Jennifer was impressed by the innovations presented this year sharing how the how access to more data impacts brands ability to deliver messages; she also touched on Netflix and it upcoming ad-supported tier and more.

And really talk about what happened over the last couple of weeks, Jennifer, how you doing?

[00:00:34] Dave Forde: You know what. Life could not be better this whole, last couple of years. And every negative thing that it brought is all in the rear view, the sun is shining. We're gonna have some hot conversations was a great discussion here, so let's get right into it.

But before we go too deep, Jennifer. Yeah. Give us a little context, little background. What is your role at M&K Media? Explain it for the people.

So I take, you know, whatever the planners give me, I run with it. All

[00:01:26] Jennifer Young: Okay. I love Below Deck Down Under I am. I'm not a huge, real reality person, but I love this franchise.

I watch all the regular Below Deck, Below Deck Mad, Below Deck Sailing. And Below Deck Down Under was a great addition. I love the cast and I personally get sea sick easily. I got sea sick on a huge cruise ship. So I'm fascinated that they live on this yacht season and have to deal with ridiculous charter guests. So I love.

[00:01:58] Jennifer Young: The Resort [00:02:00] it's from the creators of Palm Springs and Mr. Robot, which were fantastic series. It's a dramedy about vacationers at a resort in a Mayan Riviera and they encounter unsolved mysteries.

So it sounds similar to a White Lotus, which I loved, but I feel really bad for these vacationers. I'm assuming this is right after COVID and they're so excited to go away to beautiful resort. And now they're dealing with mysterious criminal activity. So I'd be seriously bummed if I were them, but it's gonna be really entertaining.

[00:02:39] Jennifer Young: Jeremy Strong. He plays Kendall Roy on Succession. And I'm wants us with that show. Love it.

[00:02:46] Jennifer Young: Yes, a hundred percent.

So I'd love to hear his perspective on his character firsthand. Yeah, he's an incredible actor and I, he seems very intelligent. So I think it'd be really interesting.

[00:03:04] Jennifer Young: Absolutely. There are lot, there's lots of exciting information coming out of the upfronts. Innovation was a huge theme of these presentations. The broadcasters are now able to layer their first party data with advertiser zone data in order order to really hone in on the audience. And since it's first party data to the broadcasters and advertisers.

Broadcasters aren't using third party cookies anymore. So they're making sure they're what Roger's called future proof or compliant with upcoming regulations and the broadcasters plan on making these tools self-service which will allow advertisers to take direct control of targeting methods, which as a control freak, I really appreciate.

And if advertisers have the budget, I agree. This is the strategy they should employ. And of course, content is always a theme at these fronts, right? Corus is launching Pluto TV. This fall. It's an AVOD out of the us. And it has, I believe over 20,000 hours of content TOB, which is Roger's AVOD asset. They have 14 original productions being launched this year, which is pretty exciting.

And we saw many new shows introduced, especially on CORUS Specialty channels and Bell CTV network. I saw the number of us shows was somewhat limited. So it appear the broadcasters cherry picked the most compelling ones and we saw lots of drama type shows, and I think we'll be seeing a lot more content on the streaming side, as well as the year progresses.

[00:05:12] Jennifer Young: Absolutely definitely streaming on the bigger small screen streaming is a very effective method of extending reach to linear buy, and we all know that building incremental reach can be a challenge and streaming effectively increases brain awareness. Plus digital streaming reaches viewers outside the home, and it could be applied to multiple parts of the funnel.

So there's increasingly a lot more content to utilize there.

[00:06:13] Jennifer Young: Well, broadcasters are now able to layer their first party data with advertisers on data in order to really reach the target audience, which is extremely advantageous.

To advertisers. And by using this first party data, it circumvents the real need for third party data. So it's compliant with the cookie-less world, which is now more prevalent than ever. And broadcasters are collaborating to join, to develop joint reporting on key metrics, such as reaching frequency, impressions, and GRPs.

Although I'm not sure how far these collaborations will go since they are all direct competitors, but it's definitely beneficial as a buyer. And I'm looking forward to seeing how these innovations will evolve over the next year or several years. I think it's a really exciting time to be in media.

[00:07:08] Jennifer Young: Yeah, sure. I think when streaming first surfaced, it was predominantly SVOD such as Netflix and Amazon prime and not owned by the broadcasters.

So initially streaming was to their detriment, but we've noticed over the past several years, AVOD has significantly grown and viewers have been very receptive to it. In fact, Rogers mentions only about 3% of streamers in Canada, exclusively access SVOD. So the broadcasters are playing a significant part of this increase in AVOD services.

So they've really flipped the table and now it's become a growing piece of their revenue model. So as we've seen in the past, several upfronts, broadcasters are investing heavily in refining their streaming services to make them essential tools for advertisers.

In what I believe is [00:08:00] 10 years, they had a negative quarter where they were losing and subscribers I believe they also announced that they're now adding an ad supported level tier. What impact do you think this will have on number one, Netflix. And then number two, the industry overall.

And, Disney Plus already announced we'll be introducing ads and other major USL platforms are following suits. And of course this will spill down or I should say up to Canada. AVOD is definitely on the rise. So Netflix is taking advantage of this, and I think just the streaming environment as a whole is going to shift toward AVOD away from SVOD much like linear TV.

[00:08:57] Jennifer Young: Yeah, it's interesting. I think like the emergence of the [00:09:00] hybrid work home office model. It appears that broadcasters are applying this as well. And from my perspective, I like this hybrid model. Cause you get the virtual upfronts, they're less time consuming. You can pause or take notes and rewatch and really focus on the content.

But you know, live upfronts. We all love the added fanfare and discussing the upfront over drinks with other people in the industry and seeing some labs. So a mix to me is the best of both world. But I think the focus on these fronts will be technology and innovation over the next several years. As we continue to move toward developing addressable TV.

[00:09:46] Jennifer Young: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.