M+E Connections

While worldwide demand for content and programming continues to grow, a shift in what content resonates with viewers in any given country is changing, according to Alisa Joseph, SVP, business strategy and development at Whip Media.

During the Audience + Insights breakout session “No Passports Needed: Content is Travelling Across Borders to Meet Audience Demand” at the Hollywood Innovation and Transformation Summit (HITS) on May 19, she pointed to a recent Whip Media study that found European audiences across France, Italy, Germany, Spain and the UK were consuming less US originating content.

Although the U.S. remains the dominant content supplier for Europe, competition for audiences is encouraging platforms to look for compelling content from a larger group of sources, she noted.

Meanwhile, a shift in what audiences want to watch is making way for new content to be discovered, according to Whip Media.

For studios and distributors, therefore, enhancing the value of titles around the globe is becoming increasingly more crucial.

During the HITS session, Joseph shared emerging trends around the worldwide distribution of local titles, content attracting viewers’ attention, and what is needed to make better content planning and strategy decisions allowing media and entertainment companies to maximise their revenue.

“Content is travelling across borders,” she told attendees. Although she conceded that’s “not really new news,” she said: “I think the fact that the streaming platforms have really taken off” and content is “crossing borders is an increasing phenomenon.”

The big streaming players, including Amazon, Disney and Netflix are helping to drive this trend and they’re competing in local markets around the world, she noted.

The amount of content is “increasing and there’s much more variety and new markets that are having impact in terms of their original content making traction in other markets,” she said, pointing to the popularity of Globoplay’s Brazilian telenovela Hidden Truths (in Portuguese) around the world.

Meanwhile, there’s a need for more data to understand the opportunities and to track the trends that are being seen in local markets around the world, she said, adding Whip Media has been doing a series of white papers on the subject.

The “big epiphany” in one of those papers was that, although U.S. original content still makes up the lion’s share and remains a “dominant player” in all the major European markets, there was a 10% decrease over the last five years, and “that’s significant,” she said.

She predicted it will be even more interesting to track this trend over the next 10 years.

To view the entire presentation, click here.

The Hollywood Innovation and Transformation Summit event was produced by MESA in association with the Hollywood IT Society (HITS), Media & Entertainment Data Center Alliance (MEDCA), presented by ICVR and sponsored by Genpact, MicroStrategy, Whip Media, Convergent Risks, Perforce, Richey May Technology Solutions, Signiant, Softtek, Bluescape, Databricks, KeyCode Media, Metal Toad, Shift, Zendesk, EIDR, Fortinet, Arch Platform Technologies and Amazon Studios.