June 4, 2025 • 37 mins
Forget vanity metrics, David Croyé is rewriting the rules of entertainment marketing with a data-powered model built for results. From bootstrapping his business to outpacing agency giants, he unpacks how JustWatch is helping Hollywood get smarter, faster, and more accountable.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good Company is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
It's important not to chase always a silver bullet. It's
really about the basics and taking time, zooming out, trying
to really look at what drives your business instead of
trying every day a new productivity heck, or a new
tool or some new service. So I think, just like
zooming out, looking back at the basics, understanding what tools
(00:23):
you actually want to use instead of chasing, I think
will in the end lead to success.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
I'm Michael Casson, and this is Good Company. Together we'll
exploit the dynamic intersection of media, marketing, entertainment, sports and technology.
I'll be joined by visionaries, pioneers, and yes, even a
couple of disruptors for candid conversations as we break down
how these masters of ingenuity are shaping the future of business,
culture and everything in between. My bet is you'll pick
(00:58):
up a listener two along the way. I like to
say it's all good. Welcome back to Good Company. Today's
guest didn't just spot a gap in the entertainment marketing ecosystem.
He built the bridge, He paved the road, and he's
now leading the industry across it. David krea Is the
(01:18):
founder and CEO of Just Watch, a company that's quietly
become one of the most influential players in entertainment marketing.
People may know Just Watch as the global streaming guide,
helping users figure out what to watch and where to
watch it. But beyond that consumer tool is just Watch Media,
a data powered at tech engine that's fundamentally reshaping how studios, streamers,
(01:41):
and game publishers reach their desired audiences. David's not interested
in vanity metrics. He's a performance marketing purist, someone who's
turned viewing behavior into predictive weapons for return on investment.
While legacy players are still selling reach, He's commanding reconsts,
and David is fearlessly challenging the industry to wake up
(02:04):
and more importantly, speed up. If you're curious whether the
future of entertainment marketing might just belong to the data
native disruptors, you're certainly going to want to hear this.
Let's dive in. David, thank you for joining me today
on Good Company.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
What I'd love to do is keep our listeners. A
little ride back to twenty thirteen when you found it
Just Watch and the founding team where yourself and five
other Berlin based startup leaders. Could you tell us how
the team came together? And you know, how did you
get a group of sort of diverse backgrounds from this
(02:43):
community to come together and you know, share some of
the company's early culture and vision. It's always a good
place to start.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Yeah, definitely. I mean I always start with I love
movies and TV shows, so I watch a lot. Back then,
I was in the German Startups system CMO the startup,
and I did a lot of performance marketing and media
buying and this was for weekly ads and retail marketing,
and that's also where I met a lot of the
co founders. And I'm not really into shopping too much.
I loved movies and shows and wanted to bring this
(03:14):
passion for movies, shows and optimizing media and buying media
together in a new startup. And that's basically how it started.
And six founders are normally something that doesn't work if
you look at statistics. It's just like when you tell
a VC or somebody at the beginning of six founders,
they run. But it took me over a year to
assemble this team. I worked with most of them for
(03:36):
five years before and as we are building like two
companies in one basically a B two C and a
B to B company. We needed to have like a
lot of different people with different heads on to actually
pull this off.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
David, you made a comment your passion for movies and
not necessarily for retail, and you know, as a media
buyer in the beginning of my career, movies was something
that I studied carefully and what I learned, and I
think you'd agree with this, there's probably nothing more retail
than movie marketing. Oh yeah, okay at the end of
the day, in traditional movie viewing. And I going to
(04:09):
talk about that at length later in this conversation about
what you think of the movie going market today but
on a global basis. But what I always said is
movie marketing is about the most retail it gets. You're
introducing a new product. Each time, you've got to go
through all the steps in the funnel. Again, unless it's franchised,
unless it's you know, Marvel part twenty three. No disrespect
(04:32):
to Marvel, it's a great brand, but you know, you've
got to tell the story each time it's a new product.
And I always said that's kind of like, you know,
consumer package goods. You know, there's a new version of
Dove soap coming out, you've got to market it differently,
and movies are kind of the same.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Yeah, it's definitely like a lot of similarities. So we
had this brick and mortar business with digital ads before
and how to track that and how to figure out
like what is driving actually to bring people to open
the door buy something, and how can we actually bring
this together. This was a big influence at the beginning
to understand that because, yeah, cinema marketing, you go from
(05:10):
zero brand awan is to one hundred and six weeks
and you don't really know what your all your video
ads will do six weeks down the line, and then
the opening weekend is there. Either it works or it doesn't,
and if it works, marketing is the hero. If it doesn't,
probably most the weather or something else. So there's definitely
like a lot of parallels there that we also saw,
and that my background at.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
One of the beauties of just Watch media. And when
you and I sat down for the first time, you
had me at hello when I met you and one
of your partners in terms of something you said, which
is I think a very important building block in Just
Watch media, which is the capability of predictive modeling and
(05:51):
the idea. Early in my career, somebody came to me
and said, you know, from a movie studio, and this
is when the home video market in the whole entertainment
market was big, with DBD and you know, VHS and
beta talking about that. The argument was, you should be
able to predict the full cycle of a movie's box
(06:13):
office back in the day home video pay perview based
by ten o'clock on Friday morning, You'll know if you're
really using the numbers, you should be able to predict
the life cycle of that film. Yeah, and that's kind
of a foundation for you. I think taking the viewer
data from your B two C business and applying to
(06:35):
your B to B business. So if you could shine
a light on that, that would be very helpful.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Let's zoom out. So it's basically what I thought back
then was I loved movies and went to the cinema
every week, and I got horror trailers as ats on YouTube,
and I hate horror personally. A lot of people love horror.
I hate horror. I actually watched a lot of rom
coms and I was normally not targeted by those because
I was not the associate demographic that would get those ads,
(07:01):
and I said, like, please show me those ads. Don't
want to miss something in cinema and that I actually
want to watch, And nobody knew the taste and who
to actually target, and so I said, you actually have
to have data and a lot of data to know
what people like. This is something where we said the
B two C component is just watch the streaming guide
or the entertainment guide, where we help people to figure
(07:23):
out where a movie is playing and where they have
they have to rent or buy it if there's on
one of the sports services. And this is something where
we have the platform one hundred forty markets now with
sixty million unique users per months, and it's a ton
of data that we learn about people, what their taste is,
how they consume movies, what they want to watch, and
(07:44):
we have the biggest market is the US by far,
and this is something that is one side to build
and at the same time we basically build a data
management platform to make sense of all these taste profiles
with over one hundred million accumulated where we collect more
and more data on and on either side. It's really
how to build a DSP to connect those data points
(08:05):
to the platforms where we run the ads. So we
run the ads on YouTube a lot. We run the
ads on Meta so Instagram mostly by now back then
it was Facebook and now TikTok, Snapchat and x so
our system is connected to that. And yeah, it's a
lot about predictive modelings about like who to reach and
where people are each one to reach and how much
(08:26):
a campaign has to be driven, like on the weekend
or these kind of things. So we build it on
over the last ten years.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
And David, your enterprise studio clients, and you know, you've
got some of the biggest old faced names in the
industry with Universal and Paramount, Sony, et cetera as partners.
That mountain of data that you just talked about. You know, traditionally,
I always liked one of the smartest people I know
in the industry, gentlemen by the neigh of Rashad Tobacco.
(08:53):
Walla always like to say data is like oil. When
it's in the ground, it's not worth much. When you
take it out and refine it is when it becomes valuable.
A look at the data that you have from your
consumer side of your business, as oil. Yeah, the refining
of that oil makes it really valuable to your enterprise
(09:14):
studio clients. But let me ask you a different question,
because we're also in a mode where we're going to
see some consolidation coming. I think we seem to be
in a more at least on the US side, maybe chaotic,
but I think a more lenient M and A scenario.
