A bonus episode with Andy and Jo, fresh off the plane from Content Europe in Lisbon, where both were on panels and Jo was moderating. Emily is absent this week, so the two debrief on the themes that dominated the conference.

The defining question that ran through almost every session was deceptively simple: what even is a hit anymore? A show can hit 200 million YouTube views and still not be financially viable. That gap between attention and money, Andy and Jo agree, is not self-correcting — and without investment flowing back in on terms that make sense for kids content, the market risks stalling further. The advertising conversation is equally candid, with Jo pointing to WildBrain Media Solutions and Lumi as two companies actively trying to solve the COPPA problem by taking kids YouTube inventory out of the programmatic black box and selling it directly to advertisers.

Jo closes with the sharpest observation of the episode: that kids media has quietly allowed tech company measurement frameworks — 28-day windows, engagement metrics, short-term return expectations — to define success in a space that has never worked that way. You can't speed run fandom. Patient capital is the only kind that works in kids media, and the industry needs to say so louder.

Key Takeaways:

1. "What is a hit?" is now genuinely an open question — the old definition (big linear partner, west coast origin, strong ratings) no longer holds, and the panel at Content Europe couldn't agree on a replacement, which is itself telling.
2. Attention and revenue have been decoupled, and the industry hasn't yet found a reliable way to bridge them. 200 million YouTube views doesn't automatically translate to financial viability for the producers who made the content.
3. WildBrain and Lumi are testing a direct sales model for kids YouTube inventory — selling contextually against known IP rather than through programmatic systems, which offers advertisers brand safety and producers a better commercial deal.
4. Connected TV co-viewing changes the advertising calculus — when a child watches YouTube on the living room TV, a parent is often in the room. That audience is more valuable and more brand-safe than mobile-first viewing, and the industry is only beginning to price that in.
5. Platform native, not platform everywhere — the shift observed across multiple Lisbon panels is from spray-and-pray digital distribution to intentional, platform-specific strategy: YouTube as top of funnel, FAST as destination viewing, streaming partners for deeper engagement.
6. Tech company measurement frameworks don't fit kids media — 28-day Netflix windows, short-term engagement metrics, and VC-style return expectations are being applied to an industry where fandom takes years to build and IP value compounds over decades.
7. Patient capital is the only capital that works in kids — and the industry needs to make that case more deliberately to investors, rather than trying to fit kids IP into frameworks designed for SaaS companies or adult entertainment.
8. The swing back to curated, intentional viewing is good news for kids content — audiences paralysed by infinite choice are gravitating back towards scheduled, lean-back experiences, which plays to the strengths of well-programmed kids IP on FAST and connected TV platforms.

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Hello, and welcome to a bonus episode of the Kids Media Club Podcast.

I'm Andy Williams.

And I'm Jo Redfern.

And we don't have Emily here this time around because Andy and I are fresh off the back of Content Europe in Lisbon, where we spent the last couple of days.

So we figured we'd hop on and give a bit of a bonus set with some takeaways from our time at Content Europe.

So.

Yes.

How was your journey back, Gandy?

Yeah, it was fine.

I mean, I think everyone had a bit of a nightmare in the journey in.

I think a lot of.

A lot of queuing and grumbling in Passport Control for about two hours.

But the.

The journey out was very swift.

Maybe.

Maybe they just couldn't wait to get rid of us.

Exactly.

Maybe it was all those media folks.

Yeah, yeah, maybe Lisbon was more like, don't let the door kick you on the ass in the way.

On the way out, but very kind of begrudging about letting us in at the start.

I know it's good and actually Lisbon was fabulous.

It helped.

It was nice and sunny, but it's such a.

Such a great city to kind of host an event like that.

Yeah, I had a great time.

How about you?

What were your kind of impressions?

Yeah, it's always nice to regroup with kids media folk.

And obviously we're not too far away from Kids Screen, where you and Emily were in February.

And I was with kids media people at the Kids and Teens Summit.

But I think, yes, a function of being in Lisbon made it feel a little bit different.

It was interesting having been to Lisbon twice in the last couple of weeks, as you know, the first time for Stream TV Europe, which, which is a bigger event, less purely content focused, but in a way that was quite nice to be mixing with people who came from distribution.

There were some sports people there, Dazn, the sports streamer, were there some YouTube people, and even down to ad tech and CTV professionals and content delivery networks, people that I wouldn't necessarily meet or hear from in panels, but Actually, all of it is the world in which we operate in some way and they all have their space and sometimes that gives you a nice perspective.

