February 13, 2025 • 52 mins
What if you could transform a simple live video into an unforgettable brand experience? Join us as we sit down with John Petroccelli, the visionary founder of Bulldog DM, to uncover the secrets of live video production that has captivated audiences worldwide. With a career spanning YouTube, the Grammys, and Coachella, John shares his pioneering insights into creating seamless live-streaming experiences. From tackling challenges like ad blockers and cord-cutting to navigating the unique dynamics between brands, artists, and audiences, this conversation is a masterclass for anyone passionate about the evolving world of live video.
Streaming giants like Netflix, Apple, Amazon, and Hulu are turning to live events to boost engagement and discovery, and we explore how they're shaping the future of entertainment. Learn about the technical intricacies behind creating immersive experiences, from micro-sites to bespoke solutions that bridge brands and consumers. Discover how AT&T is leveraging 5G to redefine live streaming, offering viewers new ways to interact with content and see how technological partnerships, like those with Samsung, are crafting narrative-driven experiences that captivate audiences.
As we navigate the future of live video, we discuss into the importance of capturing consumer attention amidst an ever-crowded marketplace. Unpack the impact of technological advancements on consumption habits and see how platforms are evolving to meet changing viewer demands. With real-world examples like Coca-Cola's collaboration with the Viva Latino Festival and Hyundai's successful Elantra launch, we illustrate the transformative potential of live streaming. Join us for a fascinating journey through the cutting-edge techniques that are not just capturing moments but turning them into powerful brand stories.
Stay tuned for more in-depth insights on video technology, trends, and practical applications. Subscribe to Voices of Video: Inside the Tech for exclusive, hands-on knowledge from the experts. For more resources, visit Voices of Video.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Voices of Video.
Voices of Video.
Voices of Video.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Voices of Video.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Hey, good morning everyone.
We are in for another superexciting Voices of Video and, as
always, we are so thankful tohave you here listening to us
live.
And for those who can't joinlive or aren't joining live, you
should try it sometime.
It's a lot of fun, right, john?
(00:38):
Live video is the best it is.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Yeah, that's right.
Great fun, a lot of excitement.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Great fun, a lot of excitement, and, you know, lot
of excitement.
And there's always themicrophone that doesn't work.
And then you get the microphoneworking and then the platform's
not working and we don't knowanything about that, right?
All right, Well, again, welcomeeveryone.
So John Petruccelli is herewith me today and we are talking
(01:05):
about live video, live videoproduction, live events.
It's going to be a reallyexciting conversation, so thank
you for joining, John.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Thanks for having me, mark.
I'm looking forward to theconversation.
I know you're a thought leaderin the space and I'm happy to
have this exchange.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Well, I have thoughts .
I don't know about the leaderpart and I'm happy to have this
exchange.
Well, I have thoughts.
I don't know about the leaderpart.
Anyway, you're too kind there.
So let's go ahead and kickthings off.
You know why don't you?
Maybe not everyone's familiarboth with your background and
with you, but also your company,and then we've got a real
(01:43):
exciting discussion outline thatwe'll dive into.
So yeah, take it away.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Thank you.
I'm John Petruccelli.
I'm the founder of Bulldog DM.
We are the world's mostexperienced live stream studio,
which really translates to.
We provide all of the turnkeyservices and also best practice
strategies that a client wouldneed to really optimize and
deliver a seamless liveexperience.
And for us, a client is.
(02:12):
It's a brand agency, it's aplatform, a content creator.
It could be a music artist andit could be all of them together
in certain executions or asubset of that group.
And we are, when I say mostexperienced.
We're now in our 12th year inthe market.
I have, and some of mycolleagues have been in it for
about 20 years, which I think isalmost as long as it's been an
(02:33):
industry.
You know my background, I workedin the streaming world.
I took over a boutique livestreaming technology company
services company that wasacquired by AEG and there, you
know, we went on to do thingslike the live streaming
technology company servicescompany that was acquired by AEG
and there, you know, we went onto do things like the live
streaming for the Grammys,oscars, masters, ted Conference,
e3, also AEG experiences andright around the time, I had,
(02:56):
you know, sold the business.
I had started a conversationwith YouTube about live video
and they were intrigued and theplanets aligned and we did this
alicia key show in new york livestreamed on youtube, brought to
the viewer by american express,and youtube said hey, the way
you did this, we did everything.
Um, we were impressed.
We had a delighted artist, wehad a very happy audience and a
(03:18):
very, you know, intrigued brand.
We want to be in this business.
At the time, youtube was a vodstack, so we did everything live
on YouTube for about threeyears Coachella, bonnaroo, rock
in Rio, product launches forbrands, movie premieres,
tentpole events like Oracle OpenWorld and opened my eyes to
this kind of evolving world ofmore devices hitting the market.
(03:39):
Also, there was this movement toan experience economy fueled
largely by millennials, and Ithought, hey, there's a
different world unfolding.
So I spun out of AEG.
I formed this business, took afew people with me, later had an
executive from Insomniac atLive Nation join us and, because
we were early, we went and satdown with what we believed the
people that would fund thisindustry, the brands and they
(04:00):
told us we've got these threerecurring problems ad blockers,
brand safety and cord cutting.
We need to solve those things.
We also want to talk to thisyounger audience.
How do we do that?
So we really built a businessaround addressing those issues
and when we do these things,there's obviously a lot of
complex technical things thathappen in the background.
But it's afforded us to getinto this market and work with
(04:21):
some of the biggest brands inthe world AT&T, coca-cola, jeep,
nissan, hyundai, amazon, etcetera.
And yeah, that's our worldtoday.
It's certainly changed as aresult of the pandemic and it's
a very interesting time to be inlive video right now.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Yeah, it's amazing.
I love your story and journeyand, as I've learned about what
you guys do, one of the thingsthat really struck me for where
we are NetInt and you know ourplace in the ecosystem and you
know where I've spent most of mycareer, all of my career and
most of our audience here onVoices of Video.
(04:56):
We're kind of, you know we'rethe infrastructure people.
You know we're on the back end.
Usually it's, you know it'spremium license content.
More and more that's becominglive streams.
But you know, often it's a file, you know, so it's some asset
and then you know it's beingdelivered out.
(05:18):
Right about what happens whenyou have a brand that you know
they have an agenda.
At the end of the day, they'rethere to sell more of their
products, right, I mean, we'redoing this, make no mistake.
But at the same time, you havean artist, you know who's there,
(05:42):
and you have an audience andthe audience may or may not
actually care or even know aboutthe brand.
You know they probably havemore of an affinity with the
artist.
You know that's what draws men.
But then, as a result, they getto learn about, you know, the
brand and the products and youknow and get intrigued, and so
there's a super interestingflywheel.
(06:02):
I think you know that happensin this experience, and you know
, I'm just curious.
You know already I'm startingout a sequence here from what we
were going to talk about.
But is that?
Is that a way to think about?
You know these, what, both whatyou do and where the value is,
and you know is, is that whatyou see?
Speaker 2 (06:23):
see um well, if we look at this through the lens of
the you know I wasn't sayingadvertising industry, but it's
really a content industry aswell.
Yeah, you know the, thechallenge that I think marketers
or advertisers have today ishow do I get someone's, you know
, persistent or sustainedattention, attention, attention.
(06:46):
And when we found again theseearly conversations, we've got
ad blockers on phones.
We've got court cutting.
We're trying to connect with anaudience.
The big value proposition thatlive video delivers is watch
time and engagement time, andwe're seeing brands articulate
back and I can't get someone'sattention for four seconds like
(07:08):
that's.
That's hard to do.
A live video executed properlyand I can get into what we feel
are our best practices.
We can unlock, you know, watchtimes of 5, 15, 20, 30, 40
minutes and sure that's relevantfor coca-cola, at&t, but I also
believe now it's relevant forsome of the video platforms you
(07:29):
know Hulu, Disney, netflix,apple, amazon, et cetera.
They want people on thoseplatforms and they want them
watching and I think we'reentering into a very new era
with those entities now turningon a lot of live video.
We've come, you know, in mymind come a long way.
This industry was knownprimarily in the early days for
its failures.
(07:49):
Right, everyone knew about thevictorian secret experience
crashing.
Or remember oprah?
Oprah winfrey did a show onlineand that didn't work.
And even recently, netflix hadthe uh, love is blind, yeah,
finale, not not make it to theair.
And we certainly saw some ofthis too in the pandemic.
You know big artists trying togo live and not being able to do
(08:10):
it, largely because they wererelegated to.
You know, some using hometechnology, but also the
platforms that were funded, Ithink, in the pandemic had no
idea how to scale right.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Yeah, that's right.
Critical right, critical right,yeah, yeah, and, and so I would
.
I would love to get yourperspective.
Um, speaking of these, uh, moretraditional, you know, let's
call them kind of the vod typestreaming services and netflix,
and very clearly they are moving, um, not away from that.
(08:44):
But you, you know they'readding, let's say, a live
component, and I think it'sinteresting with the sports, the
sports events.
I was going to say sportsrights, but it's more like, you
know, almost like one off eventsthat they are.
You know that they've beenholding and you know they have a
more aggressive schedule comingup for the, you know, for 2025.
(09:05):
So why, in your opinion, whyare they doing that?
Like, on one hand, it's maybean obvious, you know, people go
well, of course, everybody wantsto watch live sports, but it's
like there's something more toit, it's more than just just,
you know, it's content peoplewant, in my opinion.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
But you know, I think a lot of live video falls into
two buckets, where it's customeracquisition or it's customer
loyalty.
And you're right.
Netflix, I think, has announceduh, there's a competitive
eating experience, you know,joey chestnut, there's a mike
tyson fight.
They've just signed up to NFL.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Christmas games as well.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
And I think it's interesting to know.
You know, ted Sarandos, I thinktwo years ago made a comment
the chief content officer at.
Netflix.
You know we're not anti-sports,we're pro-profit.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
And I think they went out and did some of these shows
.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
I think the golf tournament.
They did the Tom Brady roast,my opinion.
I think they looked tournament.
They did the Tom Brady roast,my opinion.
I think they looked at theaudience, the engagements.
You know, live video also givesyou a great set of analytics
where people are, how longthey're watching.
When did you achieve peaksimultaneous usage?
And I think they, I think theycame to the conclusion pretty
quickly that, wow, this is abusiness that we should be in.
(10:23):
We can move people onto theplatform, they can discover what
we're doing, and I think that'smy opinion.
I think we're going to see notonly Netflix do more of this
work, but also Apple, amazon, Ithink.
Hulu is doing three giant musicfestivals in partnership with
Live Nation.
I think it's a great way todrive discovery onto the
(10:43):
platform.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
And a lot of them now are doing.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Um, you know, ad supported business models are
starting to come into thoseentities.
I think I think the spotifymodel of you know, hey, sign up
for free, listen ads and thenkind of realize I don't want
these ads, I don't want thefrequency of these ads, I'll go
to a tier.
Yeah, that's right.
I think it all kind of playsinto this overall market, but
really it's, uh, again, thesustained you know watch time.
