation or partners if necessary. So You know, we, we've worked with, with brands for instance and with creators as well to help them a certain stage at delegation, but also it can actually be successful to see like we can support this this initiative on digital, who have the tools.

Because sometimes companies are not necessarily set up to to do this effectively. So you can consult essentially, you know, you can Consult and we even like execute for some brands. So we work on a Creolia YouTube channel, for instance Hasbro transformers, where we did production and help them with distribution.

So, so yeah, we, we work and we help, we actually execute for them in terms of like editing the content distributing it, optimizing the monetization and so on. Yeah. You know, we're not the only one who is doing, we're doing this. So it's just to say like. That can be actually a great way as well for these companies because It might be able to be more cost effective and actually the overall result will be better talking about brands Do you see more and more brand led channels launching over the next couple of years, you know brands becoming entertainment Brands in their own right you mentioned Crayola, which is I know it's something again That you're nominated for the Digital Video Awards.

But, and we're seeing a number of sportswear brands and retailers in the UK having real success like Foot Asylum and JD Sports and one or two others. Is that something that you expect to see more of? Yeah, definitely. I mean, yeah, a brand like Rayalida you mentioned. You know, it's a brand that when we work with them, we're able to grow their views, organic views 40 times.

So you can see like for them, it's like a new way to advertise without having to maybe pay for the visibility. Yeah. And the engagement is very strong because it's organic content. So people want to watch and engage. So I think, yeah, it's definitely a trend that I see continuing. They want to be present in this platform where the consumers are, they want to engage.

Well, it's direct to their own consumers, right? Rather than having a TV channel as the middleman. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, I'd probably still like. Target their own, their advertising to have specific audiences that they want to, to target. That might not be, but they know it's going to be like a, also another way.

And I think the interesting thing you see also love the reverse, right? So you see a lot of. People that started as creators and become brands in their own rights brand in the sense that launching actual products and, you know, using the platform that they build with the content and with the fans in order to launch this you know, potential real life product that.

You know, they know their audience pretty well. They have a great marketing tool because they have huge platform. So like, I would also see that competition as well for the brands, like that you have this new brands that come from the content side all of a sudden, and the reach is huge and the results are really good as well as we've seen you know, I think in the U S but also in the UK of like all the, some of the products different business for some of those.

And again, they're turning into entrepreneurs, I think it's becoming different, but it's still like very relevant. Yeah. And now it's time for Story of the Week, where my guests get to nominate the biggest content industry story of the past seven days. Victor, what's your Story of the Week? So it's a story of YouTube and TV, so it was about, I think, just a week ago.

So there was a Neil Mohan article, so the CEO of YouTube made some noise saying that in the US, the share of, the share of devices that, you know, where viewers are on YouTube is, the number one is TV, and it's, you know, it's taken over mobile. Which is something that, you know, we've seen for a while, but I think it's like Just further show first the success of YouTube on the TV device, but also that YouTube themselves is something they really want to to push and promote, you know, for obvious reasons there's obviously the content side of things, you know, they want to encourage more of the.

The TV content to, to be on YouTube and, you know, I think a lot of partners have seen a lot of success there as well, the broadcasters, but also the advertisers, because a TV is big market. And YouTube is still only taking a small percentage of this. So I guess they want to go after that growth of the advertising revenue.

Yeah, of course. I mean, what do you think the TV industry will look like in five years time? Well, I think it's interesting because like So sometimes some of the what we see works on YouTube on TV, it's like, it's actually. Some of the TV formats is just like a different way of doing it. So I think the programs themselves might actually evolve over time but not be so different in the way.

But then I think there will always be this kind of different mixed strategies. You know, some of the broadcasters will we will continue to push on YouTube. All of them are very invested there, but also have their programs and their platforms where maybe there is more that you can see. I know some of them, I found success by, you know, promoting on YouTube and having certain amount of content and generating revenue there, but also like.

seeing increase on their streaming on their own platforms as well. So I think this, this balance of like a promotion platform, but also like a, a consumer platform for them will will, will continue to, to, to be found. Yeah. And now it's time for hero of the week, where my guests get to nominate the person or thing that's made a big impact on them in the last few days.

So it's a thing. I think it's a thing. So I would say Spotify interesting. So they, last year they announced that they are pushing more into video content and they start to share some of the revenue of the premium users, which is a big part of, of Spotify user base with the, with the content creators.

So, and generally they share some results. You know, there's been like several people that made five figures from what they say, hundreds of them made four figures. Of course, you know, it's still like kind of small scale compared to what we know, but I found it. You know, for me, the other hero of the week, because it's another platform who goes and support the content creation ecosystem within the podcast sphere, but also broadly within the video sphere.

So I think it's a, it's good. And they also been profitable, I think from the earning call. So, you know, I hope this will continue to, to, to grow as a platform. be leaning into video podcasting with Spotify? Yeah. So we actually distribute some of our video content on, on, on Spotify and on podcast already.

Some of it wasn't necessarily made to be podcast, but actually we found that people consume them on podcast like Brightside for instance. Right. And actually we, we found some good success like, and we got millions of listens on those. And so, so yeah, we, we, we, and again, without marketing necessarily, but Yeah, it's, it's, yeah, we think it's a growing platform and we're happy they're investing more into the ecosystem.

And this was content that was originally shot as video content that is just purely working as an audio experience. Exactly. So, you know, it's again, all experimenting, but yeah, we, we found the audience and we, yeah, we're happy to, to see that there's more push into that direction from Spotify.

Yeah. And now, Victor, it's time to find out who or what is going in the bin. So it's also going to be a thing, I guess. It's the AI PIN. I don't know if you remember, it was a device. AI PIN? Yeah, it was a device that was launched about last year or maybe even, which was supposed to be a revolutionary AI device that you put on your chest and you can ask it to take some actions.

Oh, yeah. And yeah, it got a lot of, you know, harsh criticism online. Yeah. And actually it went officially bankrupt, I think this week. Yeah. So like people that bought it they, yeah, they, they didn't get any kind of refund or anything like that. It was 600, I think. And you have to take subscription as well, 25 per month.

I think fundamentally, maybe like the product, there was a vision behind it. I'm not going to explain it, but I, it's just one of those where. You know, there are other things there was like the robots with AI that's a go get your toilet paper, for instance. I just again, like one of those things like with AI, I think, you know, there's a lot of interesting things going on and a lot of progress being made and love things to take from, for us, but also like.

Let's sometimes be rational and critical as well of, of some of those announcements. And yeah, well, wearable tech is something that is, is still struggling to get into the, the mainstream, isn't it? I mean, we've seen meta and the glasses and obviously Apple is moving into that as well. But in terms of other wearables, I mean, the, the, there doesn't seem to be anything else, certainly that's AI driven, but necessarily has made that breakthrough, but, yeah, exactly.

It's one of those where, you know, the AI word is there for a specific reason, maybe, but AI for AI's sake. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Victor, thank you very much for joining us on TellyCast this week. It's been brilliant to speak to you. All the best. For London Screenings Week, which I know you're here and having lots of meetings, and we look forward to seeing you at the ceremony for the Digital Video Awards in June.

Yeah, looking forward. Thank you for having me. Thanks for being on the show. Well, that's about it for this week's show. Thanks very much for watching. TellyCast was produced by Spirit Studios and recorded in London. We'll be back with another show next week. Until then, stay safe.