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cover of episode Tubi CEO Anjali Sud says you can’t beat free

Tubi CEO Anjali Sud says you can’t beat free

2024/10/16
logo of podcast Channels with Peter Kafka

Channels with Peter Kafka

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Anjali Sud:Tubi作为免费广告支持的流媒体平台,拥有巨大的市场潜力。其成功秘诀在于庞大的内容库、注重用户体验以及对观众需求的精准把握。Tubi通过灵活的内容策略,满足不同观众群体的需求,并通过数据驱动的内容创作和采购,形成良性循环。在与其他流媒体平台的竞争中,Tubi的优势在于其免费模式和低成本运营,以及对增量受众的精准触达。盈利方面,Tubi致力于通过高效增长而非削减成本的方式实现盈利,并通过提升广告商对Tubi价值的认知来提升广告收入。 Peter Kafka:对Tubi的商业模式、内容策略、用户获取方式、与福克斯的关系以及盈利能力等方面进行了深入探讨,并提出了关于Tubi如何应对竞争、如何平衡与内容分发平台的关系以及如何吸引年轻观众等问题。

Deep Dive

Key Insights

Why did Anjali Sud join Tubi?

Anjali Sud joined Tubi because she saw an opportunity for disruption in the streaming industry, particularly with the shift towards free ad-supported streaming. She was excited about the potential for Tubi to define the future of entertainment with its free model.

What is Tubi's current market position?

Tubi is the most-watched free movie and TV streaming service in the US, with over 80 million monthly active viewers. It ranks as the third largest ad-supported streaming service after YouTube and Amazon in terms of viewing time.

How does Tubi compete with larger streamers like Netflix and Amazon?

Tubi competes by offering a vast library of content and focusing on viewer discovery and engagement. It operates on a fraction of the budget of larger streamers, leveraging its free model to attract audiences without the need for expensive subscriber acquisition campaigns.

What is Tubi's content licensing strategy?

Tubi has built its library over a decade through a network of content partners, including studio deals and independent distributors. It does not rely heavily on Fox's library and actively seeks out unique content, including homegrown talent and stories from underrepresented communities.

Why does Tubi produce original content?

Tubi produces original content when it identifies fandoms or communities that want more of a specific type of storytelling. These originals are made at a fraction of the budget of traditional streamers' content and are driven by viewer data and demand.

How does Tubi cater to specific audiences like the Black community?

Tubi listens to viewer signals and responds by providing more content that resonates with specific audiences, such as Black entertainment. This approach has led to over-indexing in growth with younger multicultural audiences.

What role does Fox play in Tubi's operations?

Fox provides support to Tubi but allows it to operate with an entrepreneurial spirit. Tubi is exploring ways to leverage Fox's assets, such as Fox Sports, to create unique content and marketing opportunities without relying heavily on Fox's resources.

How does Tubi monetize its service?

Tubi monetizes through advertising, offering advertisers incremental reach at scale with a good ROI. Over 65% of Tubi's audience consists of cord cutters and nevers, making it an attractive platform for brands looking to reach new audiences.

What is Tubi's approach to distribution partnerships?

Tubi focuses on being ubiquitous across devices, ensuring it is accessible on any screen. It works strategically with distribution platforms to optimize content discovery and maintains a win-win relationship with partners like Amazon and Roku.

What is Tubi's stance on profitability?

Tubi is committed to profitability and believes it can achieve this through efficient growth and smart investments, rather than cost-cutting. It aims to unlock advertiser awareness to match its growing audience.

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And of course, podcasting.

Yes, the thing you're listening to right now. Well, it's increasingly being produced directly by companies like venture capital firms, investment funds, and a new crop of creators who one day want to be investors themselves.

And what is actually going on with these acquisitions this year, especially in the AI space? Why are so many big players in tech deciding not to acquire and instead license tech and hire away co-founders? The answer, it turns out, is a lot more complicated than it seems. You'll hear all that and more this month on Decoder with Nilay Patel, presented by Stripe. You can listen to Decoder wherever you get your podcasts.

