Voices of Video
Explore the inner workings of video technology with Voices of Video: Inside the Tech. This podcast gathers industry experts and innovators to examine every facet of video technology, from decoding and encoding processes to the latest advancements in hardware versus software processing and codecs. Alongside these technical insights, we dive into practical techniques, emerging trends, and industry-shaping facts that define the future of video.
Ideal for engineers, developers, and tech enthusiasts, each episode offers hands-on advice and the in-depth knowledge you need to excel in today’s fast-evolving video landscape. Join us to master the tools, technologies, and trends driving the future of digital video.
Voices of Video
Mastering Live Events for Unforgettable Brand Impact
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.
Voices of Video. Voices of Video. Voices of Video.
Speaker 2:Voices of Video.
Speaker 1:Hey, good morning everyone. We are in for another super exciting Voices of Video and, as always, we are so thankful to have you here listening to us live. And for those who can't join live or aren't joining live, you should try it sometime. It's a lot of fun, right, john? Live video is the best it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right. Great fun, a lot of excitement.
Speaker 1:Great fun, a lot of excitement, and, you know, lot of excitement. And there's always the microphone that doesn't work. And then you get the microphone working and then the platform's not working and we don't know anything about that, right? All right, Well, again, welcome everyone. So John Petruccelli is here with me today and we are talking about live video, live video production, live events. It's going to be a really exciting conversation, so thank you for joining, John.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me, mark. I'm looking forward to the conversation. I know you're a thought leader in the space and I'm happy to have this exchange.
Speaker 1:Well, I have thoughts. I don't know about the leader part and I'm happy to have this exchange. Well, I have thoughts. I don't know about the leader part. Anyway, you're too kind there. So let's go ahead and kick things off. You know why don't you? Maybe not everyone's familiar both with your background and with you, but also your company, and then we've got a real exciting discussion outline that we'll dive into. So yeah, take it away.
Speaker 2:Thank you. I'm John Petruccelli. I'm the founder of Bulldog DM. We are the world's most experienced live stream studio, which really translates to. We provide all of the turnkey services and also best practice strategies that a client would need to really optimize and deliver a seamless live experience. And for us, a client is. It's a brand agency, it's a platform, a content creator. It could be a music artist and it could be all of them together in certain executions or a subset of that group. And we are, when I say most experienced. We're now in our 12th year in the market. I have, and some of my colleagues have been in it for about 20 years, which I think is almost as long as it's been an industry.
Speaker 2:You know my background, I worked in the streaming world. I took over a boutique live streaming technology company services company that was acquired by AEG and there, you know, we went on to do things like the live streaming technology company services company that was acquired by AEG and there, you know, we went on to do things like the live streaming for the Grammys, oscars, masters, ted Conference, e3, also AEG experiences and right around the time, I had, you know, sold the business. I had started a conversation with YouTube about live video and they were intrigued and the planets aligned and we did this alicia key show in new york live streamed 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, we had a very happy audience and a very, you know, intrigued brand. We want to be in this business. At the time, youtube was a vod stack, so we did everything live on YouTube for about three years Coachella, bonnaroo, rock in Rio, product launches for brands, movie premieres, tentpole events like Oracle Open World and opened my eyes to this kind of evolving world of more devices hitting the market.
Speaker 2:Also, there was this movement to an experience economy fueled largely by millennials, and I thought, hey, there's a different world unfolding. So I spun out of AEG. I formed this business, took a few people with me, later had an executive from Insomniac at Live Nation join us and, because we were early, we went and sat down with what we believed the people that would fund this industry, the brands and they told us we've got these three recurring problems ad blockers, brand safety and cord cutting. We need to solve those things. We also want to talk to this younger audience. How do we do that? So we really built a business around addressing those issues and when we do these things, there's obviously a lot of complex technical things that happen in the background. But it's afforded us to get into this market and work with some of the biggest brands in the world AT&T, coca-cola, jeep, nissan, hyundai, amazon, et cetera. And yeah, that's our world today. It's certainly changed as a result of the pandemic and it's a very interesting time to be in live video right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's amazing. I love your story and journey and, as I've learned about what you guys do, one of the things that really struck me for where we are NetInt and you know our place in the ecosystem and you know where I've spent most of my career, all of my career and most of our audience here on Voices of Video. We're kind of, you know we're the infrastructure people. You know we're on the back end. Usually it's, you know it's premium license content. More and more that's becoming live streams. But you know, often it's a file, you know, so it's some asset and then you know it's being delivered out.