(11:05):
It's just like when we, when tvyou know fox got into the tv
business, yeah, they just boughtthe nfl rights, right, probably
a major loss later, but it madethem a network that had
relevancy.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
And here, that's right, yeah, yeah, interesting,
okay.
Well, there is, uh, a technicalcomponent which is really
important to pull all this off,and so maybe you can give us an
(11:35):
overview of both what you do,what are you building?
Are these, you know you,fascinate?
I'll let you explain it, buthow?
You're even going so far as tobuild like micro sites you know,
where, where these experiencesare, are are.
You know, there's some sort ofbranding, there's like even
(11:57):
experience around the experienceof watching the video.
So, you know, tell us what thatlooks like.
You know what.
What are they doing?
What's your role in it?
You know, are you guys buildingeverything bespoke?
Do you have, do you have, aproduct or a platform that you
know that you bring?
(12:17):
Yeah, give us, bring us.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
You know, behind the scenes there, yeah, I think the
uh, the evolution of livestreaming is, uh, it's pretty
intriguing.
My belief is that the onlinevideo world was built for
on-demand video, right, if youwant.
If you want to watch a movie,it's on netflix.
A tv show is on hulu anythingand everything is on a platform
(12:41):
like youtube.
And what we didn't contemplateis there may come a time, which
I think we're in today, whereconnectivity will be in your
hand and everybody will want totune into a live experience and
have that collaborative,participatory experience
together.
And so certainly we see themain platforms are building up
(13:04):
their live stacks ecosystems.
I think Netflix has hired someterrific video engineers to come
in live video engineers as well, and they're moving pretty
quickly to get to the that level.
I have a, you know, I havebrand customers that also rely
very heavily on their socialplatforms.
Right, they want to livebroadcast on.
YouTube, facebook, twitch,twitter, linkedin, instagram,
tiktok, you name it.
(13:25):
They also say to us thoseplatforms are critical to us and
they're important, but I wantto have that direct relationship
as well with the consumer or Iwant to do something that's just
for maybe it's AT&T subscribers.
They're not built or equipped toturn it on.
I mean, look how challenging itis for the video platforms to
do it, live the brands and themarketers they're not there,
built or equipped to turn it on.
I mean, look how challenging itis for the video platforms to
live the brands and themarketers they're not there,
(13:47):
they don't have thatinfrastructure and I don't
normally expect them that theywould.
Sure, sure.
So, turning on and buildingmicrosites or embeds that we can
drop into their infrastructurewithout taxing their
infrastructure and having thatvideo obviously served by a
backend like an AWS, that's aninteresting business for them.
(14:09):
A couple of years ago AT&T isone of our bigger clients.
They came to us and said wereally want to tell our 5G story
away from the market.
We want to get away from thenoise and have our way of how
we're going to articulate thevalue proposition.
And they have activesponsorships with the NCAA and
with the NBA and we came up withthis idea.
(14:31):
Why don't we allow you to powerthese experiences, the
entertainment and the concertsat these events, but do it on an
experience where you can chooseyour view, and also choose your
view in real time and the audiowill be delivered in stereo
audio which is a differentexperience than you would get on
Instagram or Facebook orwherever, and we were, so we
(14:54):
built this microsite.
Drop it into an AT&T or could bea vanity URL as well, but you
may discover the performance by,you know, doja Cat at the NBA
pregame all-Star game on aplatform like Instagram.
But you'll come over to thismicrosite.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
And you can change your camera perspective.
We took it to a different levelwith them.
We were shooting some of thesupplemental camera feeds on
Samsung Galaxy S23 devices.
Oh, cool, cool Inside of apop-up 5G network app.
Yeah, wow, that's a radicallydifferent way to talk about what
they're doing but also share itbeyond the room where the show
(15:36):
is happening.
Yeah, that also engaged Samsungas their partner.
We also did one event.
We used Google Pixel Pro phonesas well, but microsites we've
done this for you know a brandlike Coca-Cola Nestle as well.
They want to kind of again ownthat direct relationship.
They might simulcast out tosocial as well.
(15:56):
Maybe sometimes they'll teasethe experience.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Yeah, hey, you discovered the first 10 minutes
of the show.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Come over here and watch.
Um, uh, you know, watch thefull thing in its entirety.
But Microsoft's for the forcertainly for bigger client and
also for uh, you know, forsecure reasons as well.
Yeah, disney wants to do a townhall.
That's going to happen in theirworld.
We've had big consumer packagedgoods companies release a new
product to their internal teamsaround the world.
(16:25):
So microsites come in handy todo that.
So they're a big part of, Ithink, our world.
But it gives functionality.
We can turn on video chat,polling, trivia, graphics, calls
to action.
So it really helped them get abigger bang for their buck.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
I mean without taxing , yeah, yeah.
So I'm curious for thismulti-view experience.
You know where you can change,select camera angles and things
like that.
That does seem very compellingfrom a user perspective.
You know it's neat, right?
You can decide, you know, ifit's a band like oh, you know,
(17:05):
it's like I want to watch thedrummer, I want to watch this
side of the stage or that side,or look at the audience, or you
know whatever.
So you know, in sports it'ssuper clear.
I mean there's all kinds ofangles that, in theory, you know
in sports is super clear.
I mean there's all kinds ofangles that, in theory, you
could select.
Were you using?
You know some like low latencyplatform WebRTC like Phoenix
Technologies, or did you buildyour own?
(17:27):
Or you know, are you leveraginglike AWS?
Or maybe you can, you know,give a little bit more detail
about how you built this or whatyou're doing?
Speaker 2 (17:39):
The notion came out of the early days of delivering
an experience like a musicfestival, like Coachella.
So Coachella is eight stageshappening simultaneously.
The presenters wanted to givethe audience the ability to look
at an experience and change.
You know, maybe you're notinterested in what's happening
(18:00):
on stage a you wanted to look atdifferent artists on stage b
and we kind of took that to achoose your view.
Uh, concert experience, andthat's definitely you know, aws
powered uh jw player um, and wehave some kind of engineering
tricks we use to have thathappen, you know, seamlessly.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Yeah, because each stream has to be synchronized.
In that scenario, when you'rewatching disparate events, you
know that's not, as it's notrequired, right, because you
know stage A, stage B, by verydefinition they're out of sync.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
You know it's different, different, different,
different music and everythinggoing on, but you know, and we
spend a lot of time, uh,analyzing consumer behavior as
well, and the audience doesn'twant, you know, the player to
take, I think, six seconds toload typically we see that
happen, we lose about 20 of theaudience audience.
(18:54):
So it's going to happen quickly.
I've seen experiences where youknow if someone does change
their camera, things that wedon't provide.
You know there's like thisbuffer cycle and you know a
consumer, that's not what theywant and we can.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
certainly that bears itself out in the analytics as
well.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Sure, but the you know for distinct the audio as
well.
I think is a difference maker,so you're really staying in the
experience, even if you'relooking from a different
perspective, but also gettingthat audio up to you know, I
think 256k that's a higherquality, fidelity and all the
years I've been doing.
I started my career, you know,working um with prince 17 18
(19:35):
years ago amazing, and certainlyworking with that type of an
artist who wanted to go directbut also my background in
working at AEG the music artists.
They care more about the audioin the live stream than they do
the video, of course.
Yeah.
So having a higher level offidelity and a persistent level
of quality audio has been, Ithink, a difference maker.
(19:59):
And if it's brought to you byAT&T, you know they have skin in
the game as well.
They want it to be synonymous,you know, with their brand.
You know so having all thesethings happen under the hood.
You know we're using managing alot of different technologies
in a lot of ways.
You know to do that.
But at the end result, you orthe big check writers they tell
(20:21):
us you figure this out, we wantto do this.
If you want to do this withthese other partners, just hold
them to the same standards thatwe're going to hold you to.
The whole world has to, youknow, live video.
I think the pandemic, thecompanies that got funded in the
pandemic, I think it certainlyshowed that this is not easy to
do.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
A lot of moving pieces have to happen.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
I think it certainly showed that this is not easy to
do.
Right, that's right.
A lot of moving pieces have tohappen.
We go to great lengths to usemultiple transmission paths.
A lot of times those live viewpacks are pretty critical to a
successful show.
We're also deploying multiplelive encoders, so there's a
primary and a backup device.
(20:57):
Elementals and Perls, I think,are critical for that success
and no matter what the guaranteeis, the show has to stay on the
air.
So encoder doesn't work.
Encoder A, we're flipping overto encoder B, I think also using
sometimes massive events.
You've heard that multiple CDNsis a strategy to deploy, but
the idea is we've got to makethis experience happen.
(21:18):
It's got to stay on the air andwe've got to use the best
solutions available to us.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.
Yeah, that's interesting.
So then, just one last questionbefore we move on, because I
know we have a case study todiscuss and you know we're going
to wrap up talking about therole of advertisers, you know.
So, yeah, it's pretty pretty.
I'm excited about that.
(21:42):
Hear your thoughts.
So, on the on the technicalside though I am, I am curious
have you have you settled on,you know, a base architecture or
configuration that you know?
You've already mentioned someencoders that you use and you
(22:03):
know.
So now, have you done enoughevents that you basically have
your, you know, your,architecture I guess call it
that or are they all uniqueenough that you kind of have to
approach each a little bit froma bespoke perspective?
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yeah, it's a great question and it comes up pretty
frequently.
The reality of.
I haven't done this for twodecades, certainly the past 12
years at Bulldog.
No event is the same from oneto the next, that's right.
So we're constantly having to,I would say, spin up.
I mean, we'll certainly borrowfrom what we've done in the past
.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Yeah, of course.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
We're very vocal about making best practice
recommendations right, if we'regoing to do this, we should do
it this way.
You know, a lot of this isdictated by the distribution
platforms.
So if a customer says to us mytop three are Facebook,
instagram and TikTok, I need tobe on those platforms.
We also get hired by TikTok,youtube and Facebook, so we know
(23:09):
we're going to send the stream.
To do it that way.
I mean, a lot of it is, too, isknowing the critical people are
the live ops people at thoseplatforms and since we've done
so much work with them, we knowwhat their challenges are.
I mean, I think every socialmedia platform has its strengths
and its you know disadvantages.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
And how do we do?
Speaker 2 (23:31):
that.
You know that's.
That's a big.
I mean live video looks amazingon YouTube.
But discovery is not theirstrong suit.
You know Instagram has a greatalert notification system.
Historically it's been.
You know a lot of Instagram livehas been relegated to a camera
phone.
We've got workarounds we'veused for four or five years.
(23:51):
So if we're going to social,that's going to dictate a lot of
how we're going to execute theexperience.
You know, knowing the bandwidthat the venue, yeah, that's
going to dictate a lot of of howwe're going to execute the
experience.
You know, knowing the bandwidthat the venue, yeah, that's
right.
Huge aspect of this, huge, huge.
Yeah, fortunately for us.
I come out of aeg who owns andoperates a lot of the bigger
(24:11):
venues and arenas around theworld.