From the Vox Media Podcast Network, it's Channels. I'm Peter Kafka. That is me. I am the Chief Correspondent at Business Insider, where I cover tech and media. Last week, I was in LA. It was really nice to meet so many people who listened to the show. Thank you for saying hi, and thank you for listening. On to today's show, where we are talking about the streaming wars, which are basically over when it comes to first place. That's Netflix, full stop, out of story.

But after that, it gets pretty interesting. And one of the reasons it's interesting is the rise of free ad-supported streamers. So today we're talking about one of them. That's Tubi, the free service Fox bought in March 2020. Yep, in the pandemic. And we're talking to their newest leader. That is Anjali Sood. She took over Tubi just about a year ago. If you are a longtime listener, you may remember Anjali Sood from an earlier episode. We talked to her all the way back in 2019.

when she was running Vimeo. Two very different video services, two very different approaches. This is a conversation we taped live at the Javits Center in New York, courtesy of the National Association of Broadcasters. Thank you to NAB for hosting us. And now here's me and Anjali Sood.

Exciting. We're doing live broadcasting here. It is very fun to be back on the NAB floor. It's been a minute. Anjali, it's been a minute since I've seen you. The last time I interviewed you, you were running Vimeo, a video service for Barry Diller. Now you're running Tubi, a video service for Rupert Murdoch. We'll explain the differences. But first of all, what was the pitch to get you to come to Tubi? And what did you tell...

Tubi's bosses, the Murdochs, that you wanted to do with the company once you got there? So I joined Tubi over a year ago, and I actually hadn't really heard of the service before that. And when I learned more about the business, I just got really excited about free streaming. And

you know, it felt to me as I was looking around at the industry, and I'd started my career way back at the old AOL Time Warner. So I had started in media, kind of moved over to tech. And it just became clear to me that we were in a place where streaming was really ripe for disruption. You know, I love to be in environments where disruption creates opportunity. And so I just got really excited about the idea that

long-form movie and TV viewing could move more towards a true free ad-supported model. Tubi was already doing it well, and I developed the conviction that Tubi had the ingredients to define the future of entertainment, and that sounded really exciting. All right, we're at the National Association of Broadcasters event. So unless you randomly wandered into a TV conference, you probably know what Tubi is, but just...

On the odd chance you don't know or don't know the full scope of the company, give us the size. So Tubi is the most watched free movie and TV streaming service in the US. We have over 80 million monthly active viewers. Anybody can watch Tubi. You never have to pay anything. And we have the world's largest library and collection of movies and TV shows.

About 2% of the streaming audience, right? And about 2% of the streaming audience. Which puts you sort of ahead of the Max's and Peacock's of the world. That's right. And actually, Peter, if you look on an ad-supported viewing basis, we're probably number three after YouTube and Amazon. So it's been pretty meaningful momentum, particularly in the last year. We've actually almost doubled our share of TV viewing time in the last 18 months. So I don't want to spend the entire time comparing Vimeo and Tubi, but...

When you were at Vimeo, which is really a B2B sort of creator-focused tools service, there was a minute where the folks at IEC said, we're going to go compete with Netflix. We're going to be in the streaming wars. And it got very close. And then at the very last minute, turned around and said, actually, we're not. And the reason why is it costs billions of dollars a year to buy all this content. We don't want to be in that war. Now you're in that war.

a different strategy, but explain how you compete with, because you're competing with everyone, right? You're competing with every streamer, including the Netflix's of the world that are spending $17 billion in content yearly. And then obviously TikTok, video games, everything I can spend time on and everything an advertiser can use to reach me. You know, it's Fox. It's not a small company, but I wonder how you feel, how you stop,

Do you feel like you're outgunned? That's a stupid question. Of course, you're not going to say that. But how do you use a smaller budget to compete? Yeah, so I completely agree with you, Peter, that the competitive set when you're in the business of entertainment is literally anything that takes consumers' time and attention. And that competitive set has gotten much broader than AVOD or SVOD or streaming or cable. And it is social. It is gaming. It is all these things.