Speaker 1:Right about what happens when you have a brand that you know they have an agenda. At the end of the day, they're there to sell more of their products, right, I mean, we're doing this, make no mistake. But at the same time, you have an artist, you know who's there, and you have an audience and the audience may or may not actually care or even know about the brand. You know they probably have more of an affinity with the artist. You know that's what draws men. But then, as a result, they get to learn about, you know, the brand and the products and you know and get intrigued, and so there's a super interesting flywheel. I think you know that happens in this experience, and you know, I'm just curious. You know already I'm starting out 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 what you do and where the value is, and you know is, is that what you see?
Speaker 2:see um well, if we look at this through the lens of the you know I wasn't saying advertising industry, but it's really a content industry as well. Yeah, you know the, the challenge that I think marketers or advertisers have today is how do I get someone's, you know, persistent or sustained attention, attention, attention. And when we found again these early conversations, we've got ad blockers on phones.
Speaker 2:We've got court cutting. We're trying to connect with an audience. The big value proposition that live video delivers is watch time and engagement time, and we're seeing brands articulate back and I can't get someone's attention for four seconds like that's. That's hard to do. A live video executed properly and I can get into what we feel are our best practices.
Speaker 2:We can unlock, you know, watch times of 5, 15, 20, 30, 40 minutes and sure that's relevant for coca-cola, at&t, but I also believe now it's relevant for some of the video platforms you know Hulu, Disney, netflix, apple, amazon, et cetera. They want people on those platforms and they want them watching and I think we're entering into a very new era with those entities now turning on a lot of live video. We've come, you know, in my mind come a long way. This industry was known primarily in the early days for its failures. Right, everyone knew about the victorian secret experience crashing. Or remember oprah? Oprah winfrey did a show online and that didn't work. And even recently, netflix had the uh, love is blind, yeah, finale, not not make it to the air. And we certainly saw some of this too in the pandemic. You know big artists trying to go live and not being able to do it, largely because they were relegated to. You know, some using home technology, but also the platforms that were funded, I think, in the pandemic had no idea how to scale right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right. Critical right, critical right, yeah, yeah, and, and so I would. I would love to get your perspective. Um, speaking of these, uh, more traditional, you know, let's call them kind of the vod type streaming services and netflix, and very clearly they are moving, um, not away from that. But you, you know they're adding, let's say, a live component, and I think it's interesting with the sports, the sports events. I was going to say sports rights, but it's more like, you know, almost like one off events that they are. You know that they've been holding and you know they have a more aggressive schedule coming up for the, you know, for 2025. So why, in your opinion, why are they doing that? Like, on one hand, it's maybe an obvious, you know, people go well, of course, everybody wants to watch live sports, but it's like there's something more to it, it's more than just just, you know, it's content people want, in my opinion.
Speaker 2:But you know, I think a lot of live video falls into two buckets, where it's customer acquisition or it's customer loyalty. And you're right. Netflix, I think, has announced uh, 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:Christmas games as well.
Speaker 2:And I think it's interesting to know. You know, ted Sarandos, I think two years ago made a comment the chief content officer at. Netflix. You know we're not anti-sports, we're pro-profit.
Speaker 1:And I think they went out and did some of these shows.
Speaker 2: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 the audience, the engagements. You know, live video also gives you a great set of analytics where people are, how long they're watching. When did you achieve peak simultaneous usage? And I think they, I think they came to the conclusion pretty quickly that, wow, this is a business that we should be in.
Speaker 2:We can move people onto the platform, they can discover what we're doing, and I think that's my opinion. I think we're going to see not only Netflix do more of this work, but also Apple, amazon, I think. Hulu is doing three giant music festivals in partnership with Live Nation. I think it's a great way to drive discovery onto the platform.
Speaker 1:And a lot of them now are doing.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, ad supported business models are starting to come into those entities. I think I think the spotify model of you know, hey, sign up for free, listen ads and then kind of realize I don't want these ads, I don't want the frequency of these ads, I'll go to a tier. Yeah, that's right. I think it all kind of plays into this overall market, but really it's, uh, again, the sustained you know watch time. It's just like when we, when tv you know fox got into the tv business, yeah, they just bought the nfl rights, right, probably a major loss later, but it made them a network that had relevancy.
Speaker 1:And here, that's right, yeah, yeah, interesting, okay. Well, there is, uh, a technical component which is really important to pull all this off, and so maybe you can give us an overview of both what you do, what are you building? Are these, you know you, fascinate? I'll let you explain it, but how? You're even going so far as to build like micro sites you know, where, where these experiences are, are are.
Speaker 1:You know, there's some sort of branding, there's like even experience around the experience of watching the video. So, you know, tell us what that looks like. You know what. What are they doing? What's your role in it? You know, are you guys building everything bespoke? Do you have, do you have, a product or a platform that you know that you bring? Yeah, give us, bring us.
