Lionsgate is ready for its ad tech close-up.
The film and TV studio has chosen Comcast’s FreeWheel as its exclusive ad server to help manage and sell the growing volume of ad inventory Lionsgate creates with new FAST channels.
Lionsgate ran the RFP this year as it “began taking a little bit more control over our inventory,” Chase Brisbin, EVP and head of global channels, told AdExchanger.
Brisbin, who for 14 years at Lionsgate has focused primarily on licensing, is new to ad tech. As is the Lionsgate studio as a whole. Lionsgate selected FreeWheel, she said, because it needed a trusted partner to “guide us through this,” since the studio doesn’t have a legacy business in advertising.
How it started
Lionsgate’s entrée to the ad world started only a couple years ago when the company started offering a menu of FAST channels via platforms and manufacturers, including DirecTV, Pluto TV, LG and Vizio.
Lionsgate worked with a CTV reseller, which Brisbin said went well enough. However, the studio was seeing large viewership and relatively low CPMs from its streaming channels and wanted to “take more control and show that we are a premium offering to the marketplace,” she said.
For some media companies, taking more control means adding direct sales and taking more in-house control over ad tech. But going from zero experience in advertising or ad sales to owning the entire ad proposition is “exactly what we didn’t want,” Brisbin said.
Lionsgate, like other Hollywood studios, is trying to get a handle on what streaming views are worth. Should inventory be sold directly and packaged as “Lionsgate,” or is it worth braving the open programmatic auction? And what data would be most enticing to advertisers in an open exchange?
These are unfamiliar questions for Lionsgate, she said, which is why it prefers an exclusive relationship with a single ad server partner.
Where FAST ads go
FreeWheel is responsible for the ad monetization side of things and for maximizing the value of Lionsgate’s inventory, while the studio works on scaling its network of channels and viewership.
That division of labor makes sense at this interesting moment for TV consumption, Brisbin noted.
Most TV programmers spend their energy on programming and packaging multi-content linear TV channels – Bravo, HGTV, Comedy Central, etc. That’s what advertisers think of as premium TV.
But there are growing number of FAST channels, of which Lionsgate operates a score or so, that are single-IP networks and only run episodes of one show, or two at most. Lionsgate’s network includes channels that run through episodes of “Designated Survivor,” “The Conners” and “Nashville,” to name a few.
The whole idea of a single-series channel is “unique to CTV right now,” Brisbin said. And those channels can draw huge viewership, too, since people are leaning back into familiar, comfortable shows, rather than hunting for something new to watch.
Right now, advertising on these single-show channels is still a “kernel” of what it could be, she said. But inventory owners like Lionsgate and CTV ad tech like FreeWheel are out to prove the value of those CPMs.
And the advertising business also generates useful information for Lionsgate as a studio by helping identity monetizable evergreen content. For example, which Lionsgate TV titles have an enduring audience that keep coming back? And which TV programs or movies have the potential to live long and lucrative lives on of CTV FAST channels?
The answers to these questions can inform Lionsgate’s production choices, Brisbin said, which is one reason why the studio prioritizes collecting and analyzing that data, even though it’s not building its own ad tech.
“I guess it’s impossible not to be data-driven these days,” she said.