At the same time, I look at it as my addressable market is also bigger. And the way that I can get attention and earn audiences time, I think there's more opportunity now than ever if you have a free model for consumers. So the difference in when I remember looking at, you know, at Vimeo, we were looking at a subscription service.

And I think this is when the model was Netflix, no ads. People who are going to get into that world were doing no ads at a discount. And when you do a subscription service, I have many years of experience doing that. It is a different model. You do have to spend a lot of money to acquire subscribers and then you have to retain them and fight fight

fight that constant churn battle. And if you think about what free ad supported streaming looks like, it's not that. It's more similar in many ways to TikTok or Instagram in that there's no switching, very low switching costs for the consumer. And all you are thinking about is every single time you have to earn their engagement. And I think why that is an important difference is the way we think about investing.

in content, in user experience, in marketing, all has to work that way. And it's not that it's an easier model, but I think the tailwinds are in our favor because I think consumers, especially younger audiences, do not want to pay for content, especially when they can otherwise be entertained on TikTok.

And I think what we have proven is that if we have a large enough library, we obsess and prioritize that viewer discovery and experience. We can actually earn audience time. And then there's a flywheel. The more larger our audience gets, the more signals we have, the better our content investment goes. And everything that I mentioned around 2B scale, it has happened at a fraction of the cost of many of these other streamers. And just dive into it for a second. How...

How are you licensing that stuff? Is this, you're part of Fox, so you get Fox's library for free? I doubt it. There's a minimum, it's gotta be an arm's length thing. So how are you assembling content? How are you thinking about building a giant library? What sort of stuff are you not pursuing that maybe you would have a couple years ago? So Tubi has spent over a decade building this library and building a very vast network of content partners.

We do not rely on Fox for our content. We can carry some of their content, but the vast majority of the library is coming from us doing everything from studio deals where we'll license, acquire content to working with independent distributors all around the country. And in many cases, also going into certain communities that aren't

generally, you know, represented in Hollywood and finding aspiring filmmakers, homegrown talent and stories and giving them a platform. And what is so interesting about Tubi, it's so different from traditional television is, you know, traditional television, if it's 8 p.m. on a Friday, somebody is programming for one audience. It's very monolithic.

What Tubi is is almost the opposite. We help stories find their audience because we have this huge long tail and audiences have diverse tastes. So that's the strategy. And just to give you a little bit more of a sense, if you looked at the library from a percentage basis, you would see, you know, it's it's.

It's a long tail. If you looked at viewership, you'd see it's very distributed. So it's not a hit driven business. I was texting you this weekend because I was watching a fairly obscure 1979 Bob Fosse movie, which used to not be able to watch anywhere. You couldn't even get it on a DVD. And you guys now have it, which is great. All that jazz. Thank you. Might be surprised to know, Peter, that does not drive the majority of our viewing. Not shocked. And then we do originals. And what's

What's interesting is 2B originals look different than, you know, maybe some of the other originals you might hear about. But we have produced over 300 originals. One in four, nearly one in four 2B viewers watches an original. And, you know, but they don't look like Game of Thrones, right? These are often movies that we're producing at a fraction of the budget. But it's because we deeply understand and listen to our viewers. We know what they want. We know how to get them.

Why make an original at all, right? In the SVOD world, you make these, initially you would make these big tentpole shows to get attention from the press, attention from the media, drive subscriptions, sort of changes over time. I can't tell you a single Tubi original. I doubt most of the audience here can. So what is the point of making that stuff instead of buying from the giant catalogs that are out there? Our philosophy is that we actually don't want to produce originals.

Unless we have to. So I'll give you a very specific example. If you look at the last, I think Luminate and Variety have like a top 10 movie streaming chart.