Um colleagues of mine come on alive nation.
We advised uh neva during thepandemic, so there's 3 000 um
national independent venue, kindof know.
Typically, if we're going to gosomewhere, we do the uh
snapdragon summit for qualcomm,which happens in a beautiful
resort but it's in maui and thathas a lot of bandwidth
(24:32):
challenges.
In the past year we came thereright after the fires in Maui,
so it was a lot of playing withour tech guys, our tech people,
with the Qualcomm people,because also the audience for a
lot of Qualcomm's announcementsare in China.
So there's a whole other set ofsteps to get through, to
distribute out to theirplatforms and their partners.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Oh, that's fascinating.
That's right, because, yeah,it's not sufficient just to say,
hey, you know, we did our part.
You know we've got a greatlooking stream coming out of the
venue.
You know, like, if you, if,ultimately, where their audience
is, if they're not able to seeit and you know, then it doesn't
(25:13):
matter, right?
Speaker 2 (25:14):
so, yeah, and the figure is, you know, going to be
pointed at the customer.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
They're not going to say oh, exactly do this properly
, or the bandwidth constriction.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
At the end they're going to point to you know
qualcomm, or they're going topoint to at&t and say I tried to
tune in for this food fightersconcert before the super bowl
and yeah, and I couldn't, Icouldn't see it.
Yeah, wow, so we go wayoverboard to make sure that
there's a checklist.
We go through a process, we dosite surveys and you know we
want to be helpful.
This should be easy.
(25:43):
Live video is, I think,presents a lot of anxiety, no
matter how many times you'vedone this for the clients.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
And we're sensitive to that.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
But we also want to make sure that they can focus on
the experience and the contentand not worry about is this show
going to hit the air?
So your bigger question a lotof it's dictated by that.
If we're operating from amicrosite perspective, then
we're working in parallel withthe infrastructure teams at
those companies, as well, yeah,interesting, wow, super
fascinating, super fascinating.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Okay, well, you have a case study and why don't you
tell us you know about some realworld results of all of this?
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Yeah.
So when we started the business,I had been powering, obviously,
some of the work I was doingsupporting at AG, supporting
YouTube, and when we started ourbusiness, coca-cola, I think,
had done a pretty big PaulMcCartney concert in Mexico and
said, hey, we love what we'redoing on YouTube, but we also
want to distribute directly fromour platform at coca-colafm and
we happen to be the titlesponsors of the Viva Latino
(26:54):
Festival, which is the largestrock festival, I think, in that
part of the world.
It's treated as the Coachella ofLatin America.
And we won the business largelybased on helping them deliver
content directly fromCoca-Colafm but simulcasting out
to social, and over severalyears of working together
(27:17):
together we were able to kind ofmove them into a place where
you could watch, I think 11hours both days of the festival
and three different channels, soabout 60 70 bands.
Uh, you could also go to themicrosite and look at the lineup
and say, hey, I'm mark and I'ma fan of these bands G-Eazy,
jake, bob, prophets of RageEnter in your mobile number and
(27:39):
get a push notification with alink to the video.
Say hey, the artist that youlike is starting now on Channel
1.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Super cool.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Wow, yeah, come to the experience.
Yeah, we also brought in, we'llcreate everybody and use this
video director to direct themain stage and offer that in VR.
So if you were again thecountry and you were at a Best
Buy store, you can go and put onthat Samsung headset and enjoy
the show.
Or if you were on YouTube, youcould 360 the experience and a
myriad of other kind of coolthings Polling, trivia, et
(28:09):
cetera.
Anyway, the end result was also, I think, the first major
simulcast on Twitter in thatpart of the world as well.
But for Coke, again, the bigthing was we want to get
someone's attention and it'svery hard to do that, and the
broadcast on the microsite ledto a watch time of about 29
(28:32):
minutes on mobile and 113minutes on desktop, about 3.9
million viewers between thosetwo platforms, and that was a
massive win for them.
You know, huge, hugelysuccessful and also a big part
of our business is.
You know, people spend a lot ofmoney on experiential and being
with consumers.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
And the notion of live video is.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
let's amplify that it kind of goes back to my days of
moving into AEG and seeing howCoachella has 85,000 people.
You know all three of thosedays.
Imagine that experienceamplified, I think, the Beyonce
year.
I think that's 89.2 million,you know.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Crazy.
So this partnership with Cokewas just a big, big home run.
So this partnership with Cokewas just a big, big home run.
And just recently we helpedthem launch their Coke Spice
their first new permanent flavorin three years at an activation
in New York City.
Live on Coke's Twitch account.
But also Chrissy Costanza, abig influencer.
(29:33):
So that's been a great partnerto work with, among a myriad of
others, but that was a real kindof eye opener.
Yeah, hey.
Here's the results that thisbrand really not upon, but
thirsted for and wanted.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Yeah, really helped, yeah, interesting, and you said
a couple interesting things too.
So, like you were, you knowCoke was, I think you said the
title sponsor or whatever youknow was the primary sponsor.
But then there was anexperience around Samsung.
You know Samsung Mobile.
So was that just becauseSamsung was a chosen device or
(30:07):
were they also a sponsor?
And therefore there's likemultiple brands kind of you know
in a way, coming together Inthat case you know, vr was this
is a couple of years ago wasbecoming the hot thing, and you
know a lot of marketers.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
They want to be aware , they want to be in the
forefront of innovation and theyhave what are called test
budgets or test and learnbudgets, and they responded to
the idea of let's broadcast justthe main stage in that kind of
VR format.
Vr, yeah, cool, but the way toget the consumer.
So if you had, you could reallydo a cool 360 stream on YouTube
(30:45):
on an Android, I believe.
Yeah, but to really connectwith the consumer in country, it
was go to the best buy.
Not everybody had headsets backthen.
Yeah, exactly, vr headsets.
So the partnership with Samsungcame out of that work.
Let's bring them into the store.
You know with AT&T, clearly.
You know massive partnershipwith the Galaxy.
Sure, sure, sure, can we takethat partnership to a different
(31:08):
level and actually shoot?
These phones are, I would say,prosumer level cameras, but the
pit cam would be, you know, aSamsung galaxy or artists cam.
But we're still offering up,you know, five camera directors.
Yeah, yeah, but yeah that's kindof the idea of how to bring
other partners into the solution.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
Yeah, very cool, well , awesome.
Well, let's talk about the roleof advertisers and you know, I
know you've got a lot ofthoughts around this, so I'm
going to turn it over to you todiscuss.
How can advertisers play a moresignificant role in really
(31:52):
unlocking the value here in livestreaming of events, and what
does that look like?
What do they need to bethinking about doing?
Speaker 2 (32:02):
You know we hear a consistent.
I think everybody's got a Gen Z, you know strategy.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
How do I talk to that ?
Speaker 2 (32:09):
consumer.
They're not watching, you know,tv commercials traditionally.
They're not really consumingtraditional media, consuming
media traditionally, or evenadvertising.
So we've endeavored to find out, hey, you know what are the key
ways to do that.
And you know there is thisnotion of I think you hear Live
(32:30):
Nation talk about it.
You know the experience economyConsumers value being at.
You know quote experiences,shared experiences, shared
experiences.
You know with their friendsthat they can extend that.
You know, digitally orvirtually, right, you might be
in miami at a, at art basel oran experience, but you want to
share it with your colleague andor your friend in detroit, live
(32:51):
video.
And that immediacy offers thatopportunity.
And again, the real drivershere are watch time to do that.
And, by the way, the audienceis not.
They're not upset Like, oh, hey, I can't.
You know Verizon is sponsoringthe headlining performance of
Coachella.
They're pretty happy about that, right, because they can now
(33:13):
see this.
And also the ability to execute.
We've got higher camera, higherquality cameras now we're
almost everywhere, so that's abig.
We can also mount, you know,cinematic lenses.
We can shoot it in a way thatsomebody wants it done.
But you know, real significant.
You know big opportunity thereand combined with you know, I
think a lot of marketing dollarsnow, as a result of of pursuing
(33:38):
that age demographic, are inexperiential and people will
spend a significant amount ofmoney to put on these beautiful
whether it's to a small audienceor a big audience these
experiences and to amplify thatout is really interesting.
We can just come in and layerin a live stream workflow and
take that from 1,000 people inthe room to 20 to 50 times that
(34:02):
and drive discovery, watch timeet cetera, give them some great
data points.
But those two strategies Ithink are top of mind for
advertisers and brands.
Advertisers and brands but alsoin our conversation today we've
covered that I view Amazon,apple, disney, netflix, hulu as
brands as well.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
So they're using that video to customer acquisition.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
Yeah, that's right, so it's an interesting time
right now in the overall market,but I again, I'm a big believer
in seeing how do you helpbrands solve their challenges is
give them a way to reach anaudience in real time with a
sustained watch time.
I can't see a better way toallocate your money.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
Yeah, definitely, I agree.
I'm wondering from yourperspective you have a lot of
conversations with the bigbrands, the advertisers,
agencies, because they're allprobably involved in some of
these really massive festivalsand these massive events.
Why is it, though and this is aquestion for you see if you
(35:21):
have an answer, or what yourview is why is it, though, that
the CPMs on, for example, likefast channels, are so low
relative to television broadcastthat it's no wonder, for all
the promise of fast, nobody ismaking money.
Very few people are makingmoney.
(35:42):
Most of the platforms arereally struggling, and it's not
the success that everyoneclaimed it was going to be.
Why is that?
Why are advertisers so willingto throw the big budgets after?
(36:03):
You know broadcast and yet,where, arguably, they've got
much better targeting, they get,and they get the analytics,
they get the user data.
They get.
You know, I understand a lot ofit, you know it's anonymized
and you know there's the.
You know, so it's not like theyknow exactly what I'm watching.
I know that, but why is thatwhat you know?
What's the situation there?
Speaker 2 (36:24):
You know, I think a lot of it has to do with the
audience is just fatigue.
There's way too many optionsand, as a result, I think the
number one currency in the worldis time, and if I'm going to
give you my time, I want to havean experience that I'm going to
have some value, derive somevalue from and I'm going to
(36:45):
appreciate it.
And just putting anything andeverything.
I think these guys are allgoing to slug it out Interesting
.
I've read a lot of John Stankyat AT&T.
If he can get to the final 10video platforms, there's going
to be a little bit moreconsolidation, probably down to
(37:07):
six, and the interesting theorywas that by that time,
autonomous driving will havekicked in and we're not going to
grow as a society by billionsor millions of people, but
autonomous driving will returntwo hours a day.
Yeah, Interesting thesis andtheory.
(37:27):
So I think some of that isworth exploring and thinking
about.
I also see that, again, theaudiences that we serve great,
that we do a lot of shows orexperiences that appeal to
everybody, but doing, you know,say, a festival, or we work with
United Masters does a SelectConconference and it's about
(37:50):
culture and emerging artists,independent music artists, but
also relevant topics.
You know finance.
How do you learn about financeas a 24 year old?
That type of content is is, youknow, relevant and it's
appealing.