Do you see consolidation changing any of this or just
(09:35):
enhancing it from your perspective.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
I mean, overall, there will be more consolidation on the
other side. Over ten years ago when we started a company,
people already said like, there will be only three in
a few years. Unbundling, bundling, rebundling. There will be a
lot of different ways in the end. There's so much
great content, more than ever before, and there is a
fragmentation also on niche services, on special interest, vod Avid Fast,
(10:02):
and so many different ways of watching something, so many
new windows and micro windows. There's a lot of confusion
around it, and a lot of ways to more efficiently
monetize content. There will be changes, and there will be
probably even more on a few big ones. A lot
of people have five streaming services and they're adding more
and more channels, so I think overall it will not
(10:23):
be like one to basically combine it all in the future,
and so I think, just watch with our platform on
the consumer side is still something if you watch a lot,
if you track several shows, it still makes sense and
it will not change too much.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
I think you're right, but I look at it through
the lens of there's a fragmentation of streaming capabilities. You know.
In the old days. You don't know this, but you
and I are very aligned in two things. You said,
I hate horror movies and I love rom coms. So
you and I are both the missing target, you know,
in terms of what they're going to send our way.
(10:58):
But through that lens and the old days, we were
more interested, excuse my expression, as we say, on this
side of the pond, putting asses and seats on Friday,
Saturday and Sunday when you're opening a movie, because I
do want to get to that in terms of release
patterns and schedules. But now I think it's more putting
eyeballs on a screen than putting asses in seats relative
(11:21):
to the streaming side of the business. And I'm wondering how,
if at all that changes the dynamic for you, I
would think so, but changes the dynamic for you from
a standpoint of utilizing the data as a directional marketing tool.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Yeah, I think since the seventies eighties, it was about
like give me eighty percent reach on TV and a
frequency of three, and that's basically how it goes. And
this was like for decades the same thing. Now for
the first time, I'm pretty frustrated about like how slow
for like a startup mindset this goes. I hear like
different studios and clients of us saying like, I want
(11:58):
to go digital first, I want to plan what's the
new metric? How do we plan digital first? And at
TV on the top for some movies. So this switch
that's finally going digital first, using the data that's there,
using the capabilities the KPIs who can use from digital
and targeting people better to really know who to reach,
because in the end, that's what we also wanted. We
(12:19):
wanted to close the loop, get the data, bring the
data to the platforms where we can reach people with you,
and then close the loop to actually know who's going
who doesn't go. And that's something big in terms of
targeting is one thing and then knowing like the new
trailer for this or this movie might have been a
good idea to go for this audience, but you have
to get prove and a KPI that you can actually
(12:40):
optimize against. And this was missing. So it's getting much
more efficient. You can reach a lot more of the
right people with less budget to be more profitable. And
I think this is a big trend right now.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
We're going to hit pause for a moment, but stay
with us after the break. We've got more insights to share.
One of the reasons that in the old days, Thursday
night was deemed to be must see TV and the
(13:14):
most money was always spent by studios on Thursday night.
Why because that's when people plan their weekend. Yes, and
so you want to get that person on Thursday night
because they're making their plans for the weekend. And again,
like you, my wife and I were Friday night regulars.
Whatever movies were opening, we would always be at a
movie on a Friday night. Obviously that's changed. Let me
(13:37):
ask you a question. I want to go back to
something you said at the start, David, of your beginnings,
your career beginnings as a CMO with a very marked
performance marketing view. You said something earlier that is so
true about movie marketing. You also have to do brand
marketing in the movie business because in each case, you're
building a brand. In that six week period, you're building
(13:59):
a brand. And you know, I've combined some words over
the years, and two that I put together were brand
marketing and performance marketing to call it brandformance. That's what
I think you're trying to communicate in the fact of
performance marketing can give uplift that traditional brand marketing probably can't,
(14:19):
especially if we're utilizing just watch media. Can you talk
about that, not friction, but the collaboration between brand and
performance when you have to build a brand as well
as you know, drive action.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Yeah, there is not much fiction. I think data is
good to reach the right people, but brand is really
about like what you show them. So I think marrying
those two things, marrying performance marketing with a great storytelling
of a trailer and the right storytelling of Hollywood, basically
combining those two things is great. I'm from the Berlin
startup Center here and we have a lot of at
(14:52):
tech companies and a lot of at tech talent here.
But if you market the wrong thing, you're basically multiplying
with zero nobody cares if you're talking is great if
nobody likes the product. So I think bringing this German efficiency,
this German engineering and a little bit nerdy thing that
we build. We had more tech company than a media company.
We have something new data, publisher media buying, so it's
(15:14):
all combined, but just for entertainment. But we if we
have a bad trailer, it doesn't work. So bringing the
best of storytelling for Hollywood together with the right targeting
is key. And I get often asked like or can
you use blockchain to write a script? Or can you
use AI to do this? And that It's like, no,
data is the opposite of creativity. Data is good to
(15:34):
find somebody later that that might like your trailer and
how you display your product. But data is not creative.
It's not story, is not brand. It's just a way
of being more efficient and doing much much more with
your money than it could before, and being more flexible.
You basically plan, you see some results, you can adapt,
you see if an audience actually wants to watch a
(15:54):
movie or not. And this is something that wasn't there before.
Let me give you one example, Like for campaign we
did for big streaming company. So we got a briefing
like you get from Hollywood. You get these hundred and
twenty page briefings where they say like what the show
is about and how you should market it, And it
was like eighteen to forty four year old male, gory
(16:15):
dark superhero that's basically a niche show. Let's market for that.
We used our data and our insights into audiences and
some tests we've run with our own survey based KPI
system and just ask more different audience and demographics if
they want to watch this show and sign up for
the streaming service to watch it. And we found out
(16:35):
months before the release that it was more female, it
was younger, it was older, it was much broader, and
so in the end we were able while the campaign
was running basically in real time, to recommend to the
client to do a much different campaign, and we were
able to invest over sixty percent of the budget outside
of the briefing. And this show was pretty big and
(16:56):
I think most listeners probably saw it. So this is
one of the ex amples to use data because there's
always an idea what something is and then you see
like what real feedback you get from data? How people
perceive it, and this is I think a great tool
to use. But storytelling is to start up everything to
build a brand.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
One of the things that I know is on our
list of things to talk about is legacy agency models.
And one of the things that has become so relevant
in the agency community referencing the large holding companies is
principle based buy. And to the degree you have principle
based buying, in many people's opinions, it flies in the
(17:36):
face of what you just said, because the idea of
being able to do that research in advance, six months
out before release, understanding what the demographic was driving viewership
based on that, having the lead time to work with
the client on allocating the budgets in the right way,
as opposed to, Hey, I'm long on this because I've
(17:59):
taken a principal position this is what you should buy.
I think there's some friction there for sure in the
agency community, and I'm curious how you look at that positioning.
Just watch media versus legacy holding company models, so that again,
because of profitability, we're all aware of this might be
(18:20):
leaning against their principal media positions as opposed to what's
necessarily right for the client for that particular program.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Yeah, there's definitely more friction on that than on the
storytelling and brand building pot So this is something where
when you look at a digital media it's basically the
opposite of where the legacy agency model comes from. I mean,
one of the first things you told me that you
basically started and ran the biggest media agency in the world.
