- Brands are the latest to demand more data-sharing from streamers.
- They’re pouring more money into Hollywood-style entertainment but want streamers to share more data.
- An industry effort is underway to standardize measurement of brand films.
Brands are joining the chorus of content producers and creators demanding more audience data from Hollywood entertainment giants.
Blue-chip brands like Pepsi and Saint Laurent have been pouring money into filmed entertainment that’s aimed at wide distribution, a strategy to reach consumers who’ve become more ad-avoidant — but companies struggle to tell if their investment is paying off.
Companies like Procter & Gamble — whose studio division has backed projects including HBO Sports docuseries “The Cost of Winning” — are accustomed to granular data when it comes to measuring their ad and marketing expenditures. But the big streaming platforms offer little to no information about how many people are watching their content and who those viewers are.
And just as Hollywood producers and creators complain that the lack of data makes it hard to know what’s a hit, it’s a top pain point for execs trying to justify the expense of brand-backed films to their CFOs, several such execs and their Hollywood connectors told Insider.
“Brand people get pressure from their higher-ups to show a direct connection to a purchase, getting new customers,” said Brian Newman, founder of Sub-Genre, which consults for companies like Unilever and REI on content strategy. “That’s the holy grail. The second would be, can you prove tons of people watched it? Netflix doesn’t report numbers. Hulu doesn’t give you that data, even when you’re paying for the media. Most of the platforms aren’t giving that data.”
Without transparency from the streamers, brands and their agencies rely on other measurements, some quantitative, some qualitative — typically a mix of things like critical reviews, social chatter, earned media, and sentiment.
REI Co-op Studios has backed films like Kyra Sedgwick-directed “Space Oddity” to promote environmental issues. Paolo Mottola, who oversees the studio as REI’s director of brand marketing and content, looks at factors like PR and social conversation in the absence of viewer data from streamers. For REI, he said, knowing a project got people to think positively about the environment and the outdoors can be more important than viewership numbers.
“A silver bullet for films is knowing who saw it and knowing how they behaved — the same standard we would have with an advertisement or out of home billboard or working with an influencer,” Mottola said.
Brand Storytelling, an organization that holds a widely attended festival for brand content alongside the Sundance Film Festival, is spearheading an initiative to come up with standardized best practices, measurement, and ROI that will help marketers assess the impact of brand films.
The organization has been interviewing a wide range of film commissioners and creators for the past eight months, with the goal of getting industry agreement on what this type of content can do for a brand, when to use which format type depending on the brand’s goals, and what metrics to use for each format.
“Our research has validated that there’s a lot of confusion around terminology and expectations, which leads to confusion around measurement and success,” Megan Wells, who’s chairing the initiative for Brand Storytelling, told Insider in an email.
Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s Imagine Entertainment, which has made films in partnership with the likes of Unilever and P&G, discusses with brand clients up front what they can expect in terms of recouping their costs. Imagine also shares which platforms are most generous when it comes to sharing viewing data. Roku, which has been in the advertising business a long time, is widely acknowledged to be in that camp.
Most streamers don’t show viewership data, so “you never really know how many people saw it,” said Marc Gilbar, who leads Imagine’s brands division. “But I think you know on some level it’s making an impact. Most brands are way more accustomed to investments they can measure to the third decimal point.”
As subscription streamers gun for more advertising revenue, brand stakeholders hope they’ll loosen up with data sharing, which in turn could spur more brand spending on films.
Brand funding of films is still a relatively small part of marketers’ budgets, but P&G Studios head Kimberly Doebereiner has said she thinks spending could increase, especially if Hollywood provides more viewership data sharing and involves brands as promotional partners.
“In order for there to be more and more shift of funding, the value equation has to be right,” Doebereiner told Insider in July. “So the expectation can’t be, brands are going to create all the content and give it to them, or that brands are going to create this and the distributors are going to pay premium money without anything else.”
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