But again, having that, thatcollaborative, participatory
experience, I think is far moremore valuable.
Where you're posting, tweeting,commenting, maybe you're
(38:13):
answering polls with like-mindedpeople on connected devices
elsewhere.
I think, and it's it's why I Ibelieve, that a platform like
netflix now has, I think, testedsome live content.
Yeah, now they're goingspending some serious money
obviously yeah yeah, bringingthe uh, the nfl on board yeah,
yeah, yeah, it's very clear.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
Yeah, I find, I, I find that so fascinating A
little bit.
You know a little bit.
Like you know, reed Hastingsfamously you know only I think
it was like four years ago orsomething you know made a very
strong statement about therewill never be advertising on the
Netflix platform.
You know, when he was asked, Ithink it was on earnings call
(38:55):
and then, well, hello, you know,here we are.
It's one of the things I loveabout Netflix, by the way, is
that they're very comfortablewith their thesis, you know
today, which they hold verystrongly, and they stand by, but
then, when proven otherwise orshown what they change, you know
, and uh, and so I love it.
(39:16):
I, I had a conversation withsomebody I'm very senior in the
um on the streaming side ofnetflix and this would have gone
back to like probably 2016 or17.
So you know, this is like.
You know, seven years ago or so, uh, and maybe even eight years
ago, and somebody asked, hey,will Netflix ever have live?
(39:41):
Why wouldn't you go after live?
And the person made kind ofthat same definitive like
Netflix will never, netflix isfile bait.
And now here they are, live,and it's all just a testament,
of course, to who they are as anorganization, that they are
always innovating.
They're always looking at howthey can bring more value, you
(40:02):
know, to the consumer.
But at the same time, theconsumers evolved, right, you
know, seven, eight years ago,people were talking about live
video in a world of VODplatforms.
People were talking about livevideo in a world of VOD
platforms and, yeah, consumersare watching TV and live video.
But basically, we loved ourNetflix, you know, select the
file, hit, play and it played.
(40:23):
Right, that, you know, that wasit.
Well, now, as you're aptlypointing out, the consumer.
It's time that we're competingfor.
It's time that we're competingfor, you know, and again, going
back to not to use all Netflixexamples, but I think Reed
Hastings also famously made aquote about, you know, their
(40:46):
ultimate competitor it's games.
You know it's gaming, it'sother experiences.
It really isn't you know thisstreaming service or that
streaming service, or you knowit's it's other experiences.
And I totally buy into that,you know, into that line of
thinking.
And so, for those of us workingin the industry, you know it's
(41:08):
one of the reasons that I I havea personal, you know, I just
sort of I shudder a little bitwhen I read yet another headline
about the streaming wars, youknow, and who's going to win,
and it's just like it's thewrong conversation.
It's completely the wrongconversation.
You know.
This isn't about, you know,disney beating Netflix or
(41:30):
Netflix beating Amazon Prime.
This is about capturingattention of the consumer, who
has a lot of places they canspend it.
Spend that attention.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
And they're pretty vocal about what they want.
So a lot of times I say let'slisten, let's hear what they
have to say and I think thetechnical live or technical
video people know better thananybody that you can't expect
things not to change.
Yeah, I think we've all workedin video for the past four or
(42:07):
five years, even 10 or 20 years.
You've dealt with constant,repeated change, always
something happening.
You know, look at TikTokentering the market and market
and you know that's a wholedifferent platform it's
different yeah, and you got tosupport that and be prepared to,
you know, to deal with it.
But I, you know, I, we, I see Iget a lot of great feedback from
(42:29):
, you know, from engineers.
What's your thinking?
Where this industry is headed,were you observing?
And a lot of it, too, iswatching the, the social streams
around the shows.
I mean, we, we use tools toeliminate, uh, you know,
trolling and off topic.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
You know, uh yeah, commentary, yeah, yeah, that
must be a challenge it is, butwhen I started this business, I
you know youtube was a big.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
You know, I did for three or four years powered the
youtube experience and people dowant to uh, they want to go
beyond just webcam video yeah,they don't want yeah, you could
hire uh drake and have a keynotefrom jeff bezos.
But if you know, especially ayounger consumer, if they can't
interact with that video,they're not going to watch too
long.
(43:12):
And by you know, turning on asocial stream but also curating
it, so the conversation isrelated to the video.
People lean more into thatrather than pull away.
They're more likely to comeback to subsequent live
broadcasts.
They're more likely to invitetheir friends to it as well.
Turn on some graphics and somepolling and you've really
(43:32):
transformed that viewer into aparticipant.
And those are key ways to besuccessful.
And this is not.
I mean, it's all happening live, right.
So it is not easy.
But people in my industry havefigured this out and there's
great tool sets out there tokind of change your video
experience and take it to awhole nother level.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Yeah, yeah, cool.
Yeah, I really appreciate allthe insights.
John, this is amazing.
Let's wrap it up here.
We're coming coming a littlebit over time, but we've got to
start a few minutes late.
So, let's you know, I think agood place to wrap this up would
be you know, we touched on this.
(44:13):
Is Nielsen a friend or foe?
You know we touched on this.
Is Nielsen a friend or foe, youknow?
And then where's theopportunity?
So I'm asking for the question,I'm asking the question, I'm
looking for your insights fromthe perspective of.
I put my hat on.
You know, I work at more of aI'm going to call it a
traditional streaming service.
(44:33):
You know somebody, as we'vetalked about, you know, out of
that, netflix, amazon Prime, youknow Hulu, vudu, you know that
kind of a thing, how?
So?
I'm sitting here and I'mlistening.
I'm going, yeah, you know we'rehaving a lot of discussions,
we're even, you know there'ssome strategy around some of
this.
But gee, how do I go from thiskind of licensed content world
(44:57):
where everything was about I gostrike a deal for a certain
amount of time and it gives meaccess to a library and then I
basically go try and monetizethat?
I mean, at the end of the day,the business is kind of as
simple as that I pay $300million for this library.
Now let's go see if I couldgenerate more than $300 million,
(45:19):
you know, out of that.
How do, how can people thinkabout expanding into these live
experiences, maybe bringingbrands in, maybe starting to
kind of step beyond, you know,into the world that you're in,
starting to kind of step beyond,you know, into the world that
you're in?
Give us some you know, I don'tknow some insights.
(45:44):
You know what?
Speaker 2 (45:44):
they may want to think about, talk about, look at
yeah, I think you know, dippingyour toe in the water and
coming out with an event thatoffers you a story, and the
story is the data and theanalytics.
And when I give example, I'vedone a lot of automotive reveals
for Hyundai and they struggledwith you know how do I navigate
(46:04):
the Jacob Javits center.
It's so difficult just to getpower and connectivity there.
Same thing with the conventioncenter in LA.
You know this is what we do fora living right.
We figured this out, we have.
You know, again, the bigunlocking challenge in a lot of
these places is internetconnectivity and proper
bandwidth to execute the show.
And you know we were able tofigure that out for them and
(46:27):
also distribute to multipleplatforms simultaneously.
And, do you know, on the flytranslation and do on-the-fly
translation.
And at the end I'd say the realreturn for them was they were
launching the new model of theElantra a couple years ago and
it's the number one sellingvehicle in Hyundai history and
(46:50):
by executing a really perfect,beautiful presentation of the
vehicle and I think it was, youknow, the big kind of consumer
selling points were also a lineof green electric vehicles, even
the ability to share a key inyour household digitally, so if
the parent wants to share withthe child or spouse they can do
(47:13):
that, but to showcase that inthe moment, in real time, and
put it everywhere.
Hugely successful for them andgoes beyond just showcasing the
vehicle to the Detroitautomotive press.
As a result they had a recordnumber of pre-orders but again,
the most selling, most soldvehicle of all time.
That live stream brought theman incredible amount of
(47:35):
pre-orders.
So great viewership, but alsopeople expressing an interest,
and when that car and the carmight, I think it was available,
you know, not that day, butcertainly a quarter or two away,
sure, but that's a great way tolook at this market is how do I
captivate somebody?
and they even had the headengineer after the big
presentation.
We took a camera and followedhim around the vehicle he's like
(47:56):
.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
Here's what we thought about how we designed
the panel to be and what you'regoing to see there.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
I always found that people love to see things they
normally wouldn't get to see itcould be anything.
Years ago I was blown away by.
We did a live stream in Brazil.
It was two mma fightersinterviewing each other and the
audience was just off the chartsand I had no idea that that's,
uh, what was to be expected.
(48:23):
But I think, to answer yourquestion, you know doing this
and getting into the businessand then now you have a value
proposition to go to a brand,say hey this experience yeah.
Do you want to come back nextyear?
We do this for the next quarter.
Do you want to be the presenterof this experience?
Speaker 1 (48:36):
Yeah, boy, I, I, I can already, and I, and I'm sure
you know the, the team over atNetflix are super smart, they've
got it.
You know there's a whole new adunit that can be sold.
You know, like you think aboutthe live, a live golf, a golf
event.
You know, and what if, ratherthan just putting ping logos
everywhere or you know whatever,like what if there was a little
(49:00):
three and a half minutevignette of of a ping executive,
you know, walking through, likethe design of the of a club, or
you know, and and, by the way,I'm not a golfer, so so just
riffing here, but you know, like, like, like it's, it's because
I'm totally with you.
(49:21):
You know I'm, I'm a carenthusiast and I'm also a
musician, and you know, and I'minto, you know, like all of us,
I've got things I'm interestedin.
And you know, boy, I mean Iwould just eat that up way more
than just seeing logos or having, you know, a little 29 second
splashy commercial.
You know that, you know thatit's.
(49:46):
You know I can love the brand,but it's like it's a commercial.
No, tell me, like, what'sbehind the product.
Or show me something that Idon't know.
You know that makes me evenfeel more excited, either to
acquire it or that I own it.
You know, I think that'sanother thing that's interesting
about like advertising, is it?
And it depends on the product,of course.
But you know, like, sometimesyou can really activate the
(50:08):
existing owners to make themevangelist.
You know, to make themevangelist, you know, because
you know, by giving them eitherfresh insights into how the
product was designed or you knowsomething about it.
Where then I'm going to be moreapt to not only go tell my
neighbors or my friends, butwhen somebody says, oh, I love
your car, I love this, I lovethat, oh, how do you like this?
(50:29):
Oh, did you know, you know?
And it's the.
Did you know that?
Um, then others respond to aswell, you know, you know, and
it's the.
Did you know that?
Um, then others respond to aswell, you know, because they
probably didn't know and they'relike oh, really, I didn't know.
Oh, wow, and now I really haveto go drive that car.
You know it's so.
Speaker 2 (50:45):
But even you know you bring up netflix.
I think you know an interestinguse case.
You know the mike, tyson, jakeor logan paul fight yeah the
experience and say who do youthink won that last round?
You know that could be, yeah,yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:59):
Who do you think is going to win the next round?
Speaker 2 (51:00):
And now you've got a really engaged audience, but
they could be, you know, castingto their connected TV and
that's yeah, and that wholewhole, or that companion
experience could be brought toyou by a Procter Gamble or a
brand.