This was impressive because we had your name on the
(18:50):
list for for many, many years. So it's great to
see that you directly got what we're doing and that
this will drive the industry forward and you can just
use old tools forever and just like put them on
digital eyeballs versus TV eyeballs.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
So in the end, I think, yeah, you know, David,
just to interrupt for a minute, and that's like we
always said about the creative side of the business. When
you started with magazines for advertising or newspapers, you then
transition to radio, You then transition to television, You then
transition to digital or to online. Each iteration creatively has
to be different. It should be no different with media
(19:28):
as it is with creative on each platform. But go ahead,
I agree with you.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
The big difference between all of them is that all
the older ones are basically a few big publishers or
a few big stations or a few big TV broadcasters,
and you basically the more money you can aggregate as
an agency holding, the bigger you can get, the more
leverage you have to negotiate deals and to get better rates.
(19:53):
And this is where the whole legacy model, the whole
way of brands working with agencies come from. It's basically
how the whole mechanics work. And then you go to
digital where it's auction based, where it's biddable a lot
of the inventory, and then putting more money on it
actually increases your price because you put more pressure on
the auction. So the mechanics of bidabile media are so different.
(20:17):
But because the legacy business models, the legacy deals, the
legacy thinking is so much in the industry. They used
reach on target like they used on TV for YouTube buying,
and you can completely screw up campaigns and it's not
like a commodity like a lot of those other channels
are by now because a lot of people don't know
the difference. So like this agency buy some YouTube, this
(20:39):
agency buys some YouTube. It's not a big difference, but
biddable media. The difference is massive. If you do a
good campaign versus a bad campaign or okay campaign, you
lose up to half of your reach, half of your views.
If you do a bad campaign with the same budget.
It's not like a few percent up or down. It's
fifty percent down or one hundred percent up. And that's
(21:00):
these big swings if you are not set up and
you're not incentivized in this direction. This is also something
we wanted to really have different here. Have you our
own data, have our own technology, focus on one industry,
be the best at this one, and basically suck at
everything else. But focusing really on that and using biddable
media and everything at our disposal only works if you're
(21:23):
not bound to legacy models.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
And speaking of that, David, I know, one of just
Watch Media's proudest, you know proclamations in the market is
something that you call the need for speed. And what
I say is a former partner mine taught me a
good expression, speed kills if you don't have it, yay.
(21:45):
So it's it's kind of the you know, play on words,
but you know, you use the G word, which people
hesitate to use often, and that is guarantee a twenty
four hour cycle to be able to give feedback. And
it's so critical. It's what we said at the early
part of this conversation, there's nothing more retail than movies.
(22:07):
You have a shelf life. You got to hit it
while the shelf life is there. So speed is critical.
How is it you're able to guarantee something that quick?
You know in a world where generally x weeks you know,
later you're looking at it and go, well, gee, that
didn't work or that did work. It doesn't help you
to amend on the fly kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
I mean, one of the worst things in the movie
campaign is when you say, oh, I still have half
the budget left and the first weekend is through, So
this is like the worst case before doing something better.
But yeah, as I said, like Legacy Media, they were
pushed down on their fees, so the whole industry basically
has to look at cost and to reinvest something in
(22:48):
media and be up to date. Work basically cat and
mouse games against yield algorithm engineers from Google. They try
to press out the most money of every impression, and
we work on our things to get the most views
out of the same impression. For the least money. This
is something that you constantly have to do and if
you're not incentivized of doing it because you get your
fixed fee and that's it, and it's really low. This
(23:10):
is something where you lose fifty percent of reviews if
you do that, and you have to be slow. If
you have only a few people on an account. This
means you have a ten day SLA return to briefing.
We guarantee a twenty four hour SLA. So we had
like another studio come to me and said, like, it's
close to my fiscal and my agency has a ten
day service level agreement to return to brief. Its not
(23:32):
just a return to brief. It's not starting a campaign,
but my fiscal is over in seven days. I have
a million euros here, can you do a campaign in
twelve markets in EMEA for this big blockbuster might have
been Marvel when we talked about it earlier, but this
was something where we got a call at four pm
if we can do something at the next day, and
I said we can. The question is your legal department can.
(23:53):
And they actually got it together in twenty hours and
we got a whole briefing and a whole media plan
and everything done in twenty hours and start of the
campaign basically next day, twelve markets, different time zones, different languages,
and we're running it and we guarantee twenty four hour
basically campaign starts. We also guarantee upfront how many views
people will get, so we predict the inventory, what title
(24:16):
we have, what audience we have in our system is
pretty accurate and predicting how many views we will be
able to get for this budget, and we also guarantee
it upfront. We said we put our money where our
mouth is. If we say we are better if we
guarantee it. We have to deliver. And then people came
to me from the agency that booked us in the
end and said, like, but what happens if you can't
get to the views? What happens then? So like, yeah,
(24:38):
we guarantee and they didn't have this vocabulary for that,
it's not in the industry. And I said, like, we
pay from our own money, and this happened before. We
sometimes have to pay on top. It's really really rare.
But if a trailer comes in late, they cut the
audience really small and give us only two days to
run instead of seven. Sometimes we still fulfill our guarantee
(24:58):
and just pay on top doesn't happen too often, but
is also something we want to do better. If we
say we are so great, let's prove it. And I
was alsay important for us.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
You're clearly an anomaly in the in the industry to
use the G word and actually live up to it.
So I appreciate that, David. I want to go back
to something we talked about earlier, and I'd said, my
viewing habits. You're viewing habits of you know, early butts
and seats on a Friday for movie openings. But you know,
domestic box office from a US perspective, is shrinking in
(25:30):
twenty twenty four. I think the percentage was about a
ten percent drop in the top ten films, and then
the movies that kind of ranked in the twenty one
to one hundred if you look at the top twenty,
are really feeling it. And I know you have a
passion for movies, as do I, and I'm certain many
of our listeners. The idea of reviving that middle budget,
(25:53):
you know, is it going to be the five hundred
or two hundred million dollar movies? What about that angry
middle you know, what about that middle market movie feel
very important to the economic future of the studio business.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Yeah, it's not just ten poles. So the statistics you're
referring to. I was at Cinema Con and this was
one of the big opening speeches about the market and
the state of the market, to say, like after the pandemic,
we are down ten percent of the top twenty movies,
so like big ten poles, and we are down thirty
two percent on the next eighty, like the mid sized
and mid tier movies and the smaller ones, they are
(26:28):
really suffering. This is something where you have to be
even more efficient. I think the market is shrinking a
little bit further and it's more concentrated, and most people
don't know that only like around thirty million Americans are
responsible for over fifty percent of the box office. So
if you don't know who those thirty are and what
their taste is. People have this thing like we are Hollywood.
(26:51):
Let's try to reach everybody. This product is for everybody.
This doesn't work when you go a bit smaller and
a bit more niche and you reach the right people
with the right subject and genre, and you have to
do it with a lot less money than earlier. This
is something where you can't treat every movie campaign like
a tent pole. And this is especially important to understand
(27:12):
really quickly which audience are too narrow and they will
go anyways, and which audience that the studio maybe wants
to hit, but we have data to actually find out
that they don't want to see. It's what we call
cinema intent. So we do integrated research and surveys on
the same audience we run media, So we build audiences
that are really specific to taste, and then we also
(27:33):
run surveys on them to get this research basically real time,
and we do the several times over the campaign, so
we find out how high the cinema intent is of
like a broad audience like I don't know, horror fans
where this retro classic horror subgenre? And then we see,
like a retro classic horror works pretty well, high cinema intent,
(27:54):
low awareness. Let's put more money there, and let's see
if we schoo a little bit more male or femail
at all or younger, and the cinema intent for horror
or thriller or suspense is dropping really really quick. So
if you put money there, you just waste it. To
be much much more thoughtful and in having a KPI
that actually works. That's really important because in digital there
(28:15):
are so many KPIs. It's just too many. And we
looked at it, like ten years ago when we started campaigns,
we looked at it and like which KPI to use
if people watch a full trailer, if they click on something,
if they don't skip. The vitral rate is like a
big KPI to judge if an audience is good or bad.