Speaker 2:You know, behind the scenes there, yeah, I think the uh, the evolution of live streaming is, uh, it's pretty intriguing. My belief is that the online video world was built for on-demand video, right, if you want. If you want to watch a movie, it's on netflix. A tv show is on hulu anything and everything is on a platform like youtube. And what we didn't contemplate is there may come a time, which I think we're in today, where connectivity will be in your hand and everybody will want to tune into a live experience and have that collaborative, participatory experience together. And so certainly we see the main platforms are building up their live stacks ecosystems. I think Netflix has hired some terrific 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 have brand customers that also rely very heavily on their social platforms. Right, they want to live broadcast on.
Speaker 2:YouTube, facebook, twitch, twitter, linkedin, instagram, tiktok, you name it. They also say to us those platforms are critical to us and they're important, but I want to have that direct relationship as well with the consumer or I want to do something that's just for maybe it's AT&T subscribers.
Speaker 2:They're not built or equipped to turn it on. I mean, look how challenging it is for the video platforms to do it, live the brands and the marketers they're not there, built or equipped to turn it on. I mean, look how challenging it is for the video platforms to live the brands and the marketers they're not there, they don't have that infrastructure and I don't normally expect them that they would. Sure, sure. So, turning on and building microsites or embeds that we can drop into their infrastructure without taxing their infrastructure and having that video obviously served by a backend like an AWS, that's an interesting business for them.
Speaker 2:A couple of years ago AT&T is one of our bigger clients. They came to us and said we really want to tell our 5G story away from the market. We want to get away from the noise and have our way of how we're going to articulate the value proposition. And they have active sponsorships with the NCAA and with the NBA and we came up with this idea. Why don't we allow you to power these experiences, the entertainment and the concerts at these events, but do it on an experience where you can choose your view, and also choose your view in real time and the audio will be delivered in stereo audio which is a different experience than you would get on Instagram or Facebook or wherever, and we were, so we built this microsite.
Speaker 2:Drop it into an AT&T or could be a vanity URL as well, but you may discover the performance by, you know, doja Cat at the NBA pregame all-Star game on a platform like Instagram. But you'll come over to this microsite.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2:And you can change your camera perspective. We took it to a different level with them. We were shooting some of the supplemental camera feeds on Samsung Galaxy S23 devices. Oh, cool, cool Inside of a pop-up 5G network app. Yeah, wow, that's a radically different way to talk about what they're doing but also share it beyond the room where the show is happening. Yeah, that also engaged Samsung as their partner. We also did one event. We used Google Pixel Pro phones as well, but microsites we've done this for you know a brand like Coca-Cola Nestle as well. They want to kind of again own that direct relationship. They might simulcast out to social as well. Maybe sometimes they'll tease the experience.
Speaker 1:Yeah, hey, you discovered the first 10 minutes of the show.
Speaker 2:Come over here and watch. Um, uh, you know, watch the full thing in its entirety. But Microsoft's for the for certainly for bigger client and also for uh, you know, for secure reasons as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, disney wants to do a town hall. That's going to happen in their world. We've had big consumer packaged goods companies release a new product to their internal teams around the world. So microsites come in handy to do that. So they're a big part of, I think, our world. But it gives functionality. We can turn on video chat, polling, trivia, graphics, calls to action. So it really helped them get a bigger bang for their buck.
Speaker 1:I mean without taxing, yeah, yeah. So I'm curious for this multi-view experience. You know where you can change, select camera angles and things like that. That does seem very compelling from a user perspective. You know it's neat, right? You can decide, you know, if it's a band like oh, you know, it's like I want to watch the drummer, 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's super clear. I mean there's all kinds of angles that, in theory, you know in sports is super clear. I mean there's all kinds of angles that, in theory, you could select. Were you using? You know some like low latency platform WebRTC like Phoenix Technologies, or did you build your own? Or you know, are you leveraging like AWS? Or maybe you can, you know, give a little bit more detail about how you built this or what you're doing?
Speaker 2:The notion came out of the early days of delivering an experience like a music festival, like Coachella. So Coachella is eight stages happening simultaneously. The presenters wanted to give the audience the ability to look at an experience and change. You know, maybe you're not interested in what's happening on stage a you wanted to look at different artists on stage b and we kind of took that to a choose your view.
Speaker 2:Uh, concert experience, and that's definitely you know, aws powered uh jw player um, and we have some kind of engineering tricks we use to have that happen, you know, seamlessly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because each stream has to be synchronized. In that scenario, when you're watching disparate events, you know that's not, as it's not required, right, because you know stage A, stage B, by very definition they're out of sync.
Speaker 2:You know it's different, different, different, different music and everything going on, but you know, and we spend a lot of time, uh, analyzing consumer behavior as well, and the audience doesn't want, you know, the player to take, I think, six seconds to load typically we see that happen, we lose about 20 of the audience audience.
