BBC Studios Goes FAST

BBC Studios continues to scale its FAST footprint, most recently unveiling a deal with Xiaomi TV+ to bring a slate of channels to the smart TV manufacturer’s platform in key Western European markets.

Kasia Jablonska, director of digital and on-demand for EMEA at BBC Studios, took part in our FAST Festival this summer to showcase how the content powerhouse is approaching the AVOD segment. The suite of services Jablonska oversees includes FAST channels and BBC-branded SVOD players that sit on affiliate platforms as add-on services. The FAST slate covers seven brands across 42 countries in EMEA.

While growth in FAST has slowed, BBC Studios is still pursuing expansion in this space, Jablonska said in the session, which you can watch here. “The mandate is to follow the audience wherever they are. Is it CTV platforms? Is it OTT platforms? We’re very much moving in that free space, which FAST is a part of.”

Jablonska added: “We take a unique position looking at the underlying advertising opportunities rather than just a pure content partnership on a rev-share basis.”

For example, BBC Earth landed exclusively on Samsung TV Plus across EMEA, “and within two months, that brand was already delivering 2.5 million hours of viewing just on the Samsung platform. It was a very strong sign that there is still interest in the FAST proposition, especially if it’s a premium, strong brand that has recognition globally.”

The slate features a “healthy balance” of single and multi-genre. “Single IP is a good opportunity for rediscovering iconic series and engaging with super fans. And then multi-genre is a good opportunity for testing specific genres and brands, seeing how they perform and then potentially turning them into the single-IP opportunities. Each format brings something different to our audiences in EMEA.”

Single-IP services generally need about 150 episodes, with multi-genre at 250 episodes, Jablonska said. “All of this is carefully curated. Even with a single IP, we create invitations to view, stunts, marathons, just to make sure we keep re-engaging audiences.”

For scripted in particular, multi-brand channels can present a challenge. “For drama, we’re moving toward dual-IP propositions. So, we’ll be relaunching with only two IPs, Silent Witness and New Tricks. We will be rotating different IPs depending on the interest of the audiences.”

Scheduling tweaks in response to audience behavior are crucial. “Data is extremely important to us,” Jablonska said. “We are not able to scale our digital proposition unless it is data-driven. Working for a legacy business, it’s not particularly easy to create your data strategy, but the BBC has been brilliant in doing this. We launched our own data platform where we bring in all the third-party data we have access to. We are sifting through, trying to figure out what is the most relevant and how we can use it. That’s been a major exercise. We now have dashboards. We’ve agreed on the key KPIs. We have benchmarks for our performance. We are able to react quickly if we see any dips in performance, respond to it in real time, readjusting scheduling strategy and ensuring the performance remains at a certain level.”

Editorial strategy is not enough to address the discovery challenge. “Every partner has a different UI interface. Our marketing and editorial teams are working closely together; we look at the data, identify what works, what doesn’t work and run publishing calendars where we curate to specific market needs. We know what local holidays are coming up. We know if specific talent in our shows are popular in those markets. And then we work with our FAST platform partners to ensure that content is promoted across UIs. We do the paid promotion wherever it’s possible. And then curation and stunts.”

The CTV advertising market is beginning to scale in EMEA, she said. “Market penetration is 60 percent, but I don’t think [advertisers] are engaging with the opportunity. The CTVs are only waking up to the fact that monetizing content is probably a better way of making money than from the devices, because the profit margin is so much bigger. They still face competition from traditional pay-TV platforms, which are more used to content aggregation, bundling and locking audiences in through aggregating different products. However, linear TV is now probably going to be a key to shifting things from one window to another. But the underlying advertising is still very much a big unknown, because despite this growing viewership, the advertising piece is still in the early stages of development, especially around how the information is being passed to the advertisers, so they are able to identify which titles they actually want to advertise against. How to combine big TV budgets with programmatic advertising to create a bigger value for content owners. How to ensure your inventory is properly aggregated and delivers value instead of being spread across multiple different CTV platforms. So, there’s still a lot of work to be done there. The platform that actually cracks the code will be the winner in this market.”

A clear understanding of the value of content is paramount when assessing who to partner with. Jablonska noted that her team works closely with other divisions within BBC Studios “to ensure the content is properly valued across the scale.” That factors into who BBC Studios partners with on the digital exploitation side.

“We heard in the past that some of the content buyers may not want to buy an IP because they fear all the seasons are on FAST and that is cheapening the value. We are always very mindful of that. So, whoever we partner with, first of all, we ensure that they have a very clear advertising strategy behind them and they are able to monetize our content to the extent that we can say we receive the proper return for the value of the content. With a new partner, we are looking for minimum guarantees to ensure that they trust in the value of what they are getting from us, and they feel comfortable that they can recoup that value. We are very careful who we work with. We always look at this underlying advertising strategy they have to ensure that we are not spreading ourselves too thin and that our inventory continues to be valuable and premium.”

An on-demand player in Spain goes live this year with Telefónica, a longstanding BBC Studios partner. “It is an established client; we have a strong content sales business. We launched FAST channels and now we are following with the Player. It’s a good example of us partnering with somebody to figure out together what those different entry points are for your audiences, where they can enjoy our content and how we can deliver it to them.”

Similarly, BBC NL+ is in partnership with telco KPN, which carries the BBC NL linear channel. That deal encompasses the branded SVOD player as well as FAST channels. “If audiences love the content, they will continue looking for it, be it through traditional means, FAST or SVOD services.”

BBC Studios is focusing on quality, not quantity, while continuing to scale its FAST and on-demand suite. “There are at least two new channels in the pipeline for us this year. We are going to continue looking at the underlying ad sales opportunities to ensure that the content is monetized to the extent it should be monetized.”