Speaker 1 (51:14):
Exactly, yeah, yeah, of course.
Yeah, that's cool.
Well, I really enjoyed theconversation.
Thank you for coming on andsharing all your wisdom and
insights.
And, for listeners, if you'renot following John or connected
to John on LinkedIn, I know Isee your posts all the time, so
(51:37):
you know updates and so I'm surethat you're happy to connect to
folks and you know we'll bewatching the events that you're
producing and continue toproduce.
So, yeah, thank you for comingon.
Voices of Video.
Speaker 2 (51:54):
Mark, thanks for having me Great conversation.
Really appreciate it Absolutely.
This episode of Voices of Videois brought to you by NetInt
Technologies.
If you are looking forcutting-edge video encoding
solutions, check out NetInt'sproducts at netintcom.
Voices of Video.
Voices of Video.
Voices of Video.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Voices of Video.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Hey, good morning everyone.
We are in for another superexciting Voices of Video and, as
always, we are so thankful tohave you here listening to us
live.
And for those who can't joinlive or aren't joining live, you
should try it sometime.
It's a lot of fun, right, john?
(00:38):
Live video is the best it is.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Yeah, that's right.
Great fun, a lot of excitement.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Great fun, a lot of excitement, and, you know, lot
of excitement.
And there's always themicrophone that doesn't work.
And then you get the microphoneworking and then the platform's
not working and we don't knowanything about that, right?
All right, Well, again, welcomeeveryone.
So John Petruccelli is herewith me today and we are talking
(01:05):
about live video, live videoproduction, live events.
It's going to be a reallyexciting conversation, so thank
you for joining, John.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Thanks for having me, mark.
I'm looking forward to theconversation.
I know you're a thought leaderin the space and I'm happy to
have this exchange.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Well, I have thoughts .
I don't know about the leaderpart and I'm happy to have this
exchange.
Well, I have thoughts.
I don't know about the leaderpart.
Anyway, you're too kind there.
So let's go ahead and kickthings off.
You know why don't you?
Maybe not everyone's familiarboth with your background and
with you, but also your company,and then we've got a real
(01:43):
exciting discussion outline thatwe'll dive into.
So yeah, take it away.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Thank you.
I'm John Petruccelli.
I'm the founder of Bulldog DM.
We are the world's mostexperienced live stream studio,
which really translates to.
We provide all of the turnkeyservices and also best practice
strategies that a client wouldneed to really optimize and
deliver a seamless liveexperience.
And for us, a client is.
(02:12):
It's a brand agency, it's aplatform, a content creator.
It could be a music artist andit could be all of them together
in certain executions or asubset of that group.
And we are, when I say mostexperienced.
We're now in our 12th year inthe market.
I have, and some of mycolleagues have been in it for
about 20 years, which I think isalmost as long as it's been an
(02:33):
industry.
You know my background, I workedin the streaming world.
I took over a boutique livestreaming technology company
services company that wasacquired by AEG and there, you
know, we went on to do thingslike the live streaming
technology company servicescompany that was acquired by AEG
and there, you know, we went onto do things like the live
streaming for the Grammys,oscars, masters, ted Conference,
e3, also AEG experiences andright around the time, I had,
(02:56):
you know, sold the business.
I had started a conversationwith YouTube about live video
and they were intrigued and theplanets aligned and we did this
alicia key show in new york livestreamed on youtube, brought to
the viewer by american express,and youtube said hey, the way
you did this, we did everything.
Um, we were impressed.
We had a delighted artist, wehad a very happy audience and a
(03:18):
very, you know, intrigued brand.
We want to be in this business.
At the time, youtube was a vodstack, so we did everything live
on YouTube for about threeyears Coachella, bonnaroo, rock
in Rio, product launches forbrands, movie premieres,
tentpole events like Oracle OpenWorld and opened my eyes to
this kind of evolving world ofmore devices hitting the market.
(03:39):
Also, there was this movement toan experience economy fueled
largely by millennials, and Ithought, hey, there's a
different world unfolding.
So I spun out of AEG.
I formed this business, took afew people with me, later had an
executive from Insomniac atLive Nation join us and, because
we were early, we went and satdown with what we believed the
people that would fund thisindustry, the brands and they
(04:00):
told us we've got these threerecurring problems ad blockers,
brand safety and cord cutting.
We need to solve those things.
We also want to talk to thisyounger audience.
How do we do that?
So we really built a businessaround addressing those issues
and when we do these things,there's obviously a lot of
complex technical things thathappen in the background.
But it's afforded us to getinto this market and work with
(04:21):
some of the biggest brands inthe world AT&T, coca-cola, jeep,
nissan, hyundai, amazon, etcetera.
And yeah, that's our worldtoday.
It's certainly changed as aresult of the pandemic and it's
a very interesting time to be inlive video right now.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Yeah, it's amazing.
I love your story and journeyand, as I've learned about what
you guys do, one of the thingsthat really struck me for where
we are NetInt and you know ourplace in the ecosystem and you
know where I've spent most of mycareer, all of my career and
most of our audience here onVoices of Video.
(04:56):
We're kind of, you know we'rethe infrastructure people.
You know we're on the back end.
Usually it's, you know it'spremium license content.
More and more that's becominglive streams.
But you know, often it's a file, you know, so it's some asset
and then you know it's beingdelivered out.
(05:18):
Right about what happens whenyou have a brand that you know
they have an agenda.
At the end of the day, they'rethere to sell more of their
products, right, I mean, we'redoing this, make no mistake.
But at the same time, you havean artist, you know who's there,
(05:42):
and you have an audience andthe audience may or may not
actually care or even know aboutthe brand.
You know they probably havemore of an affinity with the
artist.
You know that's what draws men.
But then, as a result, they getto learn about, you know, the
brand and the products and youknow and get intrigued, and so
there's a super interestingflywheel.
(06:02):
I think you know that happensin this experience, and you know
, I'm just curious.
You know already I'm startingout a sequence here from what we
were going to talk about.
But is that?
Is that a way to think about?
You know these, what, both whatyou do and where the value is,
and you know is, is that whatyou see?
Speaker 2 (06:23):
see um well, if we look at this through the lens of
the you know I wasn't sayingadvertising industry, but it's
really a content industry aswell.
Yeah, you know the, thechallenge that I think marketers
or advertisers have today ishow do I get someone's, you know
, persistent or sustainedattention, attention, attention.
(06:46):
And when we found again theseearly conversations, we've got
ad blockers on phones.
We've got court cutting.
We're trying to connect with anaudience.
The big value proposition thatlive video delivers is watch
time and engagement time, andwe're seeing brands articulate
back and I can't get someone'sattention for four seconds like
(07:08):
that's.
That's hard to do.
A live video executed properlyand I can get into what we feel
are our best practices.
We can unlock, you know, watchtimes of 5, 15, 20, 30, 40
minutes and sure that's relevantfor coca-cola, at&t, but I also
believe now it's relevant forsome of the video platforms you
(07:29):
know Hulu, Disney, netflix,apple, amazon, et cetera.
They want people on thoseplatforms and they want them
watching and I think we'reentering into a very new era
with those entities now turningon a lot of live video.
We've come, you know, in mymind come a long way.
This industry was knownprimarily in the early days for
its failures.
(07:49):
Right, everyone knew about thevictorian secret experience
crashing.
Or remember oprah?
Oprah winfrey did a show onlineand that didn't work.
And even recently, netflix hadthe uh, love is blind, yeah,
finale, not not make it to theair.
And we certainly saw some ofthis too in the pandemic.
You know big artists trying togo live and not being able to do
(08:10):
it, largely because they wererelegated to.
You know, some using hometechnology, but also the
platforms that were funded, Ithink, in the pandemic had no
idea how to scale right.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Yeah, that's right.
Critical right, critical right,yeah, yeah, and, and so I would
.
I would love to get yourperspective.
Um, speaking of these, uh, moretraditional, you know, let's
call them kind of the vod typestreaming services and netflix,
and very clearly they are moving, um, not away from that.
(08:44):
But you, you know they'readding, let's say, a live
component, and I think it'sinteresting with the sports, the
sports events.
I was going to say sportsrights, but it's more like, you
know, almost like one off eventsthat they are.
You know that they've beenholding and you know they have a
more aggressive schedule comingup for the, you know, for 2025.
(09:05):
So why, in your opinion, whyare they doing that?
Like, on one hand, it's maybean obvious, you know, people go
well, of course, everybody wantsto watch live sports, but it's
like there's something more toit, it's more than just just,
you know, it's content peoplewant, in my opinion.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
But you know, I think a lot of live video falls into
two buckets, where it's customeracquisition or it's customer
loyalty.
And you're right.
Netflix, I think, has announceduh, there's a competitive
eating experience, you know,joey chestnut, there's a mike
tyson fight.
They've just signed up to NFL.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Christmas games as well.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
And I think it's interesting to know.
You know, ted Sarandos, I thinktwo years ago made a comment
the chief content officer at.
Netflix.
You know we're not anti-sports,we're pro-profit.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
And I think they went out and did some of these shows
.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
I think the golf tournament.
They did the Tom Brady roast,my opinion.
I think they looked tournament.
They did the Tom Brady roast,my opinion.
I think they looked at theaudience, the engagements.
You know, live video also givesyou a great set of analytics
where people are, how longthey're watching.
When did you achieve peaksimultaneous usage?
And I think they, I think theycame to the conclusion pretty
quickly that, wow, this is abusiness that we should be in.
(10:23):
We can move people onto theplatform, they can discover what
we're doing, and I think that'smy opinion.
I think we're going to see notonly Netflix do more of this
work, but also Apple, amazon, Ithink.
Hulu is doing three giant musicfestivals in partnership with
Live Nation.
I think it's a great way todrive discovery onto the
(10:43):
platform.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
And a lot of them now are doing.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Um, you know, ad supported business models are
starting to come into thoseentities.
I think I think the spotifymodel of you know, hey, sign up
for free, listen ads and thenkind of realize I don't want
these ads, I don't want thefrequency of these ads, I'll go
to a tier.
Yeah, that's right.
I think it all kind of playsinto this overall market, but
really it's, uh, again, thesustained you know watch time.
(11:05):
It's just like when we, when tvyou know fox got into the tv
business, yeah, they just boughtthe nfl rights, right, probably
a major loss later, but it madethem a network that had
relevancy.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
And here, that's right, yeah, yeah, interesting,
okay.
Well, there is, uh, a technicalcomponent which is really
important to pull all this off,and so maybe you can give us an
(11:35):
overview of both what you do,what are you building?
Are these, you know you,fascinate?
I'll let you explain it, buthow?
You're even going so far as tobuild like micro sites you know,
where, where these experiencesare, are are.
You know, there's some sort ofbranding, there's like even
(11:57):
experience around the experienceof watching the video.
So, you know, tell us what thatlooks like.
You know what.
What are they doing?
What's your role in it?
You know, are you guys buildingeverything bespoke?