Speaker 2:So it's going to happen quickly. I've seen experiences where you know if someone does change their camera, things that we don't provide. You know there's like this buffer cycle and you know a consumer, that's not what they want and we can.
Speaker 1:certainly that bears itself out in the analytics as well.
Speaker 2: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're looking from a different perspective, but also getting that audio up to you know, I think 256k that's a higher quality, fidelity and all the years I've been doing.
Speaker 2:I started my career, you know, working um with prince 17 18 years ago amazing, and certainly working with that type of an artist who wanted to go direct but also my background in working at AEG the music artists. They care more about the audio in the live stream than they do the video, of course. Yeah. So having a higher level of fidelity and a persistent level of quality audio has been, I think, a difference maker. And if it's brought to you by AT&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 these things happen under the hood. You know we're using managing a lot of different technologies in a lot of ways. You know to do that. But at the end result, you or the big check writers they tell us you figure this out, we want to do this.
Speaker 2:If you want to do this with these other partners, just hold them to the same standards that we're going to hold you to. The whole world has to, you know, live video. I think the pandemic, the companies that got funded in the pandemic, I think it certainly showed that this is not easy to do.
Speaker 1:A lot of moving pieces have to happen.
Speaker 2:I think it certainly showed that this is not easy to do. Right, that's right. A lot of moving pieces have to happen. We go to great lengths to use multiple transmission paths. A lot of times those live view packs are pretty critical to a successful show. We're also deploying multiple live encoders, so there's a primary and a backup device. Elementals and Perls, I think, are critical for that success and no matter what the guarantee is, the show has to stay on the air. So encoder doesn't work. Encoder A, we're flipping over to encoder B, I think also using sometimes massive events. You've heard that multiple CDNs is a strategy to deploy, but the idea is we've got to make this experience happen. It's got to stay on the air and we've got to use the best solutions available to us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah, that's interesting. So then, just one last question before we move on, because I know we have a case study to discuss and you know we're going to wrap up talking about the role of advertisers, you know. So, yeah, it's pretty pretty. I'm excited about that. Hear your thoughts. So, on the on the technical side 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 some encoders that you use and you know. So now, have you done enough events that you basically have your, you know, your, architecture I guess call it that or are they all unique enough that you kind of have to approach each a little bit from a bespoke perspective?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a great question and it comes up pretty frequently. The reality of. I haven't done this for two decades, certainly the past 12 years at Bulldog. No event is the same from one to the next, that's right. So we're constantly having to, I would say, spin up. I mean, we'll certainly borrow from what we've done in the past.
Speaker 1:Yeah, of course.
Speaker 2:We're very vocal about making best practice recommendations right, if we're going to do this, we should do it this way. You know, a lot of this is dictated by the distribution platforms. So if a customer says to us my top three are Facebook, instagram and TikTok, I need to be on those platforms. We also get hired by TikTok, youtube and Facebook, so we know we're going to send the stream. To do it that way. I mean, a lot of it is, too, is knowing the critical people are the live ops people at those platforms and since we've done so much work with them, we know what their challenges are. I mean, I think every social media platform has its strengths and its you know disadvantages.
Speaker 1:And how do we do?
Speaker 2:that. You know that's. That's a big. I mean live video looks amazing on YouTube. But discovery is not their strong suit. You know Instagram has a great alert notification system. Historically it's been.
Speaker 2:You know a lot of Instagram live has been relegated to a camera phone. We've got workarounds we've used for four or five years. So if we're going to social, that's going to dictate a lot of how we're going to execute the experience. You know, knowing the bandwidth at the venue, yeah, that's going to dictate a lot of of how we're going to execute the experience. You know, knowing the bandwidth at the venue, yeah, that's right. Huge aspect of this, huge, huge. Yeah, fortunately for us. I come out of aeg who owns and operates a lot of the bigger venues and arenas around the world. Um colleagues of mine come on a live nation. We advised uh neva during the pandemic, so there's 3 000 um national independent venue, kind of know. Typically, if we're going to go somewhere, we do the uh snapdragon summit for qualcomm, which happens in a beautiful resort but it's in maui and that has a lot of bandwidth challenges.
Speaker 2:In the past year we came there right after the fires in Maui, so it was a lot of playing with our tech guys, our tech people, with the Qualcomm people, because also the audience for a lot of Qualcomm's announcements are in China. So there's a whole other set of steps to get through, to distribute out to their platforms and their partners.
Speaker 1: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 great looking stream coming out of the venue. You know, like, if you, if, ultimately, where their audience is, if they're not able to see it and you know, then it doesn't matter, right?
Speaker 2:so, yeah, and the figure is, you know, going to be pointed at the customer.
