• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, September 21, 2020

Content producers and brand owners in the media entertainment industry previously had to rely on ratings data, but today data sourced from platforms like YouTube, enhanced by Tubular, a video measurement and analytics platform, lets companies reach out to fans in real-time.

Data powers just about everything that the entertainment media company WildBrain does, from building content to merchandising, said Jon Gisby, EVP and managing director at WildBrain Spark, the company’s digital division.

“When you have hundreds of millions of kids watching tens of millions of videos, you have a gigantic amount of data,” Gisby said. “It put us in a new position. We never had so much information at our fingertips about our audience and how they view out content.”

In fact data changes the way media companies like WildBrain, a kids entertainment and media company, develops content and merchandises products. For WildBrain it fuels the entertainment development cycle, provides viewing trends, the need for new types of content, and ways to identify partners.

The WildBrain media-entertainment company is home to the biggest independent library of kids and family content such as Peanuts, Teletubbies, and Inspector Gadget. The company estimates there are 24 billion monthly minutes watched.

WildBrain uses Tubular to look across large swaths of data on platforms such as YouTube to identify trends, such as emerging genres, trends of videos being created, and what is popular. It allows the company to create content from scratch and launch it across its network — all powered by data.

“We know the videos a viewer previously watched and know how to maximize the chances a video will be discovered,” he said. “It’s a new skill for us. We’re used to doing that in TV, but learning how to do that in an on-demand format with a big global audience makes having the data critical.”

The company relies on machine learning and artificial intelligence, and is almost proud of the fact the amount of data collected tends to break Tubular with all the data running across its network, he said.  

The company estimates 24 billion monthly minutes watched — 330,000 videos and 4 billion monthly views. The content reaches one in three children — about 40% of kids under the age of 13 worldwide.

Connected TV viewing for its content rose by 52% since the beginning of COVID-19. The average watch time increased by 33% and monthly views increased by 17%.

Data allows WildBrain to find new partners by spotting successful and growing studios and content producers, and helps to find the correct audience for specific content.

When it comes to merchandising, the company works with toy companies to create content that sits alongside product launches.

Making content is combined with building audiences through paid advertising. Gisby said they will match it to the metrics of how many people it represents in the market and time it with the release of the products onto shelves in stores.