IBC Conference: BBC Studios – thinking FAST in Europe

Kasia Jablonska is looking forward to IBC. As you might expect from the Director of Digital and On-Demand for EMEA at BBC Studios, Jablonska modestly confesses to being “quite techie”. She says: “I like seeing the newest technological developments. I really believe that in this day and age, you need a combination of both strong content, and the technology to be able to deliver it.”

Jablonska built her expertise at some of the biggest media players. Almost eight years at National Geographic was followed by posts at Endemol Shine, Fox, NBCUniversal, Discovery, Scripps, and A+E Networks. Somehow, she also found the time to co-found digital media platform W-Sport, a dedicated 24/7 women’s sports channel. Since November last year, Jablonska’s task at BBC Studios has been to develop, execute, and bolster strategic plans for the BBC’s commercial subsidiary, aimed at expanding digital revenue streams, innovating new digital products, and optimising audience engagement on various digital platforms across EMEA.

“I’ve always worked both with content and technology,” she says. “I appreciate the importance of being able to repackage your content and change your commercial models, ensuring the underlying technology is there in order to continue optimising your commercial opportunities.”

Local heroes

“We want to make sure that content feels local, and it speaks to the local audiences” Kasia Jablonska, BBC Studios]

In the world of free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) British content travels well, a point demonstrated by the number of channel launches across 42 EMEA countries in the past five years. “BBC Studios is the largest distributor of British content globally,” says Jablonska. “At the moment, we have over 6,000 assets sitting on our FAST propositions globally.

“We have a small editorial team which works closely with our FAST partners such as Samsung, Pluto, Rakuten, Freebie TV,” she continues. “We collect the data, we analyse this data, and we understand what works where. For example, we have BBC Drama in France, Italy and Spain, because we know those are very much scripted markets, and that’s where we have more response from scripted content. But then we have travel, food and history in a mix of documentaries and lifestyle content in Germany, because again, we know this is a market which is much more interested in that type of content. So we spend quite a lot of time making sure we get the editorial strategy right in each of the markets.”

There are challenges to all this, and Jablonska aims to share her experience of dealing with them during her IBC session: ‘Setting the pace for FAST in Europe? Monetisation and Motivations’, on 14 September.

Here’s a preview tip - make sure there is a local element. “It’s important to provide content localisation in every different market with localised metadata, and do our best to translate the titles, [providing] episodic level thumbnails if required,” she says. “We want to make sure that content feels local, and it speaks to the local audiences. The combination of both seems to be working really well.”

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FAST forward

“They would pick up the cheque, but nobody was really looking under the hood” Kasia Jablonska, BBC Studios]

Jablonska’s presentation at IBC comes shortly after a big deal was announced with Samsung TV Plus to expand two BBC FAST channel brands in EMEA on its platform, namely BBC Drama and Top Gear.

It illustrates how content needs to intersect with the technology to deliver it.

“FAST started as an OTT proposition with platforms like Pluto, but then it moved to connected TVs (CTV), with Samsung probably leading that space,” says Jablonska. “We will see more CTVs entering it. From their perspective, it’s extremely important to get the content to make their CTVs more attractive. There’s LG, and now Philips, using Titan OS, coming into that space. VIDAA, which is a Hisense operating system, is also now becoming really active.”

She notes that telecommunication companies are also starting to be active in FAST. “Their strength is that they are extremely good at packaging content, they’ve got years of experience doing it,” she says. “And we have years of experience working with multiple telco platforms packaging our content, be it as linear channels or as on-demand propositions. So there is a very good underlying relationship, which we are extremely happy to build on and provide them with more content, just packaged slightly differently.

“We are also seeing the broadcasters enter this space; they actually come with advertising sidelines,” she continues. “They have relationships with big media houses, or they own big media houses, and they are now trying to figure out how to take advantage of the advertising budgets. Take ITVX, for example, or Disney building its ad-supported tier. I think we will see more of that, but there will be a lot of variation. But [they] have to make sure they have the underlying technology, the right type of metadata, and understand the advertising opportunity.”

Jablonska notes that originally, FAST was being looked at as a content distribution model.

“You had production studios and distribution companies taking content, providing it to FAST platforms. Money was coming in. They would pick up the cheque, but nobody was really looking under the hood,” she says.

“The reality is, FAST is an ad sales business model,” she continues. “It’s being monetised mostly through programmatic advertising. So an important element is to make sure that: a) you’ve got the technology to be able to optimise your performance, and b), you set up your partnership and you understand what the advertising opportunity is.

“From a technology perspective, you need effective inventory and rights management tools,” she adds. “You need comprehensive, highly automated, virtual planning solutions. You need a data platform to be able to harness this data coming from multiple different sources and take a single view. You need compliance handling – because FAST is a branded service, the compliance element is extremely important, not only from programming perspective, but from the advertising perspective as well.

“It is a growing industry, and the underlying ad sales model means you must ensure the advertisers feel comfortable to come in and advertise on your channels. Hence that compliance has to be provided across the board. You need automated ad break creation as well, and a presentation for the analytics of your ad breaks. It is a complex model if you want to make sure it’s right. Most of all, you have to make sure whatever you use is scalable, because it’s effectively a long tail game.”

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Perfect partners

On the commercial side, Jablonska says those entering this market need to ensure the right sort of strategy for a mix of commercial partners.

“The BBC has some of the most premium content, highly recognisable IP in Top Gear, Doctor Who, Call the Midwife and Death in Paradise, and it’s content that travels extremely well,” she says. “We want to make sure if we monetise our IPs on FAST, that we get the right level of return and the right level of treatment for our IP. So we always make sure that the FAST platforms we work with are reputable, recognised, and provide the right compliance level, but that they also have a comprehensive, established advertising pipeline.

“We always spend a lot of time, both with our counterparts’ account management teams, but also with the advertising teams within those platforms,” she continues. “We want to understand what the mix of ad sales from media houses, and programmatic is: what’s being sold where. We want to understand the underlying ad-sales metadata to ensure the advertisers can actually see that it’s BBC content flowing through the programmatic. We want to understand the mix of the CPM rates in each market; even though the programmatic platforms can sometimes be quite reluctant to share it, it’s important for us to understand. Effectively, we’re spending lots of time trying to build a very clear commercial strategy around FAST and the supporting technology to deliver it.”

At IBC, Jablonska will look to promote discussion with peers on the panel and the audience on how to mature the industry from a European perspective.

“We want to find out how to develop our own FAST model across Europe, which will be suitable for the way European markets work,” she says. “Hopefully [we can] come together around industry standards, discuss compliance issues and needs. Also, we can continue looking at the underlying technology to streamline and automate and scale FAST, and turn it into something that fits more within the broadcast video on demand (BVOD) model which is developing here.”

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