So whilst it's lovely to focus on purely content people, as we have done for the last couple of days, and that's equally enjoyable, I think I do quite like going in and hanging around at the intersections of different parts of the media business.

At some point, I think we could perhaps do more of it in kids media, I think, is the.

The main thing I would say.

Yeah.

And I didn't go to the Stream TV event, but I was reading about it from Evan Shapiro's posts and it felt like it had some of that celebrity sort of stardust sprinkled over it from industry kind of influencers or thought leaders.

Yeah, and I mean, that's a good point to call out because it's one of the themes that came across in the panels, Content Europe, and particularly the panel that I was moderating with Agnes Augustine and Adina Pitt and Gia Delaney and Kate o'.

Connor.

We were talking, it was the first panel that I moderated and it was the state of the kids content nation.

And we were talking, you know, let's not dwell on the negative, but it is fair to say.

And even Evan Shapiro and our lovely Emily Horgan has posted about it very recently.

In terms of.

We can say that kids are watching more content across more platforms than ever before, yet the economics are still broken behind it.

Both things can be true at once.

One implies there's a healthy market, the other one implies that the market has broken down somehow.

And you've heard me say the words market fairly before, but one of the things that came out of most of the sessions was this need for collaboration and partnership and actually extending on that.

What we just spoke about with Stream TV Europe is very much a case of let's not circle the wagons anymore, let's not just keep ourselves to ourselves.

It's a time to collaborate, to throw open the doors, to look outwards maybe rather than inwards as a way to move from this point forward, which I felt came through.

Did you see any evidence of that in the panels that you listened to?

And of course, the panel that we also were on.

Yeah, I mean, I thought it was.

So the panel we were on was to discuss the kind of the DNA of making a hit kids TV show.

And I think all of the.

Probably most of the speakers, because, I mean, some incredibly experienced and produced some big shows, but probably all of them were feeling that they didn't have the secret to the magic formula that would guarantee a hit TV show in the current climate, really, because, yeah, everything's quite uncertain.

But it was.

But in some ways because of that, it was a kind of an interesting and quite open discussion.

I think in terms of the challenges around that, some of the dynamics and conditions that might kind of that kind of magic alchemy that might come together to deliver a hit show when you have something like Bluey.

I really enjoyed that panel actually, because it was an opportunity to.

I think we even used the term, you know, the anatomy of a hit.

We had a bit of a session, a bit of a section at the opening where it was what even is a hit anymore.

Which is a great place to start given that the economics are different and the platforms are different.

You used to be able to, you know, 10, 15 years ago, you kind of knew what a hit was, a kids hit show.

It would usually come out of the west coast of the US and it would have a big linear distribution partner.

But now what is a hit is a very different thing.

But then that anatomy of a hit, we broke that down.

And it was really interesting to hear some of the viewpoints on that.

Particularly when you mentioned Bluey, that that traditional engine of hit making is.

Is not necessarily the only engine of hit making anymore.

When you've got culturally specific things like Bluey, K Pop, Demon Hunters, Mighty Little Beam, those came from anywhere but that west coast hit factory.

Yeah, absolutely.

And we talked about Danny Go and Miss Rachel and David.

Michelle kind of said, I thought something which was quite astute on our panel about the fact that we come from it from almost like a more traditional producer's point of view.

And a lot of the shows are big hits on, on YouTube are kind of talent driven shows where they could start relatively cheap and nimble and then grow from there.

So Danny, Danny, go on.

Ms. Rachel very much shows that that kind of arrives out of that creator driven, that they're the face in front of the camera.

They can almost do everything themselves to start with and then grow from there.

But the traditional producer approach of finding material, developing that, assembling a crew to deliver that it's harder to make those economics work within the YouTube space.

Yes.

I think probably the, the conference as a whole was grappling with.

I think in some ways I felt like it was a lot of the participants came from more of a traditional TV background and particularly if they operate within the kids space.

Yeah.

And they're having to make sense of a world in which attention and profitability have been Slightly decoupled from each other.

Absolutely.

Going back to what it means to have a hit, you could have a hit in terms of attention and awareness, but that may not correspond to money.

Yeah, yeah.

It came up more than a few times, not just in this panel about making a hit kids show.

You know, how do you define a hit?

What even is a hit?

Where do they come from?

What was the anatomy of a hit?

And actually how do you measure a hit?

Because that's like you said, if you measure it in attention terms, that might not look quite so successful in financial terms.

And one of the examples that came up is you might have a piece of content that rockets to 200 million views on YouTube but if you judged it on the monetization there, it wouldn't look quite as successful yet.

Oh, absolutely.

Who's going to turn their nose up at 200 million views?