Speaker 1:They're not going to say oh, exactly do this properly, or the bandwidth constriction.
Speaker 2:At the end they're going to point to you know qualcomm, or they're going to point to at&t and say I tried to tune in for this food fighters concert before the super bowl and yeah, and I couldn't, I couldn't see it. Yeah, wow, so we go way overboard to make sure that there's a checklist. We go through a process, we do site surveys and you know we want to be helpful. This should be easy. Live video is, I think, presents a lot of anxiety, no matter how many times you've done this for the clients.
Speaker 1:And we're sensitive to that.
Speaker 2:But we also want to make sure that they can focus on the experience and the content and not worry about is this show going to hit the air? So your bigger question a lot of it's dictated by that. If we're operating from a microsite perspective, then we're working in parallel with the infrastructure teams at those companies, as well, yeah, interesting, wow, super fascinating, super fascinating.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, you have a case study and why don't you tell us you know about some real world results of all of this?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So when we started the business, I had been powering, obviously, some of the work I was doing supporting at AG, supporting YouTube, and when we started our business, coca-cola, I think, had done a pretty big Paul McCartney concert in Mexico and said, hey, we love what we're doing on YouTube, but we also want to distribute directly from our platform at coca-colafm and we happen to be the title sponsors of the Viva Latino Festival, which is the largest rock festival, I think, in that part of the world.
Speaker 2:It's treated as the Coachella of Latin America. And we won the business largely based on helping them deliver content directly from Coca-Colafm but simulcasting out to social, and over several years of working together together we were able to kind of move them into a place where you could watch, I think 11 hours both days of the festival and three different channels, so about 60 70 bands. Uh, you could also go to the microsite and look at the lineup and say, hey, I'm mark and I'm a fan of these bands G-Eazy, jake, bob, prophets of Rage Enter in your mobile number and get a push notification with a link to the video. Say hey, the artist that you like is starting now on Channel 1.
Speaker 1:Super cool.
Speaker 2:Wow, yeah, come to the experience. Yeah, we also brought in, we'll create everybody and use this video director to direct the main stage and offer that in VR. So if you were again the country and you were at a Best Buy store, you can go and put on that Samsung headset and enjoy the show. Or if you were on YouTube, you could 360 the experience and a myriad of other kind of cool things Polling, trivia, et cetera. Anyway, the end result was also, I think, the first major simulcast on Twitter in that part of the world as well. But for Coke, again, the big thing was we want to get someone's attention and it's very hard to do that, and the broadcast on the microsite led to a watch time of about 29 minutes on mobile and 113 minutes on desktop, about 3.9 million viewers between those two platforms, and that was a massive win for them. You know, huge, hugely successful and also a big part of our business is. You know, people spend a lot of money on experiential and being with consumers.
Speaker 1:And the notion of live video is.
Speaker 2:let's amplify that it kind of goes back to my days of moving into AEG and seeing how Coachella has 85,000 people. You know all three of those days. Imagine that experience amplified, I think, the Beyonce year. I think that's 89.2 million, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Crazy. So this partnership with Coke was just a big, big home run. So this partnership with Coke was just a big, big home run. And just recently we helped them launch their Coke Spice their first new permanent flavor in three years at an activation in New York City. Live on Coke's Twitch account. But also Chrissy Costanza, a big influencer. So that's been a great partner to work with, among a myriad of others, but that was a real kind of eye opener. Yeah, hey. Here's the results that this brand really not upon, but thirsted for and wanted.
Speaker 1:Yeah, really helped, yeah, interesting, and you said a couple interesting things too. So, like you were, you know Coke was, I think you said the title sponsor or whatever you know was the primary sponsor. But then there was an experience around Samsung. You know Samsung Mobile. So was that just because Samsung was a chosen device or were they also a sponsor? And therefore there's like multiple brands kind of you know in a way, coming together In that case you know, vr was this is a couple of years ago was becoming the hot thing, and you know a lot of marketers.
Speaker 2:They want to be aware, they want to be in the forefront of innovation and they have what are called test budgets or test and learn budgets, and they responded to the idea of let's broadcast just the main stage in that kind of VR format. Vr, yeah, cool, but the way to get the consumer. So if you had, you could really do a cool 360 stream on YouTube on an Android, I believe. Yeah, but to really connect with the consumer in country, it was go to the best buy. Not everybody had headsets back then. Yeah, exactly, vr headsets. So the partnership with Samsung came out of that work. Let's bring them into the store. You know with AT&T, clearly. You know massive partnership with the Galaxy. Sure, sure, sure, can we take that partnership to a different level and actually shoot? These phones are, I would say, prosumer level cameras, but the pit cam would be, you know, a Samsung galaxy or artists cam. But we're still offering up, you know, five camera directors.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, but yeah that's kind of the idea of how to bring other partners into the solution.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very cool, well, awesome. Well, let's talk about the role of advertisers and you know, I know you've got a lot of thoughts around this, so I'm going to turn it over to you to discuss. How can advertisers play a more significant role in really unlocking the value here in live streaming of events, and what does that look like? What do they need to be thinking about doing?