And if you look at the last quarter, a Tubi movie, original movie, has been on that chart four times. You may not have heard of The Assistant 2. It's, you know, it's bloodline killer. It's titles you might not have heard of. But what we're seeing is we'll see a fandom on Tubi. We can pick up that that fandom wants to see more and more of this kind of content.

And what will amaze you is in some cases we aren't able to acquire or license enough of that. This is like the old Netflix playbook when they got into originals. Well, we we've got data. We know that people like this kind of British spy thriller. They like we don't say it anymore, but they like Kevin Spacey. We're going to make a show with Kevin Spacey and politics.

And then he sort of backed off saying that the algorithm was driving all this stuff. But you're saying you are indeed using data to not just program, but to build programming. Yeah, it's more, I think, the way we see it is there are fandoms and communities that want to go deep down rabbit holes of storytelling that the traditional Hollywood ecosystem is not designed to create a lot of rich storytelling for them. And what we honestly hear, Peter, one of the things, obviously,

Obviously, when I joined, I spent a lot of time trying to understand, like, what is working with Tubi? And the number one thing we hear from our fans is that they feel seen in the content that they can find on Tubi. We'll be right back with Anjali Sood from Tubi. But first, a word from a sponsor. Support for this podcast comes from Stripe.

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Hey, it's Liam from Decoder with Nilay Patel. We spent a lot of time talking about some of the most important people in tech and business, about what they're putting resources to and why they think it's so critical for the future. That's why we're doing this special series, diving into some of the most unique ways companies are spending money today. For instance, what does it mean to start buying and using AI at work? How much is that costing companies? What products are they buying? And most importantly, what are they doing with it? And of course, podcasting.

Yes, the thing you're listening to right now. Well, it's increasingly being produced directly by companies like venture capital firms, investment funds, and a new crop of creators who one day want to be investors themselves.

And what is actually going on with these acquisitions this year, especially in the AI space? Why are so many big players in tech deciding not to acquire and instead license tech and hire away co-founders? The answer, it turns out, is a lot more complicated than it seems. You'll hear all that and more this month on Decoder with Nilay Patel, presented by Stripe. You can listen to Decoder wherever you get your podcasts. Thumbtack presents the ins and outs of caring for your home.

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And we're back. One thing I've always been interested about Tubi, and this existed before you got there, is you clearly are catering in part to a black audience. You seem to over index there. You can tell just by going to the home screen. If you boot up the app for the first time, you'll just see stuff is clearly aimed at a black audience. How did that start? And why are you guys continuing to pitch to that audience? What's the upside?

And so everything starts from a commitment to listening to what our viewers want and we give them more of it. And again, that's because of the nature of our business. We have to earn that engagement every day. So all we do is listen and respond and give you more of what you want. And it was never an intentional strategy to go after a demo or this age group or this audience. And it still isn't. We want to be very broad.

But when we see signals that there's interest, that's how we grow. And you're right that I think black entertainment has been one of our most popular fandoms. And we do over index and growth with younger multicultural audiences. But we also see the same thing with horror and thriller. And we're starting to see the same thing with LGBTQ audiences. And so our view is that that's not it's not about an audience.

It's just the practice of learning and listening and putting the viewer first and back at the center. In terms of marketing, do you want to be known as, hey, this is a place where we have stuff that caters to a black audience or stuff that caters to thrillers or LGBTQ? Or do you want a sort of generic, we have lots of things?

I think we want both. You know, we want Tubi to be synonymous with free, frictionless entertainment that makes Tubi fun again. And that value proposition is what's working and it applies to everybody. At the same time, we want every single viewer to feel seen on Tubi. We want people to feel that we as a brand understand that tastes are multidimensional, that they change.

that culture is evolving and that we can respond to that. And I think I will say the more that I see how younger audiences in particular, what they want and what they're interested in,

the more conviction we feel that this is a winning proposition. You're a division of a division of Fox or a unit within the division of Fox. What's the relationship? What does Fox want out of you? Do they want a place where they can drive more audience for their traditional linear stuff? I can see the Masked Singer on Tubi. Do they want just more inventory that they can sell, period? Do