Particularly if they're pretty engaged views?

So there is this disconnect in how we, not just how we measure success and what is a hit, but how we value it as well as how we monetize it.

And that impacts everything.

It impacts, as we've said, the flow of investment into the industry.

And that's an issue because that investment isn't flowing in.

And currently I think it would be folly to, to assume that the market will self correct.

I don't think that will happen.

So yeah, it's, it's interesting how, how we address that.

Yeah, I mean, I think particularly in kids.

Kids has always had an uncomfortable relationship with commercially supported television.

The.

And ultimately I think what we're having to grapple with is if there isn't a place for ad funded TV for kids, there'll be less content produced for kids.

And I think it's that question about.

I think, I think some people within kids feel uncomfortable about adverts being served.

Against kids, which has always happened.

Let's face it.

You know, we watched kids TV when we were kids and there were still ads against kids tv.

I loved adverts.

So did I.

Very often.

You remembered the adverts more than you remembered the shows that you were watching.

Totally.

And the reason that kind of, I enjoyed adverts as a kid is that no, I'd, I'd enjoy those, the toys that they were advertising.

Sometimes they wouldn't live up to the, to the promise of the advert.

But maybe that's a life lesson in and of itself.

But I think that's so I think in some ways the situation with YouTube is an extension of the, the, the tension in between producing content for a kids audience, everyone feeling the responsibility of that and, and finding some way in which advertising can comfortably and ethically sit within that space.

And I wondered whether we were talking about Stream TV and I didn't go to that but from all of the promotion around it, part of it reminded me a bit around the promotion of something like MadFest.

It felt like it was very much advertising adjacent.

Oh for sure.

Yeah.

I mean that's, that is one of the things that came across and yes it does apply and cause problems for kids media in that we basically live in an ad funded world now.

A media world that is predominantly ad funded.

All of the subscription platforms have an ad tier we used to pay a subscription to not see ads.

Now every single subscription streamer has an ad tier and actually they're increasing the price of the premium tier that where you pay not to see ads.

They're increasing the prices there at a higher rate than they're increasing the prices on the ad tiers because they want you to watch ads.

There's no getting away from it.

And as Marianne Roncher said in one of her sessions, the ad free viewer is likely to go extinct within the next 12 months.

Well, that basically tells you all you need to know.

We live in an ad funded world.

But you're right, we've not.

Even though advertising against kids content and in kids content has always happened, it's gone so far with YouTube, I think there's a nervousness around it and because of COPPA compliance and because YouTube makes $40 million of advertising against grown up content, there isn't really that motivation to look at how we fix that or make it an economic model that does attract investment into kids.

I mean I'm kind of, I'm probably quite hopeful about the possibility of some kind of course correction around that.

And I think because I think everyone comes from the.

Everyone agrees about the need to safeguard an audience because a different, different criteria apply for under 13s.

But I think there's scope to look at the way the rules currently operate and, and almost see are they working in the way that was intended.

I think there's.

Yes, agree sometimes I think with contextual advertising which is what Kids advertising on YouTube Kids is contextual advertising.

So it can only have ever served which reflect the context of the, of the program that's being watched.

But that in itself sometimes throws up inappropriate advertising that maybe contextually it might look like it's a cartoon but maybe the advert served against it will be more scary and more horror based.

So I think stuff kind of slips through the gaps and, and I think you could make an argument in some ways to, to have to allow some smart personalization.

My, you might almost mean that you have more appropriate adverts served against that audience than you do currently.

Yeah, and the solve for that currently is something that we've spoken about a lot recently.

You know, there are two companies doing it in the sense that it's Wild Main, Wild Brain Media Solutions and Lumi who are looking at selling their inventory across their YouTube portfolio directly.

So rather than through the black box programmatic way of self serve, selling inventory across YouTube, actually taking it out of that loop so that they can sell it contextually, you want to advertise against My Little Pony or Maya the Bee and you are an advertiser that wants a curated brand safe, almost kind of premium ad buying experience.

Well, we can, we can serve you that against these audience and against these demographics who are watching a lot of kids content on YouTube.

So that I think is an interesting development because again, it makes me happy that there are people saying, okay look, well we can't do it this way.

COPPA compliance exists and until such time as it maybe is tweaked to, to help support the business, there is a solution in that we can aggregate content together and we can sell it directly to advertisers rather than put it through the largely automated black box systems that YouTube offers.

So, and that itself should help then bring the investment back in whether it will be sufficient and whether it will kind of go a long way to fixing things, who knows.

But it's great to see people saying, right, okay, well then let's work out a solution within these constraints that we have.

