Playground TV’s AVOD Niche

In the ever more crowded AVOD streaming landscape, Playground TV has positioned itself as a curated home for multilingual content targeted to kids aged 2 to 9. The service rolled out in Europe in late 2020 with 14 channels serving up shows in French, Spanish, English, Hindi, Mandarin and Persian. Daniel Nordberg, founder and CEO, talks to TV Kids Weekly about the Playground TV offer and its expansion plans.

TV KIDS: Tell us about how Playground TV came about.
NORDBERG: Why did I go and start a streaming service? Seven or eight years ago, I joined Opera TV, a browser company. We built a web platform that enables streaming services to run on smart TVs. It was a white-label technology. We ran the app stores for Sony, Phillips, Hisense, many different TV manufacturers. When I joined, we had a handful of services. They asked me to come on board and get all these streaming services working on the platform. I built a global team, going from a handful to over 1,000 streaming services throughout my six years there. I met and worked with many of the major streaming services and a lot of the unknowns. One of the frustrations at that time was streaming services disrespecting the rules and regulations to protect kids’ privacy—like COPPA in the U.S., GDPR in Europe—and just having the fundamental view that streaming services’ kids’ sections or dedicated services were often created as the second technology stack. You built the technology for a streaming service for adults first, then tried to adjust it for kids. While doing so, you didn’t respect the rules and regulations. I’m assuming many of the major streamers today are still using the same technology set they have for adults when switching to kids. So, there’s a risk you’re still using cookies and other mechanics that you’re not allowed to. I wanted to create a streaming service that was made for kids first—so thinking about the kid experience first, and taking the rules and regulations that exist in the world and start by defining our technology based on that. We acquired another streaming service and rebuilt it for Playground’s purpose. The underlying platform has been live for about seven years; they had over a million users on their service. It was a company I had worked with before, so I felt comfortable in the technology. Our ambition is to build a kids-first media company with a passion for fun and learning technology, a belief in online safety and care for our kids’ childhood.

We started by launching in nine countries in Europe…as a trial to understand the users and dynamics of the different markets. We launched in the U.K., Germany, France, Spain, Belgium, Denmark, Austria and Switzerland. When selecting those markets, we looked at the fairly mature ones when it comes to kids’ advertising and where there was demand. Going forward, we intend to launch the full version in the majority of Europe, so extending that number of countries, but also in the U.S. It will be as an AVOD-SVOD hybrid. The original intent was to be for everyone; that’s why we wanted to be an AVOD service. During the trial, we got many requests from people who wanted to subscribe to remove the advertisements, so we’re adding that feature.

TV KIDS: Tell us about the content lineup.
NORDBERG: We target 2 to 9 currently. We divide that into two groups: 2 to 5 and 6 to 9. We’re trying to cherish diversity. We believe the world is growing into a more and more diverse place. We want to mimic with our portfolio the diverse world we live in. We have cartoons animated in India, China, Iran and Brazil to complement those shows from the bigger studios in the States and Europe. We believe that there are a lot of amazing productions across the world that don’t get a fair amount of exposure on the bigger streaming platforms. As the world is getting more diverse, we want Playground to reflect that in the productions we serve.

TV KIDS: Are your deals non-exclusive? Will you need exclusives for the SVOD tier?
NORDBERG: We don’t believe in exclusivity at Playground. It slows down competition, and it’s not beneficial to the producers. Often, exclusive deals give a short-term win for both parties, while the production gets lost in the long run. There is an initial boost, and then once that is capitalized on, the productions sometimes disappear within the service. I prefer a time to market or a windowing where, within a given period, typically three months, both parties agree to do something and promote the title. Then after that, the parties are free to do whatever they want. I just don’t believe in two years of exclusivity. Often, it hurts productions. [Producers] feel it’s a good deal initially, then one, one and a half years down the line, they want to sell the property, but it’s locked in and not being used. We also want to be the partner that our producers prefer to work with because we’re doing a great job, not because we’re locking them into a contract. We could look in the future at possibly doing windowing or time to market, but we’re not there yet. Currently, all our contracts are non-exclusive.

We typically don’t pay minimum guarantees. We have a clear revenue-share model. Moving into SVOD, it will still be the case. In the long run, we need more vendors in the market, be it Playground or somebody else. Many of the producers we talk to, their AVOD revenues come from very few partners. With that in mind, it’s important to favor more players coming into the market.

TV KIDS: Where do originals sit in your overall strategy?
NORDBERG: Seeing the growth of originals on the major streaming services, we have heard the pain of many producers being marginalized to a second-tier [placement]. The number one real estate often goes to the originals. Playground’s ambition is to be the platform for everyone else. With that in mind, we will not create our own productions. We want to be the home for everybody else.

TV KIDS: Based on analytics to date, what are users responding to?
NORDBERG: What’s popular on the dominant services is also popular on ours. The shows that are topping the charts for the majors are topping them here. With the feed, we’re trying to make an opportunity for the smaller producers to get better exposure on our platform.