We looked at billions and billions of views over the years,
(28:35):
hundreds and millions of budget that we ran, and we
ran lowed twenty thousand campaigns by now and over one
hundred markets, and there's zero correlation of somebody watching a
trailer to the end to actually buying a ticket. That's
why we did this cinema intent and sign up intent
or watch intent for sport and streaming, and this gives
us this edge. And I think this is really really
(28:56):
important to understand how to market mid market movies because
a lot you can only do franchise and tent pole
are it's three TOWD small and goes too quickly to streaming.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Good company will be right back after the break David,
I have just seen and I am certain and heard
as our audience will equal to your passion for movies,
(29:29):
which brought you to this business. Your passion for data
comes through. I mean, I see you both in the
creative sense loving the movies, in the nerdy sense, loving
the data. How would you define success for yourself in
this context? You're a founder, You've built this company brilliantly
(29:49):
over the last you know, twelve years plus or minus,
I think, and you're in a unique position. What's David
Croyer's KPI for himself for just watch?
Speaker 2 (30:01):
I mean we talked about is before, like the two
of us, like what what is the scoreboard?
Speaker 3 (30:06):
Like?
Speaker 2 (30:06):
How do you compare something with success? I don't know.
I think at the beginning, it's definitely like revenue and
then profit. I'm proud that we actually are profitable for
a long time, that we have more profits than a
lot of these hyped startups have revenue. What it means
is for me that we create so much value, We
deliver so much better campaigns. The app helps people to
save time. We actually are worth it to earn money
(30:28):
because we create so much value. So that's important to me.
And there's a scoreboard to actually have a company that's solid,
that's growing pretty fast, and now we are doing much
more in the US, we just watch media. This is
something where there's still a big market open, so there's
a lot of growth always ahead. This is the thing
I looked at for a long time, but I don't know.
This is something where it gets to a certain point
(30:50):
where you thought, like I want to work with movies,
and now you work with procurement and politics and a
lot of numbers that actually don't matter too much for me.
It's more about not the numbers per se anymore, but
it's really about how I feel about it because it's
so abstract. You said, like, oh, there's another million or
something budget or campaign coming in, but it's I don't know.
(31:11):
After twelve years, it's so many of them that I
care more about that we did something specially, We learned
something new. So I think numbers and KPIs change over time,
and what makes you happy, it's more what gives you energy.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
You said two things that I want to link together
because one of the great lessons from this conversation might
be how you got lawyers to act in twenty four hours.
That was impressive. I have to go back to that.
I mean, I'm a reformed lawyer, as you know, so
it's hard to get lawyers to do anything in twenty
four hours. So that was pretty impressive. You were able
to do that.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
If they want to, they can do something and in
a few hours if they don't. Is that like, oh,
let's we've got planned for six months, let's talk later.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
Yeah, exactly, That's what we're all used to, David. I
want to bring us to the part of good company
that's always my favorite part, which is the lightning round segment,
and I'd like to throw some questions your way if
that's okay.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
Sure, David.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
Is there a small habit in your daily routine that
brings you unexpected joy?
Speaker 2 (32:08):
I think it's like family. First we startup baby and
then my real babies have like a six and nine
year old daughter, and when they come home from school,
this is I think the favorite moment, when they start
running at you. They still do that at this age.
This will change at some point, but this is like
probably my favorite moment of the day when they come home.
Speaker 3 (32:26):
That's the best moment you can have. If you could
give the younger David kre a one piece of advice
or guidance, what would it be.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
I think I thought always that I could be already further, better, bigger,
all these kind of things, and I was always too
late and beating myself up that I wasn't already a millionaire,
or wasn't here or there already. And it's just if
you're to decidify with your own goals all the time,
because you never get enough kind of thing. This is
(32:54):
something whereas like things will come together if you're consistent
and if you keep going and try to manage your emotions,
especially when you're in startup environment. If a great moment
in the beginning of the day and then three hours
later somebody quits that you don't want to or something
bad happens, this is the roller coaster and being able
to be more patient. And I'm not really good at this.
(33:16):
This is something I just like things will come if
you stay on it. Not change all the time, but
just stay on your things.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
I wish we could all take a deep cleansing breaths
now and say patience is a virtue. By my problem
is I tell people all the time patience is not
my long suit. So David, if today you weren't CEO
of Just watch what other job might you be doing?
Speaker 2 (33:40):
As I like movies, I will probably produce movies. I
think at some point in my life I will do that.
So I really want to want to produce some good
movies that I want to watch myself.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
You know, I knew you looked familiar because it sounds
like I just talked to most of the waiters at
restaurants in Los Angeles. I'm doing this now.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
But I'm not a director, so I'm not creative. I'm
a creative problem solver. I want to produce, but not direct,
So I think there are too many directors in LA
and most shouldn't be. So I just want to bring
the team together and find a great writer, a great director,
a great actor to put something together in the future.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
I've been taught by somebody a long time ago that
the reason they call it show business is because there's
the show and there's the business. So it sounds like
you might want to be more on the business than
the show.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
I think I'm better at this. Yeah, yeah, I mean
this is like also, why nobody really knows us or
just watch media. We didn't really start in the US
yet with just what media. I'm going to focus on EMEA.
But I'm not like a Hollywood red carpet show person.
I just like to grind and work and work and
make something better at one percent at a time, and
not like chase flashy things every year. Every year there's
(34:46):
something new. We still do the same, put more butts
in the seats and get better at trailer campaigns. I'm
not good at this Hollywood thing.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Well, I think you're better at than you think. David
was vere a particular and you know, I've been fortunate.
If someone asked me this question, I could answer it
with many names. But was there one particular mentor or
somebody in your life that gave me that single piece
of advice or that best advice or the go to
person for you as you were making decisions? Is there
(35:17):
somebody that stands out to you?
Speaker 2 (35:19):
I asked myself this sometimes because not yet. I always
wanted something like this, because my family was not in business,
not in digital, not in entertainment at all. I wasn't
allowed to watch movies until I was much older. I
think I'm still overcompensating and still watching a lot because
of that. Until I was ten, I lived in a
little village where my telephone numbers had three digits, so small,
(35:41):
like a few hundred people. So finding people that are
interested in building a business and doing something. I had
to move to Berlin from the countryside basically because I
couldn't find people that I could learn something from early on.
And that's also why I think it took me so long.
So like I'm twenty five and I still don't have
my own startup running because I'd didn't really have any
people around that did something I was interested in. But
(36:04):
of course I had like people around me and a
good support system and people that told me to be
more patient and that I will make it at some point.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
David, you've returned the favor you paid it forward today
because I think you've given some really good advice, both
personal advice. I really appreciate the focus on patients and
the things you were talking about and the pressure you
put yourself under, which I think is always the signpost
of successful entrepreneurs, people who are tough on themselves and
(36:32):
drive harder from that perspective, and that clearly comes through.
Is there one bit of advice you'd give to our
listeners in general.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
It's important not to chase always the silver bullet, and
every year it has to be something new. It's really
about the basics and taking time zooming out, trying to
really look at what drives your business instead of trying
every day a new productivity heck, or a new tool
or some new service. So I think, just like zooming out,
(37:01):
looking back at the basics, understanding what tools you actually
want to use instead of chasing, this is something that
I think will in the end lead to success, even
if it's a bit boring. But I think this consistency
is something that drives a lot of our seccess here
just watch media David Cree.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
It's a pleasure to spend this time with you on
Good Company. I appreciate your insights, your thinking and your candor.
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Thank you, it's always a pleasure to talk to you.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
I'm Michael Casson, thanks for listening to Good Company.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Good Company is brought to you by Three c Ventures
in iHeart Podcasts. Special thanks to Alexis Borger Purdel, our
executive producer and head of Content and Talent, and to
Carl Catle, executive producer at iHeart Podcasts. Episodes are produced
and edited by Mary deo, thanks for joining us. We'll
see you next time.