Do they want to tell Hollywood, look, we're still, sorry, Wall Street, we're still in streaming even though we've sold off most of our assets. What do they want out of you? I can't speak for what they want, but what I think they want and what I believe I've been, my job is, is it's to build a number one streamer, to build a business that can win in the space and that doesn't require sort of all these synergies and heavy lifts from other parts of the portfolio. I think the,

What's been really interesting is it's been almost four years since Tubi was acquired. And clearly the business has thrived, but it operates very much with an entrepreneurial spirit and DNA. And I've never seen any instance where we haven't really thought about it as like, this is the mission of Tubi. How do we make it successful? I would actually say, Peter, I think there's more opportunity that we have not yet tapped to leverage

to leverage some of the incredible assets that Fox has to build a competitive advantage. And I think you're going to see us look to do more of that. That's part of my job is finding ways to do that more in the future. Like at the next upfronts, you know, is to be going to be sort of front and center, like here's your digital buy. Here's a way to extend linear. And you've been through this now once. And you've been an ad buyer in the past, right? As a CMO at Vimeo. And now you're a seller. Yeah.

First of all, just, we'll start with the Fox part. So are you bundled in with traditional buyers? So we've historically gone to market separately. This past upfront, I think we really made a concerted effort to also offer advertisers the ability to buy across Fox.

And what I'll say is I think it was very successful as an early effort. And I think you'll look to see us do more of that. But generally, our approach to monetization is we just want advertisers to access Tubi inventory however they want. They want to go direct to Tubi. Great. They want to have a one Fox package. Great. Like we're pretty agnostic. I will say is, you know, this was an upfront that you had Amazon entering.

It was very competitive. Netflix showed up. Yeah, Netflix, Disney. It was a very competitive marketplace. We had the strongest upfront we've had, surpassed our expectations, accelerated double-digit growth. It was a very positive validation that advertisers, when they know about Tubi and they understand that they can, you know...

The thing that resonated the most was incremental reach at scale at a good ROI. So the thing that we really emphasized this time was that over 65% of Tubi's audience are cord cutters and nevers. So if you tell a brand, you know, who's worried about... We can reach the people you can't reach on Tubi. We can reach those people and we can reach... This is what everyone says. Yes. But if you actually look at the sort of a true incrementality...

If everybody has the same content and they're marketing in the same way, harder to have truly incremental audience. Tubi's model is quite different. So in some ways, it seems like you benefit from sort of having an arm's length distance from Fox. I mean, the truth is that Fox has been extremely helpful in a variety of ways. And I will say, you asked me earlier, what's some content that we're not investing in? Premium live sports rights.

Great example of content that Tubi is not going to invest in. Those economics do not work on a free ad supported model. But what you are going to see us do more and more is how can we partner thoughtfully with Fox Sports, who has one of the most iconic set of rights in sports in the world. And I'll give you an example. Yesterday, we announced a talk show on Tubi with Deion Sanders. And that's more around culture and the entertainment around sports.

You're going to see for the Super Bowl, Tubi is going to do like a pregame purple carpet that's going to be more about the fashion and the celebrity allure of sport. And that's what I would think you would get out of that, right, is reach, distribution, marketing partnerships. Yeah. And I think we're just getting started there. So I would say for me, there's still a lot of potential that has not yet been tapped in

in leveraging the power of those assets. What's it been like for you to switch into an ad-supported business, to be an ad seller? What did you think you knew going into it? And you said, oh, actually, it doesn't work like that at all. So many things. So it's funny because I spent almost a decade in a company that was very committed to being ad-free. And actually, many of the reasons filmmakers used Vimeo was because we didn't put ads on your videos. And when I came to Tubi, I was very interested in whether...