Do you have, do you have, aproduct or a platform that you
know that you bring?
(12:17):
Yeah, give us, bring us.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
You know, behind the scenes there, yeah, I think the
uh, the evolution of livestreaming is, uh, it's pretty
intriguing.
My belief is that the onlinevideo world was built for
on-demand video, right, if youwant.
If you want to watch a movie,it's on netflix.
A tv show is on hulu anythingand everything is on a platform
(12:41):
like youtube.
And what we didn't contemplateis there may come a time, which
I think we're in today, whereconnectivity will be in your
hand and everybody will want totune into a live experience and
have that collaborative,participatory experience
together.
And so certainly we see themain platforms are building up
(13:04):
their live stacks ecosystems.
I think Netflix has hired someterrific video engineers to come
in live video engineers as well, and they're moving pretty
quickly to get to the that level.
I have a, you know, I havebrand customers that also rely
very heavily on their socialplatforms.
Right, they want to livebroadcast on.
YouTube, facebook, twitch,twitter, linkedin, instagram,
tiktok, you name it.
(13:25):
They also say to us thoseplatforms are critical to us and
they're important, but I wantto have that direct relationship
as well with the consumer or Iwant to do something that's just
for maybe it's AT&T subscribers.
They're not built or equipped toturn it on.
I mean, look how challenging itis for the video platforms to
do it, live the brands and themarketers they're not there,
built or equipped to turn it on.
I mean, look how challenging itis for the video platforms to
live the brands and themarketers they're not there,
(13:47):
they don't have thatinfrastructure and I don't
normally expect them that theywould.
Sure, sure.
So, turning on and buildingmicrosites or embeds that we can
drop into their infrastructurewithout taxing their
infrastructure and having thatvideo obviously served by a
backend like an AWS, that's aninteresting business for them.
(14:09):
A couple of years ago AT&T isone of our bigger clients.
They came to us and said wereally want to tell our 5G story
away from the market.
We want to get away from thenoise and have our way of how
we're going to articulate thevalue proposition.
And they have activesponsorships with the NCAA and
with the NBA and we came up withthis idea.
(14:31):
Why don't we allow you to powerthese experiences, the
entertainment and the concertsat these events, but do it on an
experience where you can chooseyour view, and also choose your
view in real time and the audiowill be delivered in stereo
audio which is a differentexperience than you would get on
Instagram or Facebook orwherever, and we were, so we
(14:54):
built this microsite.
Drop it into an AT&T or could bea vanity URL as well, but you
may discover the performance by,you know, doja Cat at the NBA
pregame all-Star game on aplatform like Instagram.
But you'll come over to thismicrosite.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
And you can change your camera perspective.
We took it to a different levelwith them.
We were shooting some of thesupplemental camera feeds on
Samsung Galaxy S23 devices.
Oh, cool, cool Inside of apop-up 5G network app.
Yeah, wow, that's a radicallydifferent way to talk about what
they're doing but also share itbeyond the room where the show
(15:36):
is happening.
Yeah, that also engaged Samsungas their partner.
We also did one event.
We used Google Pixel Pro phonesas well, but microsites we've
done this for you know a brandlike Coca-Cola Nestle as well.
They want to kind of again ownthat direct relationship.
They might simulcast out tosocial as well.
(15:56):
Maybe sometimes they'll teasethe experience.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Yeah, hey, you discovered the first 10 minutes
of the show.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Come over here and watch.
Um, uh, you know, watch thefull thing in its entirety.
But Microsoft's for the forcertainly for bigger client and
also for uh, you know, forsecure reasons as well.
Yeah, disney wants to do a townhall.
That's going to happen in theirworld.
We've had big consumer packagedgoods companies release a new
product to their internal teamsaround the world.
(16:25):
So microsites come in handy todo that.
So they're a big part of, Ithink, our world.
But it gives functionality.
We can turn on video chat,polling, trivia, graphics, calls
to action.
So it really helped them get abigger bang for their buck.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
I mean without taxing , yeah, yeah.
So I'm curious for thismulti-view experience.
You know where you can change,select camera angles and things
like that.
That does seem very compellingfrom a user perspective.
You know it's neat, right?
You can decide, you know, ifit's a band like oh, you know,
(17:05):
it's like I want to watch thedrummer, I want to watch this
side of the stage or that side,or look at the audience, or you
know whatever.
So you know, in sports it'ssuper clear.
I mean there's all kinds ofangles that, in theory, you know
in sports is super clear.
I mean there's all kinds ofangles that, in theory, you
could select.
Were you using?
You know some like low latencyplatform WebRTC like Phoenix
Technologies, or did you buildyour own?
(17:27):
Or you know, are you leveraginglike AWS?
Or maybe you can, you know,give a little bit more detail
about how you built this or whatyou're doing?
Speaker 2 (17:39):
The notion came out of the early days of delivering
an experience like a musicfestival, like Coachella.
So Coachella is eight stageshappening simultaneously.
The presenters wanted to givethe audience the ability to look
at an experience and change.
You know, maybe you're notinterested in what's happening
(18:00):
on stage a you wanted to look atdifferent artists on stage b
and we kind of took that to achoose your view.
Uh, concert experience, andthat's definitely you know, aws
powered uh jw player um, and wehave some kind of engineering
tricks we use to have thathappen, you know, seamlessly.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Yeah, because each stream has to be synchronized.
In that scenario, when you'rewatching disparate events, you
know that's not, as it's notrequired, right, because you
know stage A, stage B, by verydefinition they're out of sync.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
You know it's different, different, different,
different music and everythinggoing on, but you know, and we
spend a lot of time, uh,analyzing consumer behavior as
well, and the audience doesn'twant, you know, the player to
take, I think, six seconds toload typically we see that
happen, we lose about 20 of theaudience audience.
(18:54):
So it's going to happen quickly.
I've seen experiences where youknow if someone does change
their camera, things that wedon't provide.
You know there's like thisbuffer cycle and you know a
consumer, that's not what theywant and we can.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
certainly that bears itself out in the analytics as
well.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Sure, but the you know for distinct the audio as
well.
I think is a difference maker,so you're really staying in the
experience, even if you'relooking from a different
perspective, but also gettingthat audio up to you know, I
think 256k that's a higherquality, fidelity and all the
years I've been doing.
I started my career, you know,working um with prince 17 18
(19:35):
years ago amazing, and certainlyworking with that type of an
artist who wanted to go directbut also my background in
working at AEG the music artists.
They care more about the audioin the live stream than they do
the video, of course.
Yeah.
So having a higher level offidelity and a persistent level
of quality audio has been, Ithink, a difference maker.
(19:59):
And if it's brought to you byAT&T, you know they have skin in
the game as well.
They want it to be synonymous,you know, with their brand.
You know so having all thesethings happen under the hood.
You know we're using managing alot of different technologies
in a lot of ways.
You know to do that.
But at the end result, you orthe big check writers they tell
(20:21):
us you figure this out, we wantto do this.
If you want to do this withthese other partners, just hold
them to the same standards thatwe're going to hold you to.
The whole world has to, youknow, live video.
I think the pandemic, thecompanies that got funded in the
pandemic, I think it certainlyshowed that this is not easy to
do.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
A lot of moving pieces have to happen.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
I think it certainly showed that this is not easy to
do.
Right, that's right.
A lot of moving pieces have tohappen.
We go to great lengths to usemultiple transmission paths.
A lot of times those live viewpacks are pretty critical to a
successful show.
We're also deploying multiplelive encoders, so there's a
primary and a backup device.
(20:57):
Elementals and Perls, I think,are critical for that success
and no matter what the guaranteeis, the show has to stay on the
air.
So encoder doesn't work.
Encoder A, we're flipping overto encoder B, I think also using
sometimes massive events.
You've heard that multiple CDNsis a strategy to deploy, but
the idea is we've got to makethis experience happen.
(21:18):
It's got to stay on the air andwe've got to use the best
solutions available to us.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.
Yeah, that's interesting.
So then, just one last questionbefore we move on, because I
know we have a case study todiscuss and you know we're going
to wrap up talking about therole of advertisers, you know.
So, yeah, it's pretty pretty.
I'm excited about that.
(21:42):
Hear your thoughts.
So, on the on the technicalside though I am, I am curious
have you have you settled on,you know, a base architecture or
configuration that you know?
You've already mentioned someencoders that you use and you
(22:03):
know.
So now, have you done enoughevents that you basically have
your, you know, your,architecture I guess call it
that or are they all uniqueenough that you kind of have to
approach each a little bit froma bespoke perspective?
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yeah, it's a great question and it comes up pretty
frequently.
The reality of.
I haven't done this for twodecades, certainly the past 12
years at Bulldog.
No event is the same from oneto the next, that's right.
So we're constantly having to,I would say, spin up.
I mean, we'll certainly borrowfrom what we've done in the past
.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Yeah, of course.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
We're very vocal about making best practice
recommendations right, if we'regoing to do this, we should do
it this way.
You know, a lot of this isdictated by the distribution
platforms.
So if a customer says to us mytop three are Facebook,
instagram and TikTok, I need tobe on those platforms.
We also get hired by TikTok,youtube and Facebook, so we know
(23:09):
we're going to send the stream.
To do it that way.
I mean, a lot of it is, too, isknowing the critical people are
the live ops people at thoseplatforms and since we've done
so much work with them, we knowwhat their challenges are.
I mean, I think every socialmedia platform has its strengths
and its you know disadvantages.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
And how do we do?
Speaker 2 (23:31):
that.
You know that's.
That's a big.
I mean live video looks amazingon YouTube.
But discovery is not theirstrong suit.
You know Instagram has a greatalert notification system.
Historically it's been.
You know a lot of Instagram livehas been relegated to a camera
phone.
We've got workarounds we'veused for four or five years.
(23:51):
So if we're going to social,that's going to dictate a lot of
how we're going to execute theexperience.
You know, knowing the bandwidthat the venue, yeah, that's
going to dictate a lot of of howwe're going to execute the
experience.
You know, knowing the bandwidthat the venue, yeah, that's
right.
Huge aspect of this, huge, huge.
Yeah, fortunately for us.
I come out of aeg who owns andoperates a lot of the bigger
(24:11):
venues and arenas around theworld.
Um colleagues of mine come on alive nation.
We advised uh neva during thepandemic, so there's 3 000 um
national independent venue, kindof know.
Typically, if we're going to gosomewhere, we do the uh
snapdragon summit for qualcomm,which happens in a beautiful
resort but it's in maui and thathas a lot of bandwidth
(24:32):
challenges.
In the past year we came thereright after the fires in Maui,
so it was a lot of playing withour tech guys, our tech people,
with the Qualcomm people,because also the audience for a
lot of Qualcomm's announcementsare in China.
So there's a whole other set ofsteps to get through, to
distribute out to theirplatforms and their partners.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Oh, that's fascinating.
That's right, because, yeah,it's not sufficient just to say,
hey, you know, we did our part.
You know we've got a greatlooking stream coming out of the
venue.
You know, like, if you, if,ultimately, where their audience
is, if they're not able to seeit and you know, then it doesn't
(25:13):
matter, right?