And that, that's the, and that's the area that I makes me more sort of hopeful really.

Also, I mean I was really struck in our conversation with Kate Smith from Wild Brain about some of the, some of the details around the, the change in behavior that the rising connected TV creates really for, for the audience of kids content that one is with once you move from a handheld device to a TV in the living room, co viewing becomes far more of a thing.

And I think that also goes some way to addressing some of the concerns over safeguarding.

And also it just kind of makes the content more visible really and it probably creates more of a platform for, for content that's more like traditional tv.

Well this, and this is something that we spoke about in Content Europe in the sense that if you, you've got a generation of kids now who turn on the TV and what is served to them on a connected TV is a suite of apps.

And more often than not, YouTube is sat there next to iPlayer, next to Hulu, HBO, Max, whatever.

This is where the YouTube is TV debate rages on.

Is it TV, is it not TV if it is an app that sits next to traditional TV apps, bvod apps on your connected TV screen, to them it is tv.

It is appearing on the tv, you press play and some content appears on it.

To them it is tv.

So that is a lot of the.

Adults as well now.

Yeah.

And I think that is YouTube.

Of course, YouTube want TVs ad dollars and they are promoting a more premium TV like viewing experience because it is sitting as an app on a connected tv.

But similarly, one of the things that came up several times in Lisbon was that there is so much content out there now actually there is a swing back towards this more curated TV like viewing experience rather than this bombardment of content that's just thrown at you.

And we all get paralyzed by that content choice.

And now you've got this move back to actually let's watch more intentionally, maybe a little bit slower and if somebody can curate that experience for us, great, we'll have that.

Well, that feels very tv, like old fashioned tv, like.

So it's interesting how what goes around comes around ultimately.

And I. Yeah, absolutely.

And I also think there's, that, there's, I think a growing recognition amongst producers as well that YouTube is going to become a platform that's part of, part of their flywheel of content.

So, so they would like that platform to both be a place in which their viewers and audience were safe, but also a platform in which there was a potential for them to kind of make money from their content so they could produce more of it.

And I think, I think that there's, there's such a kind of a growing recognition of that, that, that's kind of what makes me a bit more optimistic that solutions will be found.

And even if those rules aren't amended that effectively there are sort of smart minds around how to, how to kind of maximize the opportunities within the framework that exists already.

Yeah.

And one of the things that came up when we, the panel that was moderating with Banerjay and Warner Brothers Discovery and Wild Brain and Sesame talking about digital distribution.

We talk about it, we basically were talking about platform native or platform first, not platform everywhere.

And we spoke about how we're now using those platforms much more intentionally.

So yes, you need to be on YouTube, but it's not all about YouTube and thinking about YouTube as an endpoint and a monetization opportunity is maybe too blinkered.

If you think about YouTube as one node in your content ecosystem, then you kind of think about it as a.

It can be top of funnel, it can be a routine, it can be your front door.

But then actually you then might migrate those audience or those fans to a fast channel or to your 22 minute TV episode with your streaming partner.

And that's one of the things that both Banijay and Monica Ohman from Warner Brothers was saying.

We think about it now at a much higher level.

We think about how we articulate our IP across all of this network and try not to get too sucked into how much Money is just YouTube bringing us in.

And actually what is YouTube doing for us outside of hopefully it's bringing some revenue.

But how is it funneling people into our IP ecosystem?

How can we use it to help show our licensees to the best effect?

If we've got toy partners, you know, Totally Spies.

Dan from Banerjee was talking about Totally Spies, which is a great IP because it's an IP that's got fans that are both 9 years old and 29 years old because it's kind of multi generational.

So even using the digital ecosystem as a way to talk to different sectors of your fan base, Sesame, case in point, they use TikTok to talk to adults and grownups about the Sesame and what it does and its mission.

But they use YouTube and of course its streaming partners to access the kids.

So we've moved away from the okay, we've got access to all these platforms and our digital strategy is just spray and play, spray and pray, put everything everywhere to now this much more intentional, selective, platform, native, not platform everywhere thinking.

And I think that's a great term, a great shift.

And yeah, I think people are becoming far more, I mean it's always been there.

But that sense that you make, you make content for your kind of context aware so you're aware of the context in which your content is viewed.

So whether that's the living room on a connected TV or a mobile phone, whether that's social media or subscription, whether that's pay per view or, or a live event, that basically the context in which that stuff is delivered, that that is the medium is the kind of the message ultimately.

And we've seen people understand that nuance.

I do think they're, that they do understand it more.

And again, you've heard me talk many times about need states and it plays into that as well.