I would feel any sort of friction or dissonance. And I think what has surprised me with Tubi is that Tubi is...

so viewer-centric and consumer-first in everything it does. I credit Farhad, the founder, with that. It really amazes me, and I think it's the secret sauce that enables its success. So I've been, in some ways, really pleased to see that that ethos exists in an ad-supported environment. The thing that surprised me the most is more on the marketing and brand side. I mean, the

And reality is that even though eyeballs have been shifting to streaming, most ad dollars still haven't really moved. Sort of the story of digital in general, right? The eyeballs go way before the ad dollars. Way before. And I think I just, as I've gotten into the upfronts and the ad buying community and understood, I think everyone I talk to, every CMO I talk to, they're very clear on what they need and what the problems are. But I haven't really seen behavior fundamentally shift in how agencies and marketers, you

yet by. And I think that shift is still to come. And I would even say there's a lot of talk about Amazon being a competitive force. I'm somewhat optimistic that Amazon can help almost be a catalyst for helping move some more of those entertainment ad dollars. Because

I think you kind of need a catalyst sometimes in markets like this. How do you think the consumer thinks about ads, right? For a while, there was this sense that the future of television was not going to have ads because why would you want them? And you could opt out. Or maybe there'd be tiers and there'd be, and there's still, there are tiers, right? There'd be anyone who could afford to not watch ads doesn't. And then you've got a pile of people who don't have the ability to escape ads. That doesn't seem like a great

environment for advertisers. What do you think it actually looks like right now for one of your coordinators, someone who's grown up not paying for cable TV, has been exposed to ad-free Netflix and ad-free HBO, but also ads on YouTube? I think young people and even across all generations are perfectly happy

to watch ads if they don't have to pay and if the experience is delightful. And I do not think that the current environment of tiers where we where

consumers are being asked to pay and then to watch ads, that is different. But true free ad supported viewing, I think you're going to see more and more audiences are totally fine with it. And it makes sense because they're used to it on social media. They're spending billions and billions of views are happening on social media with that exact value exchange. They understand the value exchange. And as long as you earn their trust with a good experience and good content,

they will reward you with their time. Where are you acquiring new users? From an Apple App Store, from a Roku home screen? What's driving growth for you? So most of our growth comes on connected TV, CTV. And there we have distribution deals with really across over 30 devices. So very, very ubiquitous. Basically, the way we think about it is like anywhere where someone has a TV, we want to make sure that Tubi is an app that you can easily access.

And then we work very diligently and I would say strategically with each of the distribution platforms. We actually have teams that will go in and work with each of those platforms. They're all very different, very different, surprisingly. And we'll help optimize the experience. We'll help with content discovery. And what we find is that, and by the way, some of those platforms have their own streaming. I'm sure you're interested in. And what we find is just

our library being as vast as it is, it gives us tremendous opportunity to be discoverable when people are searching and interested in

in content, whether that's on Google or on the device. And then the last way that people discover us, you know, the majority of our traffic is it's organic and it comes from the brand and it comes from. It's the brand more than someone looking for a specific show or kind of programming. It's both. But but but I would say both are pretty strong and important parts. So it's really both. And I think what you're going to probably see from Tubi is we think we can continue to scale our audience along both of those vectors.

More and more, you'll see us also lean into our brand because we want to control our destiny and we want to make sure that people know that what Tubi is and what it stands for. So controlling your destiny sort of bumps right up against the fact that you need all these platforms to distribute you, market you. And in some cases, like we've been talking about, specifically Roku, but others, they're competing with you, right? I think Roku is sort of neck and neck with you in that Nielsen gauge. So how do you think about that? How might that relationship change in the future?

I think we're very focused on being ubiquitous. By that, I mean, again, start with the viewer. Viewers want to be able to access an experience that they trust and content across devices, whichever screen they're on, whether they switch TVs, it doesn't matter. We need to be everywhere. And we have believed that that is a winning value proposition that will kind of

trump any kind of distribution boats that others may have. So that's sort of, I think, very core to what we have seen. And again, it's working. You know, we have been competing with all of these device partners for while partnering with them for over 10 years. A great example is Amazon. You know, I think we were the first partner on the first Amazon Fire TV device.