Speaker 2:You know we hear a consistent. I think everybody's got a Gen Z, you know strategy.
Speaker 1:How do I talk to that?
Speaker 2:consumer. They're not watching, you know, tv commercials traditionally. They're not really consuming traditional media, consuming media traditionally, or even advertising. So we've endeavored to find out, hey, you know what are the key ways to do that. And you know there is this notion of I think you hear Live Nation talk about it. You know the experience economy Consumers value being at. You know quote experiences, shared experiences, shared experiences. You know with their friends that they can extend that. You know, digitally or virtually, right, you might be in miami at a, at art basel or an experience, but you want to share it with your colleague and or your friend in detroit, live video. And that immediacy offers that opportunity. And again, the real drivers here are watch time to do that. And, by the way, the audience is not. They're not upset Like, oh, hey, I can't. You know Verizon is sponsoring the headlining performance of Coachella. They're pretty happy about that, right, because they can now see this.
Speaker 2:And also the ability to execute. We've got higher camera, higher quality cameras now we're almost everywhere, so that's a big. We can also mount, you know, cinematic lenses. We can shoot it in a way that somebody wants it done. But you know, real significant. You know big opportunity there and combined with you know, I think a lot of marketing dollars now, as a result of of pursuing that age demographic, are in experiential and people will spend a significant amount of money to put on these beautiful whether it's to a small audience or a big audience these experiences and to amplify that out is really interesting. We can just come in and layer in a live stream workflow and take that from 1,000 people in the room to 20 to 50 times that and drive discovery, watch time et cetera, give them some great data points. But those two strategies I think are top of mind for advertisers and brands. Advertisers and brands but also in our conversation today we've covered that I view Amazon, apple, disney, netflix, hulu as brands as well.
Speaker 1:So they're using that video to customer acquisition.
Speaker 2: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 help brands solve their challenges is give them a way to reach an audience in real time with a sustained watch time. I can't see a better way to allocate your money.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely, I agree. I'm wondering from your perspective you have a lot of conversations with the big brands, the advertisers, agencies, because they're all probably involved in some of these really massive festivals and these massive events. Why is it, though and this is a question for you see if you have an answer, or what your view is why is it, though, that the CPMs on, for example, like fast channels, are so low relative to television broadcast that it's no wonder, for all the promise of fast, nobody is making money. Very few people are making money. Most of the platforms are really struggling, and it's not the success that everyone claimed it was going to be. Why is that? Why are advertisers so willing to throw the big budgets after?
Speaker 1: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 of it, you know it's anonymized and you know there's the. You know, so it's not like they know exactly what I'm watching. I know that, but why is that what you know? What's the situation there?
Speaker 2:You know, I think a lot of it has to do with the audience is just fatigue. There's way too many options and, as a result, I think the number one currency in the world is time, and if I'm going to give you my time, I want to have an experience that I'm going to have some value, derive some value from and I'm going to appreciate it. And just putting anything and everything. I think these guys are all going to slug it out Interesting. I've read a lot of John Stanky at AT&T. If he can get to the final 10 video platforms, there's going to be a little bit more consolidation, probably down to six, and the interesting theory was that by that time, autonomous driving will have kicked in and we're not going to grow as a society by billions or millions of people, but autonomous driving will return two hours a day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Interesting thesis and theory. So I think some of that is worth exploring and thinking about. I also see that, again, the audiences that we serve great, that we do a lot of shows or experiences that appeal to everybody, but doing, you know, say, a festival, or we work with United Masters does a SelectCon conference and it's about culture and emerging artists, independent music artists, but also relevant topics. You know finance. How do you learn about finance as a 24 year old? That type of content is is, you know, relevant and it's appealing. But again, having that, that collaborative, participatory experience, I think is far more more valuable. Where you're posting, tweeting, commenting, maybe you're answering polls with like-minded people on connected devices elsewhere.
Speaker 2:I think, and it's it's why I I believe, that a platform like netflix now has, I think, tested some live content. Yeah, now they're going spending some serious money obviously yeah yeah, bringing the uh, the nfl on board yeah, yeah, yeah, it's very clear.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I find, I, I find that so fascinating A little bit. You know a little bit. Like you know, reed Hastings famously you know only I think it was like four years ago or something you know made a very strong statement about there will never be advertising on the Netflix platform. You know, when he was asked, I think it was on earnings call and then, well, hello, you know, here we are. It's one of the things I love about Netflix, by the way, is that they're very comfortable with their thesis, you know today, which they hold very strongly, and they stand by, but then, when proven otherwise or shown what they change, you know, and uh, and so I love it.