Speaker 2 (25:14):
so, yeah, and the figure is, you know, going to be
pointed at the customer.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
They're not going to say oh, exactly do this properly
, or the bandwidth constriction.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
At the end they're going to point to you know
qualcomm, or they're going topoint to at&t and say I tried to
tune in for this food fightersconcert before the super bowl
and yeah, and I couldn't, Icouldn't see it.
Yeah, wow, so we go wayoverboard to make sure that
there's a checklist.
We go through a process, we dosite surveys and you know we
want to be helpful.
This should be easy.
(25:43):
Live video is, I think,presents a lot of anxiety, no
matter how many times you'vedone this for the clients.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
And we're sensitive to that.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
But we also want to make sure that they can focus on
the experience and the contentand not worry about is this show
going to hit the air?
So your bigger question a lotof it's dictated by that.
If we're operating from amicrosite perspective, then
we're working in parallel withthe infrastructure teams at
those companies, as well, yeah,interesting, wow, super
fascinating, super fascinating.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Okay, well, you have a case study and why don't you
tell us you know about some realworld results of all of this?
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Yeah.
So when we started the business,I had been powering, obviously,
some of the work I was doingsupporting at AG, supporting
YouTube, and when we started ourbusiness, coca-cola, I think,
had done a pretty big PaulMcCartney concert in Mexico and
said, hey, we love what we'redoing on YouTube, but we also
want to distribute directly fromour platform at coca-colafm and
we happen to be the titlesponsors of the Viva Latino
(26:54):
Festival, which is the largestrock festival, I think, in that
part of the world.
It's treated as the Coachella ofLatin America.
And we won the business largelybased on helping them deliver
content directly fromCoca-Colafm but simulcasting out
to social, and over severalyears of working together
(27:17):
together we were able to kind ofmove them into a place where
you could watch, I think 11hours both days of the festival
and three different channels, soabout 60 70 bands.
Uh, you could also go to themicrosite and look at the lineup
and say, hey, I'm mark and I'ma fan of these bands G-Eazy,
jake, bob, prophets of RageEnter in your mobile number and
(27:39):
get a push notification with alink to the video.
Say hey, the artist that youlike is starting now on Channel
1.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Super cool.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Wow, yeah, come to the experience.
Yeah, we also brought in, we'llcreate everybody and use this
video director to direct themain stage and offer that in VR.
So if you were again thecountry and you were at a Best
Buy store, you can go and put onthat Samsung headset and enjoy
the show.
Or if you were on YouTube, youcould 360 the experience and a
myriad of other kind of coolthings Polling, trivia, et
(28:09):
cetera.
Anyway, the end result was also, I think, the first major
simulcast on Twitter in thatpart of the world as well.
But for Coke, again, the bigthing was we want to get
someone's attention and it'svery hard to do that, and the
broadcast on the microsite ledto a watch time of about 29
(28:32):
minutes on mobile and 113minutes on desktop, about 3.9
million viewers between thosetwo platforms, and that was a
massive win for them.
You know, huge, hugelysuccessful and also a big part
of our business is.
You know, people spend a lot ofmoney on experiential and being
with consumers.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
And the notion of live video is.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
let's amplify that it kind of goes back to my days of
moving into AEG and seeing howCoachella has 85,000 people.
You know all three of thosedays.
Imagine that experienceamplified, I think, the Beyonce
year.
I think that's 89.2 million,you know.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Crazy.
So this partnership with Cokewas just a big, big home run.
So this partnership with Cokewas just a big, big home run.
And just recently we helpedthem launch their Coke Spice
their first new permanent flavorin three years at an activation
in New York City.
Live on Coke's Twitch account.
But also Chrissy Costanza, abig influencer.
(29:33):
So that's been a great partnerto work with, among a myriad of
others, but that was a real kindof eye opener.
Yeah, hey.
Here's the results that thisbrand really not upon, but
thirsted for and wanted.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Yeah, really helped, yeah, interesting, and you said
a couple interesting things too.
So, like you were, you knowCoke was, I think you said the
title sponsor or whatever youknow was the primary sponsor.
But then there was anexperience around Samsung.
You know Samsung Mobile.
So was that just becauseSamsung was a chosen device or
(30:07):
were they also a sponsor?
And therefore there's likemultiple brands kind of you know
in a way, coming together Inthat case you know, vr was this
is a couple of years ago wasbecoming the hot thing, and you
know a lot of marketers.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
They want to be aware , they want to be in the
forefront of innovation and theyhave what are called test
budgets or test and learnbudgets, and they responded to
the idea of let's broadcast justthe main stage in that kind of
VR format.
Vr, yeah, cool, but the way toget the consumer.
So if you had, you could reallydo a cool 360 stream on YouTube
(30:45):
on an Android, I believe.
Yeah, but to really connectwith the consumer in country, it
was go to the best buy.
Not everybody had headsets backthen.
Yeah, exactly, vr headsets.
So the partnership with Samsungcame out of that work.
Let's bring them into the store.
You know with AT&T, clearly.
You know massive partnershipwith the Galaxy.
Sure, sure, sure, can we takethat partnership to a different
(31:08):
level and actually shoot?
These phones are, I would say,prosumer level cameras, but the
pit cam would be, you know, aSamsung galaxy or artists cam.
But we're still offering up,you know, five camera directors.
Yeah, yeah, but yeah that's kindof the idea of how to bring
other partners into the solution.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
Yeah, very cool, well , awesome.
Well, let's talk about the roleof advertisers and you know, I
know you've got a lot ofthoughts around this, so I'm
going to turn it over to you todiscuss.
How can advertisers play a moresignificant role in really
(31:52):
unlocking the value here in livestreaming of events, and what
does that look like?
What do they need to bethinking about doing?
Speaker 2 (32:02):
You know we hear a consistent.
I think everybody's got a Gen Z, you know strategy.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
How do I talk to that ?
Speaker 2 (32:09):
consumer.
They're not watching, you know,tv commercials traditionally.
They're not really consumingtraditional media, consuming
media traditionally, or evenadvertising.
So we've endeavored to find out, hey, you know what are the key
ways to do that.
And you know there is thisnotion of I think you hear Live
(32:30):
Nation talk about it.
You know the experience economyConsumers value being at.
You know quote experiences,shared experiences, shared
experiences.
You know with their friendsthat they can extend that.
You know, digitally orvirtually, right, you might be
in miami at a, at art basel oran experience, but you want to
share it with your colleague andor your friend in detroit, live
(32:51):
video.
And that immediacy offers thatopportunity.
And again, the real drivershere are watch time to do that.
And, by the way, the audienceis not.
They're not upset Like, oh, hey, I can't.
You know Verizon is sponsoringthe headlining performance of
Coachella.
They're pretty happy about that, right, because they can now
(33:13):
see this.
And also the ability to execute.
We've got higher camera, higherquality cameras now we're
almost everywhere, so that's abig.
We can also mount, you know,cinematic lenses.
We can shoot it in a way thatsomebody wants it done.
But you know, real significant.
You know big opportunity thereand combined with you know, I
think a lot of marketing dollarsnow, as a result of of pursuing
(33:38):
that age demographic, are inexperiential and people will
spend a significant amount ofmoney to put on these beautiful
whether it's to a small audienceor a big audience these
experiences and to amplify thatout is really interesting.
We can just come in and layerin a live stream workflow and
take that from 1,000 people inthe room to 20 to 50 times that
(34:02):
and drive discovery, watch timeet cetera, give them some great
data points.
But those two strategies Ithink are top of mind for
advertisers and brands.
Advertisers and brands but alsoin our conversation today we've
covered that I view Amazon,apple, disney, netflix, hulu as
brands as well.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
So they're using that video to customer acquisition.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
Yeah, that's right, so it's an interesting time
right now in the overall market,but I again, I'm a big believer
in seeing how do you helpbrands solve their challenges is
give them a way to reach anaudience in real time with a
sustained watch time.
I can't see a better way toallocate your money.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
Yeah, definitely, I agree.
I'm wondering from yourperspective you have a lot of
conversations with the bigbrands, the advertisers,
agencies, because they're allprobably involved in some of
these really massive festivalsand these massive events.
Why is it, though and this is aquestion for you see if you
(35:21):
have an answer, or what yourview is why is it, though, that
the CPMs on, for example, likefast channels, are so low
relative to television broadcastthat it's no wonder, for all
the promise of fast, nobody ismaking money.
Very few people are makingmoney.
(35:42):
Most of the platforms arereally struggling, and it's not
the success that everyoneclaimed it was going to be.
Why is that?
Why are advertisers so willingto throw the big budgets after?
(36:03):
You know broadcast and yet,where, arguably, they've got
much better targeting, they get,and they get the analytics,
they get the user data.
They get.
You know, I understand a lot ofit, you know it's anonymized
and you know there's the.
You know, so it's not like theyknow exactly what I'm watching.
I know that, but why is thatwhat you know?
What's the situation there?
Speaker 2 (36:24):
You know, I think a lot of it has to do with the
audience is just fatigue.
There's way too many optionsand, as a result, I think the
number one currency in the worldis time, and if I'm going to
give you my time, I want to havean experience that I'm going to
have some value, derive somevalue from and I'm going to
(36:45):
appreciate it.
And just putting anything andeverything.
I think these guys are allgoing to slug it out Interesting
.
I've read a lot of John Stankyat AT&T.
If he can get to the final 10video platforms, there's going
to be a little bit moreconsolidation, probably down to
(37:07):
six, and the interesting theorywas that by that time,
autonomous driving will havekicked in and we're not going to
grow as a society by billionsor millions of people, but
autonomous driving will returntwo hours a day.
Yeah, Interesting thesis andtheory.
(37:27):
So I think some of that isworth exploring and thinking
about.
I also see that, again, theaudiences that we serve great,
that we do a lot of shows orexperiences that appeal to
everybody, but doing, you know,say, a festival, or we work with
United Masters does a SelectConconference and it's about
(37:50):
culture and emerging artists,independent music artists, but
also relevant topics.
You know finance.
How do you learn about financeas a 24 year old?
That type of content is is, youknow, relevant and it's
appealing.
But again, having that, thatcollaborative, participatory
experience, I think is far moremore valuable.
Where you're posting, tweeting,commenting, maybe you're
(38:13):
answering polls with like-mindedpeople on connected devices
elsewhere.
I think, and it's it's why I Ibelieve, that a platform like
netflix now has, I think, testedsome live content.
Yeah, now they're goingspending some serious money
obviously yeah yeah, bringingthe uh, the nfl on board yeah,
yeah, yeah, it's very clear.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
Yeah, I find, I, I find that so fascinating A
little bit.
You know a little bit.
Like you know, reed Hastingsfamously you know only I think
it was like four years ago orsomething you know made a very
strong statement about therewill never be advertising on the
Netflix platform.
You know, when he was asked, Ithink it was on earnings call
(38:55):
and then, well, hello, you know,here we are.