10 years ago, and they have freebie. And we've been, you know, operating in that environment for a long time. And I think we have original content, we have unique content, we have scale. And we just believe if we obsess over that experience, it's

It's actually you can operate in an environment like that for a very long time. When you're when you're living in that world, what's more important to you? Sort of the distribution terms or how they're viewing you as a competitor? They're sort of distinct things, right? For us, it's more about it really is more about just making sure that we have access to everything.

and the ability to optimize the content discovery experience. I'm assuming there's some point in which they would say, well, we want X from you. And you'd say, that's literally a deal breaker, right? Or are you not big enough yet where you can do that? I'm thinking of Netflix saying, we don't want to work with the Apple App Store rules. We're just, you cannot buy Netflix via the iPhone. We'll live with that. We're big enough now that we can do that. I think from the perspective of the symbiotic relationship, I would say,

there's enough leverage that and sort of we are a big enough platform or partner for a lot of the platforms. But I would also say we generally

very much approach things as win-win with our partners, and that has been working. We are not in contentious relationship discussions with any of our partners. It has been very productive. And I'll give you a very concrete example. We even, like the way we think about win-win with our partners, with Amazon's a good example, our team does a ton of A/B testing and optimizing all the time.

We actually worked with Amazon to improve their live tab experience for everyone. And we're betting that because we put the viewer first and because we will naturally be kind of elevated through that experience, but we have to do that. That's our job, not theirs. And what we find is when we take that approach in this market, it's very natural and people lean in and we've been able to grow as the market grows. It's a win-win. We'll be right back with Anjali Sood from Tubi, but first, a word from a sponsor.

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Learn more at phrma.org slash IPWorksWonders. And we're back. They don't disclose financials for you guys, so I need to ask you, but can you give me a ballpark of revenue?

I want to say $800 million. Are we nearer? We don't disclose it. But I'll say if you check equity research analyst reports, they do have plenty of estimates on our numbers. And you said in the past you're not profitable, but you could be. Is that still sort of status quo? Profitability for us is something we're very committed to. I think for us, it's a choice in that we're making the decisions to invest. We haven't spent billions on content.

And we feel like we're well positioned to be able to become profitable, not through cost cutting, but through growing efficiently and smartly. So if you're not spending billions on content, you're not profitable. My assumption is really expensive marketing or spending a lot of money on marketing. Is that where is your marketing budget bigger than your programming budget? Not at all. Nor should it ever be in a business like this. No, I think in Tubi's case, it's more that we've built up the audience.

clearly. And it's more about unlocking advertiser awareness and education so that our monetization is able to meet that audience. And that's really the way you'll get, we'll get to profitability from the investments that we've made. And I think that this past upfront and some of the things we're seeing on the ad side, to me, I'm quite optimistic that we

We just have advertisers, once they understand Tubi's value prop and what they can reach, will be able to attract a greater share of their wallet. I want to circle back to where we started this idea of competition and that you're not just competing with Netflix and Amazon, but everything with a screen. You're reaching court nevers, people who have never paid for a cable TV screen.

How do you get them to watch something on connected TV instead of scrolling through this thing playing Fortnite? Do you think they distinguish between sort of how they're using their screen time or is it all just one thing?

set of bits and bytes and zeros and ones? I think there will always be, regardless of which generation, a desire to get lost in compelling, immersive, long-form storytelling. That's always going to have a really important place in entertainment. The difference that I do expect is that

When you are engaged in social media, you're literally watching culture as it's happening. And if we are putting out movies and TV shows that reflect culture, but there's a two-year lag, right? Like, that's where the dissonance becomes a problem. So I think what you're going to see is more the way that we earn, we become important part is that we just...