Good Company is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
It's important not to chase always a silver bullet. It's
really about the basics and taking time, zooming out, trying
to really look at what drives your business instead of
trying every day a new productivity heck, or a new
tool or some new service. So I think, just like
zooming out, looking back at the basics, understanding what tools
(00:23):
you actually want to use instead of chasing, I think
will in the end lead to success.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
I'm Michael Casson, and this is Good Company. Together we'll
exploit the dynamic intersection of media, marketing, entertainment, sports and technology.
I'll be joined by visionaries, pioneers, and yes, even a
couple of disruptors for candid conversations as we break down
how these masters of ingenuity are shaping the future of business,
culture and everything in between. My bet is you'll pick
(00:58):
up a listener two along the way. I like to
say it's all good. Welcome back to Good Company. Today's
guest didn't just spot a gap in the entertainment marketing ecosystem.
He built the bridge, He paved the road, and he's
now leading the industry across it. David krea Is the
(01:18):
founder and CEO of Just Watch, a company that's quietly
become one of the most influential players in entertainment marketing.
People may know Just Watch as the global streaming guide,
helping users figure out what to watch and where to
watch it. But beyond that consumer tool is just Watch Media,
a data powered at tech engine that's fundamentally reshaping how studios, streamers,
(01:41):
and game publishers reach their desired audiences. David's not interested
in vanity metrics. He's a performance marketing purist, someone who's
turned viewing behavior into predictive weapons for return on investment.
While legacy players are still selling reach, He's commanding reconsts,
and David is fearlessly challenging the industry to wake up
(02:04):
and more importantly, speed up. If you're curious whether the
future of entertainment marketing might just belong to the data
native disruptors, you're certainly going to want to hear this.
Let's dive in. David, thank you for joining me today
on Good Company.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
What I'd love to do is keep our listeners. A
little ride back to twenty thirteen when you found it
Just Watch and the founding team where yourself and five
other Berlin based startup leaders. Could you tell us how
the team came together? And you know, how did you
get a group of sort of diverse backgrounds from this
(02:43):
community to come together and you know, share some of
the company's early culture and vision. It's always a good
place to start.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Yeah, definitely. I mean I always start with I love
movies and TV shows, so I watch a lot. Back then,
I was in the German Startups system CMO the startup,
and I did a lot of performance marketing and media
buying and this was for weekly ads and retail marketing,
and that's also where I met a lot of the
co founders. And I'm not really into shopping too much.
I loved movies and shows and wanted to bring this
(03:14):
passion for movies, shows and optimizing media and buying media
together in a new startup. And that's basically how it started.
And six founders are normally something that doesn't work if
you look at statistics. It's just like when you tell
a VC or somebody at the beginning of six founders,
they run. But it took me over a year to
assemble this team. I worked with most of them for
(03:36):
five years before and as we are building like two
companies in one basically a B two C and a
B to B company. We needed to have like a
lot of different people with different heads on to actually
pull this off.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
David, you made a comment your passion for movies and
not necessarily for retail, and you know, as a media
buyer in the beginning of my career, movies was something
that I studied carefully and what I learned, and I
think you'd agree with this, there's probably nothing more retail
than movie marketing. Oh yeah, okay at the end of
the day, in traditional movie viewing. And I going to
(04:09):
talk about that at length later in this conversation about
what you think of the movie going market today but
on a global basis. But what I always said is
movie marketing is about the most retail it gets. You're
introducing a new product. Each time, you've got to go
through all the steps in the funnel. Again, unless it's franchised,
unless it's you know, Marvel part twenty three. No disrespect
(04:32):
to Marvel, it's a great brand, but you know, you've
got to tell the story each time it's a new product.
And I always said that's kind of like, you know,
consumer package goods. You know, there's a new version of
Dove soap coming out, you've got to market it differently,
and movies are kind of the same.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Yeah, it's definitely like a lot of similarities. So we
had this brick and mortar business with digital ads before
and how to track that and how to figure out
like what is driving actually to bring people to open
the door buy something, and how can we actually bring
this together. This was a big influence at the beginning
to understand that because, yeah, cinema marketing, you go from
(05:10):
zero brand awan is to one hundred and six weeks
and you don't really know what your all your video
ads will do six weeks down the line, and then
the opening weekend is there. Either it works or it doesn't,
and if it works, marketing is the hero. If it doesn't,
probably most the weather or something else. So there's definitely
like a lot of parallels there that we also saw,
and that my background at.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
One of the beauties of just Watch media. And when
you and I sat down for the first time, you
had me at hello when I met you and one
of your partners in terms of something you said, which
is I think a very important building block in Just
Watch media, which is the capability of predictive modeling and
(05:51):
the idea. Early in my career, somebody came to me
and said, you know, from a movie studio, and this
is when the home video market in the whole entertainment
market was big, with DBD and you know, VHS and
beta talking about that. The argument was, you should be
able to predict the full cycle of a movie's box
(06:13):
office back in the day home video pay perview based
by ten o'clock on Friday morning, You'll know if you're
really using the numbers, you should be able to predict
the life cycle of that film. Yeah, and that's kind
of a foundation for you. I think taking the viewer
data from your B two C business and applying to
(06:35):
your B to B business. So if you could shine
a light on that, that would be very helpful.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Let's zoom out. So it's basically what I thought back
then was I loved movies and went to the cinema
every week, and I got horror trailers as ats on YouTube,
and I hate horror personally. A lot of people love horror.
I hate horror. I actually watched a lot of rom
coms and I was normally not targeted by those because
I was not the associate demographic that would get those ads,
(07:01):
and I said, like, please show me those ads. Don't
want to miss something in cinema and that I actually
want to watch, And nobody knew the taste and who
to actually target, and so I said, you actually have
to have data and a lot of data to know
what people like. This is something where we said the
B two C component is just watch the streaming guide
or the entertainment guide, where we help people to figure
(07:23):
out where a movie is playing and where they have
they have to rent or buy it if there's on
one of the sports services. And this is something where
we have the platform one hundred forty markets now with
sixty million unique users per months, and it's a ton
of data that we learn about people, what their taste is,
how they consume movies, what they want to watch, and
(07:44):
we have the biggest market is the US by far,
and this is something that is one side to build
and at the same time we basically build a data
management platform to make sense of all these taste profiles
with over one hundred million accumulated where we collect more
and more data on and on either side. It's really
how to build a DSP to connect those data points
(08:05):
to the platforms where we run the ads. So we
run the ads on YouTube a lot. We run the
ads on Meta so Instagram mostly by now back then
it was Facebook and now TikTok, Snapchat and x so
our system is connected to that. And yeah, it's a
lot about predictive modelings about like who to reach and
where people are each one to reach and how much
(08:26):
a campaign has to be driven, like on the weekend
or these kind of things. So we build it on
over the last ten years.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
And David, your enterprise studio clients, and you know, you've
got some of the biggest old faced names in the
industry with Universal and Paramount, Sony, et cetera as partners.
That mountain of data that you just talked about. You know, traditionally,
I always liked one of the smartest people I know
in the industry, gentlemen by the neigh of Rashad Tobacco.
(08:53):
Walla always like to say data is like oil. When
it's in the ground, it's not worth much. When you
take it out and refine it is when it becomes valuable.
A look at the data that you have from your
consumer side of your business, as oil. Yeah, the refining
of that oil makes it really valuable to your enterprise
(09:14):
studio clients. But let me ask you a different question,
because we're also in a mode where we're going to
see some consolidation coming. I think we seem to be
in a more at least on the US side, maybe chaotic,
but I think a more lenient M and A scenario.