It's one of the things I loveabout Netflix, by the way, is
that they're very comfortablewith their thesis, you know
today, which they hold verystrongly, and they stand by, but
then, when proven otherwise orshown what they change, you know
, and uh, and so I love it.
(39:16):
I, I had a conversation withsomebody I'm very senior in the
um on the streaming side ofnetflix and this would have gone
back to like probably 2016 or17.
So you know, this is like.
You know, seven years ago or so, uh, and maybe even eight years
ago, and somebody asked, hey,will Netflix ever have live?
(39:41):
Why wouldn't you go after live?
And the person made kind ofthat same definitive like
Netflix will never, netflix isfile bait.
And now here they are, live,and it's all just a testament,
of course, to who they are as anorganization, that they are
always innovating.
They're always looking at howthey can bring more value, you
(40:02):
know, to the consumer.
But at the same time, theconsumers evolved, right, you
know, seven, eight years ago,people were talking about live
video in a world of VODplatforms.
People were talking about livevideo in a world of VOD
platforms and, yeah, consumersare watching TV and live video.
But basically, we loved ourNetflix, you know, select the
file, hit, play and it played.
(40:23):
Right, that, you know, that wasit.
Well, now, as you're aptlypointing out, the consumer.
It's time that we're competingfor.
It's time that we're competingfor, you know, and again, going
back to not to use all Netflixexamples, but I think Reed
Hastings also famously made aquote about, you know, their
(40:46):
ultimate competitor it's games.
You know it's gaming, it'sother experiences.
It really isn't you know thisstreaming service or that
streaming service, or you knowit's it's other experiences.
And I totally buy into that,you know, into that line of
thinking.
And so, for those of us workingin the industry, you know it's
(41:08):
one of the reasons that I I havea personal, you know, I just
sort of I shudder a little bitwhen I read yet another headline
about the streaming wars, youknow, and who's going to win,
and it's just like it's thewrong conversation.
It's completely the wrongconversation.
You know.
This isn't about, you know,disney beating Netflix or
(41:30):
Netflix beating Amazon Prime.
This is about capturingattention of the consumer, who
has a lot of places they canspend it.
Spend that attention.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
And they're pretty vocal about what they want.
So a lot of times I say let'slisten, let's hear what they
have to say and I think thetechnical live or technical
video people know better thananybody that you can't expect
things not to change.
Yeah, I think we've all workedin video for the past four or
(42:07):
five years, even 10 or 20 years.
You've dealt with constant,repeated change, always
something happening.
You know, look at TikTokentering the market and market
and you know that's a wholedifferent platform it's
different yeah, and you got tosupport that and be prepared to,
you know, to deal with it.
But I, you know, I, we, I see Iget a lot of great feedback from
(42:29):
, you know, from engineers.
What's your thinking?
Where this industry is headed,were you observing?
And a lot of it, too, iswatching the, the social streams
around the shows.
I mean, we, we use tools toeliminate, uh, you know,
trolling and off topic.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
You know, uh yeah, commentary, yeah, yeah, that
must be a challenge it is, butwhen I started this business, I
you know youtube was a big.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
You know, I did for three or four years powered the
youtube experience and people dowant to uh, they want to go
beyond just webcam video yeah,they don't want yeah, you could
hire uh drake and have a keynotefrom jeff bezos.
But if you know, especially ayounger consumer, if they can't
interact with that video,they're not going to watch too
long.
(43:12):
And by you know, turning on asocial stream but also curating
it, so the conversation isrelated to the video.
People lean more into thatrather than pull away.
They're more likely to comeback to subsequent live
broadcasts.
They're more likely to invitetheir friends to it as well.
Turn on some graphics and somepolling and you've really
(43:32):
transformed that viewer into aparticipant.
And those are key ways to besuccessful.
And this is not.
I mean, it's all happening live, right.
So it is not easy.
But people in my industry havefigured this out and there's
great tool sets out there tokind of change your video
experience and take it to awhole nother level.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Yeah, yeah, cool.
Yeah, I really appreciate allthe insights.
John, this is amazing.
Let's wrap it up here.
We're coming coming a littlebit over time, but we've got to
start a few minutes late.
So, let's you know, I think agood place to wrap this up would
be you know, we touched on this.
(44:13):
Is Nielsen a friend or foe?
You know we touched on this.
Is Nielsen a friend or foe, youknow?
And then where's theopportunity?
So I'm asking for the question,I'm asking the question, I'm
looking for your insights fromthe perspective of.
I put my hat on.
You know, I work at more of aI'm going to call it a
traditional streaming service.
(44:33):
You know somebody, as we'vetalked about, you know, out of
that, netflix, amazon Prime, youknow Hulu, vudu, you know that
kind of a thing, how?
So?
I'm sitting here and I'mlistening.
I'm going, yeah, you know we'rehaving a lot of discussions,
we're even, you know there'ssome strategy around some of
this.
But gee, how do I go from thiskind of licensed content world
(44:57):
where everything was about I gostrike a deal for a certain
amount of time and it gives meaccess to a library and then I
basically go try and monetizethat?
I mean, at the end of the day,the business is kind of as
simple as that I pay $300million for this library.
Now let's go see if I couldgenerate more than $300 million,
(45:19):
you know, out of that.
How do, how can people thinkabout expanding into these live
experiences, maybe bringingbrands in, maybe starting to
kind of step beyond, you know,into the world that you're in,
starting to kind of step beyond,you know, into the world that
you're in?
Give us some you know, I don'tknow some insights.
(45:44):
You know what?
Speaker 2 (45:44):
they may want to think about, talk about, look at
yeah, I think you know, dippingyour toe in the water and
coming out with an event thatoffers you a story, and the
story is the data and theanalytics.
And when I give example, I'vedone a lot of automotive reveals
for Hyundai and they struggledwith you know how do I navigate
(46:04):
the Jacob Javits center.
It's so difficult just to getpower and connectivity there.
Same thing with the conventioncenter in LA.
You know this is what we do fora living right.
We figured this out, we have.
You know, again, the bigunlocking challenge in a lot of
these places is internetconnectivity and proper
bandwidth to execute the show.
And you know we were able tofigure that out for them and
(46:27):
also distribute to multipleplatforms simultaneously.
And, do you know, on the flytranslation and do on-the-fly
translation.
And at the end I'd say the realreturn for them was they were
launching the new model of theElantra a couple years ago and
it's the number one sellingvehicle in Hyundai history and
(46:50):
by executing a really perfect,beautiful presentation of the
vehicle and I think it was, youknow, the big kind of consumer
selling points were also a lineof green electric vehicles, even
the ability to share a key inyour household digitally, so if
the parent wants to share withthe child or spouse they can do
(47:13):
that, but to showcase that inthe moment, in real time, and
put it everywhere.
Hugely successful for them andgoes beyond just showcasing the
vehicle to the Detroitautomotive press.
As a result they had a recordnumber of pre-orders but again,
the most selling, most soldvehicle of all time.
That live stream brought theman incredible amount of
(47:35):
pre-orders.
So great viewership, but alsopeople expressing an interest,
and when that car and the carmight, I think it was available,
you know, not that day, butcertainly a quarter or two away,
sure, but that's a great way tolook at this market is how do I
captivate somebody?
and they even had the headengineer after the big
presentation.
We took a camera and followedhim around the vehicle he's like
(47:56):
.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
Here's what we thought about how we designed
the panel to be and what you'regoing to see there.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
I always found that people love to see things they
normally wouldn't get to see itcould be anything.
Years ago I was blown away by.
We did a live stream in Brazil.
It was two mma fightersinterviewing each other and the
audience was just off the chartsand I had no idea that that's,
uh, what was to be expected.
(48:23):
But I think, to answer yourquestion, you know doing this
and getting into the businessand then now you have a value
proposition to go to a brand,say hey this experience yeah.
Do you want to come back nextyear?
We do this for the next quarter.
Do you want to be the presenterof this experience?
Speaker 1 (48:36):
Yeah, boy, I, I, I can already, and I, and I'm sure
you know the, the team over atNetflix are super smart, they've
got it.
You know there's a whole new adunit that can be sold.
You know, like you think aboutthe live, a live golf, a golf
event.
You know, and what if, ratherthan just putting ping logos
everywhere or you know whatever,like what if there was a little
(49:00):
three and a half minutevignette of of a ping executive,
you know, walking through, likethe design of the of a club, or
you know, and and, by the way,I'm not a golfer, so so just
riffing here, but you know, like, like, like it's, it's because
I'm totally with you.
(49:21):
You know I'm, I'm a carenthusiast and I'm also a
musician, and you know, and I'minto, you know, like all of us,
I've got things I'm interestedin.
And you know, boy, I mean Iwould just eat that up way more
than just seeing logos or having, you know, a little 29 second
splashy commercial.
You know that, you know thatit's.
(49:46):
You know I can love the brand,but it's like it's a commercial.
No, tell me, like, what'sbehind the product.
Or show me something that Idon't know.
You know that makes me evenfeel more excited, either to
acquire it or that I own it.
You know, I think that'sanother thing that's interesting
about like advertising, is it?
And it depends on the product,of course.
But you know, like, sometimesyou can really activate the
(50:08):
existing owners to make themevangelist.
You know, to make themevangelist, you know, because
you know, by giving them eitherfresh insights into how the
product was designed or you knowsomething about it.
Where then I'm going to be moreapt to not only go tell my
neighbors or my friends, butwhen somebody says, oh, I love
your car, I love this, I lovethat, oh, how do you like this?
(50:29):
Oh, did you know, you know?
And it's the.
Did you know that?
Um, then others respond to aswell, you know, you know, and
it's the.
Did you know that?
Um, then others respond to aswell, you know, because they
probably didn't know and they'relike oh, really, I didn't know.
Oh, wow, and now I really haveto go drive that car.
You know it's so.
Speaker 2 (50:45):
But even you know you bring up netflix.
I think you know an interestinguse case.
You know the mike, tyson, jakeor logan paul fight yeah the
experience and say who do youthink won that last round?
You know that could be, yeah,yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:59):
Who do you think is going to win the next round?
Speaker 2 (51:00):
And now you've got a really engaged audience, but
they could be, you know, castingto their connected TV and
that's yeah, and that wholewhole, or that companion
experience could be brought toyou by a Procter Gamble or a
brand.
Speaker 1 (51:14):
Exactly, yeah, yeah, of course.
Yeah, that's cool.
Well, I really enjoyed theconversation.
Thank you for coming on andsharing all your wisdom and
insights.
And, for listeners, if you'renot following John or connected
to John on LinkedIn, I know Isee your posts all the time, so
(51:37):
you know updates and so I'm surethat you're happy to connect to
folks and you know we'll bewatching the events that you're
producing and continue toproduce.
So, yeah, thank you for comingon.
Voices of Video.
Speaker 2 (51:54):
Mark, thanks for having me Great conversation.
Really appreciate it Absolutely.
This episode of Voices of Videois brought to you by NetInt
Technologies.
If you are looking forcutting-edge video encoding
solutions, check out NetInt'sproducts at netintcom.
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