We have to have a pulse on what viewers care about right now. And we have to be able to bubble up the stories that are interesting to them. But you want to be long form. I'll hear anecdotally from nephews and stuff say, I literally can't watch movies. They make me uncomfortable. They go on for so long. And they will spend hours and hours scrolling through reels or TikTok. That they're fine with. But the idea of watching something for 90 minutes, they think is...

is just this giant time commitment. Do you see that from your audience? We don't. And actually, what we see, as I mentioned, our growth over indexes on younger viewers. But we can see, obviously, the things that they're interested in. There's so many trends here. I'll give you an example. We talk a lot about nostalgia. Oh, everyone's watching Suits or everyone's watching these old shows. We call it nostalgia at Tubi because for a lot of these young folks, it's the first time that they've engaged in that content and they love it.

Another interesting thing, you know, kids content, animated stuff does great among younger audiences. And I mean, more about like Gen Z audiences. So I think the thing we see is that younger audiences are far more multidimensional. You cannot treat them as an age group or a gender or a demo. You have to understand that their tastes are evolving at the speed of TikTok.

And we have to just find a way to give them long-form storytelling that matches them. Is interactivity interesting to you? There's something Netflix flagged early on. They were trying to choose your own adventure shows, and now they're spending quite a bit of money on a game strategy that I'm still not convinced about.

Do you think that you can become an interactive or gaming part of the world? Does that make sense? I think if we saw enough signals that that was the place to go, we would. Right now, we don't. And actually what we're spending our time on is we just launched the first fan-fueled studio in streaming in April. It's called Stubios.

And what it's designed to do is allow anyone to pitch an idea to be greenlit by Tubi and distribute it on Tubi based on fan feedback.

That's the kind of thing that we're seeing in leading. - They're not gonna make the show. They're gonna say, "I want a show with this thing." - No, they are gonna make the show. We are actually not only gonna help them by funding it, but we're also gonna, we're working with Issa Rae and her company to help mentor them and help them actually be successful. And then we will distribute it on Tubi and we'll learn. We'll learn about whether that's a model that can work. So I think what I'm more interested in is what are the scalable and efficient ways

to bring in unique stories from unique storytellers. And it's got to be different from the sort of big budget, you know. Yeah, right. And at a price. And at a price. And the app for me has not been done yet. No one has cracked that. I want to say, well, that's YouTube, right? That's creator-generated stuff, right? And they split the revenue, and that seems to work pretty well for YouTube. They've done that for short form and UGC. I'm talking about movies and TV shows.

As far as I can see, no one's really cracked that code. I think your old boss, Barry Diller, would say, there just aren't that many people who can make good television and movies. Like, the internet expanded, the universe, people could do that from 1,000 to 10,000, whatever the number is. But it's not infinite. It's pretty finite. I would respectfully disagree based on the signals that we see. But I'll tell you, it is surprising. What we're seeing it to be, and I've only discovered this in the last year, what we're seeing is that

The definitions of quality, premium content, prestige content, they're evolving. I'll give you a great example. I was shocked to see this. On Tubi, we have dozens of movies that have been produced in places like Detroit and Austin by aspiring filmmakers on homegrown budgets.

that have gotten millions and millions of views on Tubi with not a dime of marketing being spent. And I'm seeing it happen and it's happening more and more. Is there a thread that connects those things? Is there some specific audience or idea that they're appealing to? It's usually stories and content that are underrepresented in Hollywood, right? Because again, like the whole Hollywood system is very, very specific and programming is

It's a monoculture. And I think we're breaking that. And we'll see. I don't pretend to have the answer to all of this, but I'm following the signals of what's working on Tubi very organically. And for me, we're putting our bets more in that type of Stubios realm versus necessarily new format and going into short form. Anjali Sood, great to reconnect with you. Thanks for your time. Thank you. Thanks to you guys.

Thanks to Anjali Su. Thank you to the NAB New York show for hosting us. Thanks to Jelani Carter, who produces and edits this show. Thanks to our advertisers for advertising so you can listen to this show for free. And thanks to you guys for listening. We'll see you next week. Support for the show comes from AT&T.

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