Speaker 1:I, I had a conversation with somebody I'm very senior in the um on the streaming side of netflix and this would have gone back to like probably 2016 or 17. 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? Why wouldn't you go after live? And the person made kind of that same definitive like Netflix will never, netflix is file bait. And now here they are, live, and it's all just a testament, of course, to who they are as an organization, that they are always innovating. They're always looking at how they can bring more value, you know, to the consumer.
Speaker 1:But at the same time, the consumers evolved, right, you know, seven, eight years ago, people were talking about live video in a world of VOD platforms. People were talking about live video in a world of VOD platforms and, yeah, consumers are watching TV and live video. But basically, we loved our Netflix, you know, select the file, hit, play and it played. Right, that, you know, that was it. Well, now, as you're aptly pointing out, the consumer. It's time that we're competing for.
Speaker 1:It's time that we're competing for, you know, and again, going back to not to use all Netflix examples, but I think Reed Hastings also famously made a quote about, you know, their ultimate competitor it's games. You know it's gaming, it's other experiences. It really isn't you know this streaming service or that streaming service, or you know it's it's other experiences. And I totally buy into that, you know, into that line of thinking. And so, for those of us working in the industry, you know it's one of the reasons that I I have a personal, you know, I just sort of I shudder a little bit when I read yet another headline about the streaming wars, you know, and who's going to win, and it's just like it's the wrong conversation. It's completely the wrong conversation. You know. This isn't about, you know, disney beating Netflix or Netflix beating Amazon Prime. This is about capturing attention of the consumer, who has a lot of places they can spend it. Spend that attention.
Speaker 2:And they're pretty vocal about what they want. So a lot of times I say let's listen, let's hear what they have to say and I think the technical live or technical video people know better than anybody that you can't expect things not to change. Yeah, I think we've all worked in video for the past four or five years, even 10 or 20 years. You've dealt with constant, repeated change, always something happening. You know, look at TikTok entering the market and market and you know that's a whole different platform it's different yeah, and you got to support that and be prepared to, you know, to deal with it.
Speaker 2:But I, you know, I, we, I see I get a lot of great feedback from, you know, from engineers. What's your thinking? Where this industry is headed, were you observing? And a lot of it, too, is watching the, the social streams around the shows. I mean, we, we use tools to eliminate, uh, you know, trolling and off topic.
Speaker 1:You know, uh yeah, commentary, yeah, yeah, that must be a challenge it is, but when I started this business, I you know youtube was a big.
Speaker 2:You know, I did for three or four years powered the youtube experience and people do want to uh, they want to go beyond just webcam video yeah, they don't want yeah, you could hire uh drake and have a keynote from jeff bezos.
Speaker 2:But if you know, especially a younger consumer, if they can't interact with that video, they're not going to watch too long. And by you know, turning on a social stream but also curating it, so the conversation is related to the video. People lean more into that rather than pull away. They're more likely to come back to subsequent live broadcasts. They're more likely to invite their friends to it as well. Turn on some graphics and some polling and you've really transformed that viewer into a participant. And those are key ways to be successful. And this is not. I mean, it's all happening live, right. So it is not easy. But people in my industry have figured this out and there's great tool sets out there to kind of change your video experience and take it to a whole nother level.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, cool. Yeah, I really appreciate all the insights. John, this is amazing. Let's wrap it up here. We're coming coming a little bit over time, but we've got to start a few minutes late. So, let's you know, I think a good place to wrap this up would be you know, we touched on this. Is Nielsen a friend or foe? You know we touched on this. Is Nielsen a friend or foe, you know? And then where's the opportunity? So I'm asking for the question, I'm asking the question, I'm looking for your insights from the perspective of. I put my hat on.
Speaker 1:You know, I work at more of a I'm going to call it a traditional streaming service. You know somebody, as we've talked about, you know, out of that, netflix, amazon Prime, you know Hulu, vudu, you know that kind of a thing, how? So? I'm sitting here and I'm listening. I'm going, yeah, you know we're having a lot of discussions, we're even, you know there's some strategy around some of this.
Speaker 1:But gee, how do I go from this kind of licensed content world where everything was about I go strike a deal for a certain amount of time and it gives me access to a library and then I basically go try and monetize that? I mean, at the end of the day, the business is kind of as simple as that I pay $300 million for this library. Now let's go see if I could generate more than $300 million, you know, out of that. How do, how can people think about expanding into these live experiences, maybe bringing brands 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't know some insights. You know what?