Do you see consolidation changing any of this or just
(09:35):
enhancing it from your perspective.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
I mean, overall, there will be more consolidation on the
other side. Over ten years ago when we started a company,
people already said like, there will be only three in
a few years. Unbundling, bundling, rebundling. There will be a
lot of different ways in the end. There's so much
great content, more than ever before, and there is a
fragmentation also on niche services, on special interest, vod Avid Fast,
(10:02):
and so many different ways of watching something, so many
new windows and micro windows. There's a lot of confusion
around it, and a lot of ways to more efficiently
monetize content. There will be changes, and there will be
probably even more on a few big ones. A lot
of people have five streaming services and they're adding more
and more channels, so I think overall it will not
(10:23):
be like one to basically combine it all in the future,
and so I think, just watch with our platform on
the consumer side is still something if you watch a lot,
if you track several shows, it still makes sense and
it will not change too much.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
I think you're right, but I look at it through
the lens of there's a fragmentation of streaming capabilities. You know.
In the old days. You don't know this, but you
and I are very aligned in two things. You said,
I hate horror movies and I love rom coms. So
you and I are both the missing target, you know,
in terms of what they're going to send our way.
(10:58):
But through that lens and the old days, we were
more interested, excuse my expression, as we say, on this
side of the pond, putting asses and seats on Friday,
Saturday and Sunday when you're opening a movie, because I
do want to get to that in terms of release
patterns and schedules. But now I think it's more putting
eyeballs on a screen than putting asses in seats relative
(11:21):
to the streaming side of the business. And I'm wondering how,
if at all that changes the dynamic for you, I
would think so, but changes the dynamic for you from
a standpoint of utilizing the data as a directional marketing tool.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Yeah, I think since the seventies eighties, it was about
like give me eighty percent reach on TV and a
frequency of three, and that's basically how it goes. And
this was like for decades the same thing. Now for
the first time, I'm pretty frustrated about like how slow
for like a startup mindset this goes. I hear like
different studios and clients of us saying like, I want
(11:58):
to go digital first, I want to plan what's the
new metric? How do we plan digital first? And at
TV on the top for some movies. So this switch
that's finally going digital first, using the data that's there,
using the capabilities the KPIs who can use from digital
and targeting people better to really know who to reach,
because in the end, that's what we also wanted. We
(12:19):
wanted to close the loop, get the data, bring the
data to the platforms where we can reach people with you,
and then close the loop to actually know who's going
who doesn't go. And that's something big in terms of
targeting is one thing and then knowing like the new
trailer for this or this movie might have been a
good idea to go for this audience, but you have
to get prove and a KPI that you can actually
(12:40):
optimize against. And this was missing. So it's getting much
more efficient. You can reach a lot more of the
right people with less budget to be more profitable. And
I think this is a big trend right now.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
We're going to hit pause for a moment, but stay
with us after the break. We've got more insights to share.
One of the reasons that in the old days, Thursday
night was deemed to be must see TV and the
(13:14):
most money was always spent by studios on Thursday night.
Why because that's when people plan their weekend. Yes, and
so you want to get that person on Thursday night
because they're making their plans for the weekend. And again,
like you, my wife and I were Friday night regulars.
Whatever movies were opening, we would always be at a
movie on a Friday night. Obviously that's changed. Let me
(13:37):
ask you a question. I want to go back to
something you said at the start, David, of your beginnings,
your career beginnings as a CMO with a very marked
performance marketing view. You said something earlier that is so
true about movie marketing. You also have to do brand
marketing in the movie business because in each case, you're
building a brand. In that six week period, you're building
(13:59):
a brand. And you know, I've combined some words over
the years, and two that I put together were brand
marketing and performance marketing to call it brandformance. That's what
I think you're trying to communicate in the fact of
performance marketing can give uplift that traditional brand marketing probably can't,
(14:19):
especially if we're utilizing just watch media. Can you talk
about that, not friction, but the collaboration between brand and
performance when you have to build a brand as well
as you know, drive action.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Yeah, there is not much fiction. I think data is
good to reach the right people, but brand is really
about like what you show them. So I think marrying
those two things, marrying performance marketing with a great storytelling
of a trailer and the right storytelling of Hollywood, basically
combining those two things is great. I'm from the Berlin
startup Center here and we have a lot of at
(14:52):
tech companies and a lot of at tech talent here.
But if you market the wrong thing, you're basically multiplying
with zero nobody cares if you're talking is great if
nobody likes the product. So I think bringing this German efficiency,
this German engineering and a little bit nerdy thing that
we build. We had more tech company than a media company.
We have something new data, publisher media buying, so it's
(15:14):
all combined, but just for entertainment. But we if we
have a bad trailer, it doesn't work. So bringing the
best of storytelling for Hollywood together with the right targeting
is key. And I get often asked like or can
you use blockchain to write a script? Or can you
use AI to do this? And that It's like, no,
data is the opposite of creativity. Data is good to
(15:34):
find somebody later that that might like your trailer and
how you display your product. But data is not creative.
It's not story, is not brand. It's just a way
of being more efficient and doing much much more with
your money than it could before, and being more flexible.
You basically plan, you see some results, you can adapt,
you see if an audience actually wants to watch a
(15:54):
movie or not. And this is something that wasn't there before.
Let me give you one example, Like for campaign we
did for big streaming company. So we got a briefing
like you get from Hollywood. You get these hundred and
twenty page briefings where they say like what the show
is about and how you should market it, And it
was like eighteen to forty four year old male, gory
(16:15):
dark superhero that's basically a niche show. Let's market for that.
We used our data and our insights into audiences and
some tests we've run with our own survey based KPI
system and just ask more different audience and demographics if
they want to watch this show and sign up for
the streaming service to watch it. And we found out
(16:35):
months before the release that it was more female, it
was younger, it was older, it was much broader, and
so in the end we were able while the campaign
was running basically in real time, to recommend to the
client to do a much different campaign, and we were
able to invest over sixty percent of the budget outside
of the briefing. And this show was pretty big and
(16:56):
I think most listeners probably saw it. So this is
one of the ex amples to use data because there's
always an idea what something is and then you see
like what real feedback you get from data? How people
perceive it, and this is I think a great tool
to use. But storytelling is to start up everything to
build a brand.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
One of the things that I know is on our
list of things to talk about is legacy agency models.
And one of the things that has become so relevant
in the agency community referencing the large holding companies is
principle based buy. And to the degree you have principle
based buying, in many people's opinions, it flies in the
(17:36):
face of what you just said, because the idea of
being able to do that research in advance, six months
out before release, understanding what the demographic was driving viewership
based on that, having the lead time to work with
the client on allocating the budgets in the right way,
as opposed to, Hey, I'm long on this because I've
(17:59):
taken a principal position this is what you should buy.
I think there's some friction there for sure in the
agency community, and I'm curious how you look at that positioning.
Just watch media versus legacy holding company models, so that again,
because of profitability, we're all aware of this might be
(18:20):
leaning against their principal media positions as opposed to what's
necessarily right for the client for that particular program.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Yeah, there's definitely more friction on that than on the
storytelling and brand building pot So this is something where
when you look at a digital media it's basically the
opposite of where the legacy agency model comes from. I mean,
one of the first things you told me that you
basically started and ran the biggest media agency in the world.
This was impressive because we had your name on the
(18:50):
list for for many, many years. So it's great to
see that you directly got what we're doing and that
this will drive the industry forward and you can just
use old tools forever and just like put them on
digital eyeballs versus TV eyeballs.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
So in the end, I think, yeah, you know, David,
just to interrupt for a minute, and that's like we
always said about the creative side of the business. When
you started with magazines for advertising or newspapers, you then
transition to radio, You then transition to television, You then
transition to digital or to online. Each iteration creatively has
to be different. It should be no different with media
(19:28):
as it is with creative on each platform. But go ahead,
I agree with you.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
The big difference between all of them is that all
the older ones are basically a few big publishers or
a few big stations or a few big TV broadcasters,
and you basically the more money you can aggregate as
an agency holding, the bigger you can get, the more
leverage you have to negotiate deals and to get better rates.