You know, the medium is the message equates to thinking about the need state of your audience at a particular time.

If you've got a 14, 15 year old who's on the bus on the way to School, a 15 second TikTok that catches them up on something that they've missed is the most valuable content for them at that time.

It services their needs state best.

They haven't got time for a 90 minute movie and they're on a bus looking at a phone screen.

So it's thinking about how you articulate your IP to best service your fans in those particular moments, in those particular need states.

And in that context that you rightly say that doesn't mean to say that on a Friday night they're not ready to lean back and watch a two hour movie with a bucket of popcorn and that's when they're feeling more passive and ready to be indulged.

But it requires a much more nuanced understanding of how you show up platform natively to the best service of your audiences.

And it's great to see how that again, Monica Oman from Warner Brothers was very articulate saying, you know, that required a development of a new skill set and a new lot of competencies within media people.

And actually now that is beginning to gather pace within the Banerjays and within the wbds.

So yes, there's always inevitably a lag when there's a big shift or a big technological development in terms of those skill sets and competencies catching up.

But it does feel like that they are now one of these.

I was going to ask, did you feel like there was a different perspective or nuance on that?

On that, on those issues from the different conferences that you, you're at Lisbon.

I mean, it's interesting because I've been reflecting on the differences and obviously the content, heavy content Europe, it comes with people who are very, very passionate about what they do.

And because it's kids media add an extra layer of passion.

Quite rightly too, because we need that advocacy and almost bloody mindedness to make sure that we move out of what could be called market failure at this moment in time.

So I found less of that at Stream tv.

But what I liked about Stream TV was almost this kind of dynamism hustle factor.

Okay, things are moving quick, let's spot opportunities.

I think we could borrow some of that energy in kids media.

So I'm hoping that we can embody that and some of the conversations had would really take that and let's Hope that we can run with that baton.

One of the other things that I wanted to point out, which I thought was perhaps still in that lag, we spoke about competencies and skill sets evolving and catching up.

Is this maybe because of the tech platforms and the tech companies now almost algorithmically making content decisions driven by those engagement metrics rather than valuing that craft or that child development expertise?

And you know the length of time it does take to grow fans and it's something that Emily has spoken about for a long time.

Well, we've all spoken about it.

You don't speed run fandom where kids are concerned.

It takes time.

There's almost a natural pace to it.

Discovery, you build affinity, then it becomes love and then it becomes fandom.

And actually that you can't force.

And I do wonder if in recent years we've perhaps devolved too much of kids content measurement and success.

We've devolved the measurement and the definition of that to the tech companies.

And that maybe is then meant that people look at kids media as something that you can measure and you can invest in in the same way as tech companies, tech companies or SaaS companies or whatever.

And actually it's not.

You can't do that.

And so if there is investment that comes into kids Media, I think we need investors who fully understand the concept of patient capital.

There is value to be had there.

We know that Pokemon is a brand.

It's an IP that's worth $150 billion.

There is value there, but it cannot be invested in and measured and then exited for a 10x valuation in three years like tech products are.

And I think maybe we've perhaps allowed that measurement system to proliferate into kids media and it just doesn't work that way.

And again, we've also allowed streamers like Netflix who measure success of content in 28 day windows.

Again, that doesn't work in kids either.

And perhaps we've let that happen and we've not, we've not saber rattled enough and said, no, no, no, measurement and capital needs to be deployed in an entirely new, unique way in kids media.

And maybe lobbied for that a little bit louder.

Yeah, I think that's, that's a very, very good point.

And I feel like maybe that's, that shift is happening even outside of kids, that there's that recognition that some of these seeds take longer to grow than kind of, maybe they've necessarily been given in, in more of the kind of the recent period.

Maybe that's a, that's a kind of good optimistic place to.

To end the chat on.

Absolutely.

Green shoots of growth and optimism, and we're proponents of optimism at the kids media club.

So, yes, let's end it there.

But it was great to hang out together in Lisbon in real life.

And, yeah, really good fun.

A box in a podcast studio.

So, yeah, it was great to hang out.

Yeah, always good to kind of see people in person.

But yeah, no, it was great.

Really good fun.

And you did a fantastic job moderating and hosting the session that I was a part of.

Expertly guiding the discussion seems to be Magnesia, and we threatened to take it kind of off the rails.

Well, yes, due in no small part to having done a podcast for six years.

So, yes, it's paid dividends in that sense.

Yes.

Good training.

Okay, that's great.

So I hope you guys enjoyed that chat and we will see you all next week.

Please like and subscribe and listen to us on the usual platforms.

And yeah, we'll see you next week.

Thanks.