Speaker 2:they may want to think about, talk about, look at yeah, I think you know, dipping your toe in the water and coming out with an event that offers you a story, and the story is the data and the analytics. And when I give example, I've done a lot of automotive reveals for Hyundai and they struggled with you know how do I navigate the Jacob Javits center.
Speaker 2:It's so difficult just to get power and connectivity there. Same thing with the convention center in LA. You know this is what we do for a living right. We figured this out, we have. You know, again, the big unlocking challenge in a lot of these places is internet connectivity and proper bandwidth to execute the show. And you know we were able to figure that out for them and also distribute to multiple platforms simultaneously. And, do you know, on the fly translation and do on-the-fly translation.
Speaker 2:And at the end I'd say the real return for them was they were launching the new model of the Elantra a couple years ago and it's the number one selling vehicle in Hyundai history and by executing a really perfect, beautiful presentation of the vehicle and I think it was, you know, the big kind of consumer selling points were also a line of green electric vehicles, even the ability to share a key in your household digitally, so if the parent wants to share with the child or spouse they can do that, but to showcase that in the moment, in real time, and put it everywhere. Hugely successful for them and goes beyond just showcasing the vehicle to the Detroit automotive press.
Speaker 2:As a result they had a record number of pre-orders but again, the most selling, most sold vehicle of all time. That live stream brought them an incredible amount of pre-orders. So great viewership, but also people expressing an interest, and when that car and the car might, I think it was available, you know, not that day, but certainly a quarter or two away, sure, but that's a great way to look at this market is how do I captivate somebody?
Speaker 2:and they even had the head engineer after the big presentation. We took a camera and followed him around the vehicle he's like.
Speaker 1:Here's what we thought about how we designed the panel to be and what you're going to see there.
Speaker 2:I always found that people love to see things they normally wouldn't get to see it could be anything. Years ago I was blown away by. We did a live stream in Brazil. It was two mma fighters interviewing each other and the audience was just off the charts and I had no idea that that's, uh, what was to be expected. But I think, to answer your question, you know doing this and getting into the business and then now you have a value proposition to go to a brand, say hey this experience yeah.
Speaker 2:Do you want to come back next year? We do this for the next quarter. Do you want to be the presenter of this experience?
Speaker 1:Yeah, boy, I, I, I can already, and I, and I'm sure you know the, the team over at Netflix are super smart, they've got it. You know there's a whole new ad unit that can be sold. You know, like you think about the live, a live golf, a golf event. You know, and what if, rather than just putting ping logos everywhere or you know whatever, like what if there was a little three and a half minute vignette of of a ping executive, you know, walking through, like the 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. You know I'm, I'm a car enthusiast and I'm also a musician, and you know, and I'm into, you know, like all of us, I've got things I'm interested in. And you know, boy, I mean I would 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 that it's.
Speaker 1:You know I can love the brand, but it's like it's a commercial. No, tell me, like, what's behind the product. Or show me something that I don't know. You know that makes me even feel more excited, either to acquire it or that I own it. You know, I think that's another thing that's interesting about like advertising, is it? And it depends on the product, of course. But you know, like, sometimes you can really activate the existing owners to make them evangelist. You know, to make them evangelist, you know, because you know, by giving them either fresh insights into how the product was designed or you know something about it.
Speaker 1:Where then I'm going to be more apt to not only go tell my neighbors or my friends, but when somebody says, oh, I love your car, I love this, I love that, oh, how do you like this? Oh, did you know, you know? And it's the. Did you know that? Um, then others respond to as well, you know, you know, and it's the. Did you know that? Um, then others respond to as well, you know, because they probably didn't know and they're like oh, really, I didn't know. Oh, wow, and now I really have to go drive that car. You know it's so.
Speaker 2:But even you know you bring up netflix. I think you know an interesting use case. You know the mike, tyson, jake or logan paul fight yeah the experience and say who do you think won that last round? You know that could be, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Who do you think is going to win the next round?
Speaker 2:And now you've got a really engaged audience, but they could be, you know, casting to their connected TV and that's yeah, and that whole whole, or that companion experience could be brought to you by a Procter Gamble or a brand.
Speaker 1:Exactly, yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, that's cool. Well, I really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you for coming on and sharing all your wisdom and insights. And, for listeners, if you're not following John or connected to John on LinkedIn, I know I see your posts all the time, so you know updates and so I'm sure that you're happy to connect to folks and you know we'll be watching the events that you're producing and continue to produce. So, yeah, thank you for coming on. Voices of Video.
Speaker 2:Mark, thanks for having me Great conversation. Really appreciate it Absolutely. This episode of Voices of Video is brought to you by NetInt Technologies. If you are looking for cutting-edge video encoding solutions, check out NetInt's products at netintcom.