(19:53):
And this is where the whole legacy model, the whole
way of brands working with agencies come from. It's basically
how the whole mechanics work. And then you go to
digital where it's auction based, where it's biddable a lot
of the inventory, and then putting more money on it
actually increases your price because you put more pressure on
the auction. So the mechanics of bidabile media are so different.
(20:17):
But because the legacy business models, the legacy deals, the
legacy thinking is so much in the industry. They used
reach on target like they used on TV for YouTube buying,
and you can completely screw up campaigns and it's not
like a commodity like a lot of those other channels
are by now because a lot of people don't know
the difference. So like this agency buy some YouTube, this
(20:39):
agency buys some YouTube. It's not a big difference, but
biddable media. The difference is massive. If you do a
good campaign versus a bad campaign or okay campaign, you
lose up to half of your reach, half of your views.
If you do a bad campaign with the same budget.
It's not like a few percent up or down. It's
fifty percent down or one hundred percent up. And that's
(21:00):
these big swings if you are not set up and
you're not incentivized in this direction. This is also something
we wanted to really have different here. Have you our
own data, have our own technology, focus on one industry,
be the best at this one, and basically suck at
everything else. But focusing really on that and using biddable
media and everything at our disposal only works if you're
(21:23):
not bound to legacy models.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
And speaking of that, David, I know, one of just
Watch Media's proudest, you know proclamations in the market is
something that you call the need for speed. And what
I say is a former partner mine taught me a
good expression, speed kills if you don't have it, yay.
(21:45):
So it's it's kind of the you know, play on words,
but you know, you use the G word, which people
hesitate to use often, and that is guarantee a twenty
four hour cycle to be able to give feedback. And
it's so critical. It's what we said at the early
part of this conversation, there's nothing more retail than movies.
(22:07):
You have a shelf life. You got to hit it
while the shelf life is there. So speed is critical.
How is it you're able to guarantee something that quick?
You know in a world where generally x weeks you know,
later you're looking at it and go, well, gee, that
didn't work or that did work. It doesn't help you
to amend on the fly kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
I mean, one of the worst things in the movie
campaign is when you say, oh, I still have half
the budget left and the first weekend is through, So
this is like the worst case before doing something better.
But yeah, as I said, like Legacy Media, they were
pushed down on their fees, so the whole industry basically
has to look at cost and to reinvest something in
(22:48):
media and be up to date. Work basically cat and
mouse games against yield algorithm engineers from Google. They try
to press out the most money of every impression, and
we work on our things to get the most views
out of the same impression. For the least money. This
is something that you constantly have to do and if
you're not incentivized of doing it because you get your
fixed fee and that's it, and it's really low. This
(23:10):
is something where you lose fifty percent of reviews if
you do that, and you have to be slow. If
you have only a few people on an account. This
means you have a ten day SLA return to briefing.
We guarantee a twenty four hour SLA. So we had
like another studio come to me and said, like, it's
close to my fiscal and my agency has a ten
day service level agreement to return to brief. Its not
(23:32):
just a return to brief. It's not starting a campaign,
but my fiscal is over in seven days. I have
a million euros here, can you do a campaign in
twelve markets in EMEA for this big blockbuster might have
been Marvel when we talked about it earlier, but this
was something where we got a call at four pm
if we can do something at the next day, and
I said we can. The question is your legal department can.
(23:53):
And they actually got it together in twenty hours and
we got a whole briefing and a whole media plan
and everything done in twenty hours and start of the
campaign basically next day, twelve markets, different time zones, different languages,
and we're running it and we guarantee twenty four hour
basically campaign starts. We also guarantee upfront how many views
people will get, so we predict the inventory, what title
(24:16):
we have, what audience we have in our system is
pretty accurate and predicting how many views we will be
able to get for this budget, and we also guarantee
it upfront. We said we put our money where our
mouth is. If we say we are better if we
guarantee it. We have to deliver. And then people came
to me from the agency that booked us in the
end and said, like, but what happens if you can't
get to the views? What happens then? So like, yeah,
(24:38):
we guarantee and they didn't have this vocabulary for that,
it's not in the industry. And I said, like, we
pay from our own money, and this happened before. We
sometimes have to pay on top. It's really really rare.
But if a trailer comes in late, they cut the
audience really small and give us only two days to
run instead of seven. Sometimes we still fulfill our guarantee
(24:58):
and just pay on top doesn't happen too often, but
is also something we want to do better. If we
say we are so great, let's prove it. And I
was alsay important for us.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
You're clearly an anomaly in the in the industry to
use the G word and actually live up to it.
So I appreciate that, David. I want to go back
to something we talked about earlier, and I'd said, my
viewing habits. You're viewing habits of you know, early butts
and seats on a Friday for movie openings. But you know,
domestic box office from a US perspective, is shrinking in
(25:30):
twenty twenty four. I think the percentage was about a
ten percent drop in the top ten films, and then
the movies that kind of ranked in the twenty one
to one hundred if you look at the top twenty,
are really feeling it. And I know you have a
passion for movies, as do I, and I'm certain many
of our listeners. The idea of reviving that middle budget,
(25:53):
you know, is it going to be the five hundred
or two hundred million dollar movies? What about that angry
middle you know, what about that middle market movie feel
very important to the economic future of the studio business.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Yeah, it's not just ten poles. So the statistics you're
referring to. I was at Cinema Con and this was
one of the big opening speeches about the market and
the state of the market, to say, like after the pandemic,
we are down ten percent of the top twenty movies,
so like big ten poles, and we are down thirty
two percent on the next eighty, like the mid sized
and mid tier movies and the smaller ones, they are
(26:28):
really suffering. This is something where you have to be
even more efficient. I think the market is shrinking a
little bit further and it's more concentrated, and most people
don't know that only like around thirty million Americans are
responsible for over fifty percent of the box office. So
if you don't know who those thirty are and what
their taste is. People have this thing like we are Hollywood.
(26:51):
Let's try to reach everybody. This product is for everybody.
This doesn't work when you go a bit smaller and
a bit more niche and you reach the right people
with the right subject and genre, and you have to
do it with a lot less money than earlier. This
is something where you can't treat every movie campaign like
a tent pole. And this is especially important to understand
(27:12):
really quickly which audience are too narrow and they will
go anyways, and which audience that the studio maybe wants
to hit, but we have data to actually find out
that they don't want to see. It's what we call
cinema intent. So we do integrated research and surveys on
the same audience we run media, So we build audiences
that are really specific to taste, and then we also
(27:33):
run surveys on them to get this research basically real time,
and we do the several times over the campaign, so
we find out how high the cinema intent is of
like a broad audience like I don't know, horror fans
where this retro classic horror subgenre? And then we see,
like a retro classic horror works pretty well, high cinema intent,
(27:54):
low awareness. Let's put more money there, and let's see
if we schoo a little bit more male or femail
at all or younger, and the cinema intent for horror
or thriller or suspense is dropping really really quick. So
if you put money there, you just waste it. To
be much much more thoughtful and in having a KPI
that actually works. That's really important because in digital there
(28:15):
are so many KPIs. It's just too many. And we
looked at it, like ten years ago when we started campaigns,
we looked at it and like which KPI to use
if people watch a full trailer, if they click on something,
if they don't skip. The vitral rate is like a
big KPI to judge if an audience is good or bad.
We looked at billions and billions of views over the years,
(28:35):
hundreds and millions of budget that we ran, and we
ran lowed twenty thousand campaigns by now and over one
hundred markets, and there's zero correlation of somebody watching a
trailer to the end to actually buying a ticket. That's
why we did this cinema intent and sign up intent
or watch intent for sport and streaming, and this gives
us this edge. And I think this is really really
(28:56):
important to understand how to market mid market movies because
a lot you can only do franchise and tent pole
are it's three TOWD small and goes too quickly to streaming.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Good company will be right back after the break David,
I have just seen and I am certain and heard
as our audience will equal to your passion for movies,
(29:29):
which brought you to this business. Your passion for data
comes through. I mean, I see you both in the
creative sense loving the movies, in the nerdy sense, loving
the data. How would you define success for yourself in
this context? You're a founder, You've built this company brilliantly
(29:49):
over the last you know, twelve years plus or minus,
I think, and you're in a unique position. What's David
Croyer's KPI for himself for just watch?
Speaker 2 (30:01):
I mean we talked about is before, like the two
of us, like what what is the scoreboard?
Speaker 3 (30:06):
Like?
Speaker 2 (30:06):
How do you compare something with success? I don't know.
I think at the beginning, it's definitely like revenue and
then profit. I'm proud that we actually are profitable for
a long time, that we have more profits than a
lot of these hyped startups have revenue. What it means
is for me that we create so much value, We
deliver so much better campaigns. The app helps people to
save time. We actually are worth it to earn money
(30:28):
because we create so much value. So that's important to me.
And there's a scoreboard to actually have a company that's solid,
that's growing pretty fast, and now we are doing much
more in the US, we just watch media. This is
something where there's still a big market open, so there's
a lot of growth always ahead. This is the thing
I looked at for a long time, but I don't know.
This is something where it gets to a certain point
(30:50):
where you thought, like I want to work with movies,
and now you work with procurement and politics and a
lot of numbers that actually don't matter too much for me.
It's more about not the numbers per se anymore, but
it's really about how I feel about it because it's
so abstract. You said, like, oh, there's another million or
something budget or campaign coming in, but it's I don't know.
(31:11):
After twelve years, it's so many of them that I
care more about that we did something specially, We learned
something new. So I think numbers and KPIs change over time,
and what makes you happy, it's more what gives you energy.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
You said two things that I want to link together
because one of the great lessons from this conversation might
be how you got lawyers to act in twenty four hours.
That was impressive. I have to go back to that.
I mean, I'm a reformed lawyer, as you know, so
it's hard to get lawyers to do anything in twenty
four hours. So that was pretty impressive. You were able
to do that.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
If they want to, they can do something and in
a few hours if they don't. Is that like, oh,
let's we've got planned for six months, let's talk later.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
Yeah, exactly, That's what we're all used to, David. I
want to bring us to the part of good company
that's always my favorite part, which is the lightning round segment,
and I'd like to throw some questions your way if
that's okay.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
Sure, David.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
Is there a small habit in your daily routine that
brings you unexpected joy?
Speaker 2 (32:08):
I think it's like family. First we startup baby and
then my real babies have like a six and nine
year old daughter, and when they come home from school,
this is I think the favorite moment, when they start
running at you. They still do that at this age.
This will change at some point, but this is like
probably my favorite moment of the day when they come home.
Speaker 3 (32:26):
That's the best moment you can have. If you could
give the younger David kre a one piece of advice
or guidance, what would it be.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
I think I thought always that I could be already further, better, bigger,
all these kind of things, and I was always too
late and beating myself up that I wasn't already a millionaire,
or wasn't here or there already. And it's just if
you're to decidify with your own goals all the time,
because you never get enough kind of thing. This is
(32:54):
something whereas like things will come together if you're consistent
and if you keep going and try to manage your emotions,
especially when you're in startup environment. If a great moment
in the beginning of the day and then three hours
later somebody quits that you don't want to or something
bad happens, this is the roller coaster and being able
to be more patient. And I'm not really good at this.
(33:16):
This is something I just like things will come if
you stay on it. Not change all the time, but
just stay on your things.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
I wish we could all take a deep cleansing breaths
now and say patience is a virtue. By my problem
is I tell people all the time patience is not
my long suit. So David, if today you weren't CEO
of Just watch what other job might you be doing?
Speaker 2 (33:40):
As I like movies, I will probably produce movies. I
think at some point in my life I will do that.
So I really want to want to produce some good
movies that I want to watch myself.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
You know, I knew you looked familiar because it sounds
like I just talked to most of the waiters at
restaurants in Los Angeles. I'm doing this now.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
But I'm not a director, so I'm not creative. I'm
a creative problem solver. I want to produce, but not direct,
So I think there are too many directors in LA
and most shouldn't be. So I just want to bring
the team together and find a great writer, a great director,
a great actor to put something together in the future.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
I've been taught by somebody a long time ago that
the reason they call it show business is because there's
the show and there's the business. So it sounds like
you might want to be more on the business than
the show.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
I think I'm better at this. Yeah, yeah, I mean
this is like also, why nobody really knows us or
just watch media. We didn't really start in the US
yet with just what media. I'm going to focus on EMEA.
But I'm not like a Hollywood red carpet show person.
I just like to grind and work and work and
make something better at one percent at a time, and
not like chase flashy things every year. Every year there's
(34:46):
something new. We still do the same, put more butts
in the seats and get better at trailer campaigns. I'm
not good at this Hollywood thing.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Well, I think you're better at than you think. David
was vere a particular and you know, I've been fortunate.
If someone asked me this question, I could answer it
with many names. But was there one particular mentor or
somebody in your life that gave me that single piece
of advice or that best advice or the go to
person for you as you were making decisions? Is there
(35:17):
somebody that stands out to you?
Speaker 2 (35:19):
I asked myself this sometimes because not yet. I always
wanted something like this, because my family was not in business,
not in digital, not in entertainment at all. I wasn't
allowed to watch movies until I was much older. I
think I'm still overcompensating and still watching a lot because
of that. Until I was ten, I lived in a
little village where my telephone numbers had three digits, so small,
(35:41):
like a few hundred people. So finding people that are
interested in building a business and doing something. I had
to move to Berlin from the countryside basically because I
couldn't find people that I could learn something from early on.
And that's also why I think it took me so long.
So like I'm twenty five and I still don't have
my own startup running because I'd didn't really have any
people around that did something I was interested in. But
(36:04):
of course I had like people around me and a
good support system and people that told me to be
more patient and that I will make it at some point.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
David, you've returned the favor you paid it forward today
because I think you've given some really good advice, both
personal advice. I really appreciate the focus on patients and
the things you were talking about and the pressure you
put yourself under, which I think is always the signpost
of successful entrepreneurs, people who are tough on themselves and
(36:32):
drive harder from that perspective, and that clearly comes through.
Is there one bit of advice you'd give to our
listeners in general.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
It's important not to chase always the silver bullet, and
every year it has to be something new. It's really
about the basics and taking time zooming out, trying to
really look at what drives your business instead of trying
every day a new productivity heck, or a new tool
or some new service. So I think, just like zooming out,
(37:01):
looking back at the basics, understanding what tools you actually
want to use instead of chasing, this is something that
I think will in the end lead to success, even
if it's a bit boring. But I think this consistency
is something that drives a lot of our seccess here
just watch media David Cree.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
It's a pleasure to spend this time with you on
Good Company. I appreciate your insights, your thinking and your candor.
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Thank you, it's always a pleasure to talk to you.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
I'm Michael Casson, thanks for listening to Good Company.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Good Company is brought to you by Three c Ventures
in iHeart Podcasts. Special thanks to Alexis Borger Purdel, our
executive producer and head of Content and Talent, and to
Carl Catle, executive producer at iHeart Podcasts. Episodes are produced
and edited by Mary deo, thanks for joining us. We'll
see you next time.
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