Kasia Jablonska is looking forward to IBC. As you would expect from the Director of Digital and On-Demand for EMEA at BBC Studios, Jablonska modestly admits that she is “quite a tech freak”. She says: “I like to see the latest technological developments. I am convinced that nowadays you need a combination of strong content and the technology to be able to deliver that content.”

Jablonska has built her expertise at some of the biggest media companies. Almost eight years at National Geographic were followed by roles at Endemol Shine, Fox, NBCUniversal, Discovery, Scripps and A+E Networks. Somehow she also found the time to co-found digital media platform W-Sport, a dedicated 24/7 sports channel for women. Since November last year, Jablonska’s role at BBC Studios has been to develop, implement and strengthen strategic plans for the BBC’s commercial subsidiary aimed at expanding digital revenue streams, developing new digital products and optimising audience engagement across various digital platforms across the EMEA region.

“I’ve always worked with both content and technology,” she says. “I know how important it is to be able to repackage content and change business models while having the underlying technology in place to continue to optimize business opportunities.”

Local heroes

“We want to make sure that the content has a local impact and appeals to the local audience” (Kasia Jablonska, BBC Studios)

In the world of free, ad-supported streaming television (FAST), British content is well received, as evidenced by the number of new channel launches in 42 EMEA countries over the past five years. “BBC Studios is the world’s largest distributor of British content,” says Jablonska. “We currently have over 6,000 assets in our FAST offerings worldwide.

“We have a small editorial team that works closely with our FAST partners like Samsung, Pluto, Rakuten and Freebie TV,” she continues. “We collect the data, analyse it and know what works where. For example, we have BBC Drama in France, Italy and Spain because we know those are very scripted markets and we have more response to scripted content there. But then in Germany we have travel, food and history shows in a mix of documentaries and lifestyle content because we know that market is much more interested in that kind of content. So we spend quite a lot of time making sure we have the right editorial strategy in each of those markets.”

All of this comes with challenges and Jablonska wants to share her experience in dealing with these challenges during her IBC session on 14 September: “Setting the pace for FAST in Europe? Monetisation and motivations”.

Here’s a preview tip: Make sure there’s a local element. “It’s important to provide localization of the content in each market with localized metadata and do our best to translate the titles and provide episode-level thumbnails where necessary,” she says. “We want to make sure the content feels local and appeals to the local audience. The combination of both seems to work really well.”

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FAST FORWARD

“They picked up the check, but no one really looked under the hood” (Kasia Jablonska, BBC Studios)

Jablonska’s presentation at IBC comes shortly after the announcement of a major deal with Samsung TV Plus to expand two BBC FAST channel brands in EMEA onto its platform, namely BBC Drama and Top equipment.

It illustrates how content must meet the technology that delivers it.

“FAST started as an OTT offering with platforms like Pluto, but then moved to connected TVs (CTV), with Samsung probably leading the way in that space,” says Jablonska. “We’ll see more CTVs in that space. From their perspective, it’s extremely important to get content to make their CTVs more attractive. LG and now Philips, using Titan OS, are entering that space. VIDAA, an operating system from Hisense, is also becoming very active now.”

She notes that telcos are also starting to get involved in FAST. “Their strength is that they are very good at bundling content, they have years of experience doing it,” she says. “And we have years of experience working with multiple telco platforms in bundling our content, whether it’s as linear channels or on-demand offerings. So there’s a very good underlying relationship that we’re very happy to build on and offer them more content, just bundling it a little differently.”

“We’re also seeing broadcasters getting into this space; they’re actually coming in with side businesses in advertising,” she continues. “They have relationships with big media houses or own big media houses and are now trying to figure out how to make the most of the advertising budgets. Take ITVX for example or Disney building out its ad-supported offering. I think we’ll see more of that but there’ll be a lot of variation. But (they) need to make sure they have the underlying technology and the right kind of metadata and understand the advertising opportunities.”

Jablonska points out that FAST was originally considered a model for content distribution.

“There were production studios and distribution companies taking content and making it available to FAST platforms. Money was coming in. They were paying the check, but no one was really looking behind the scenes,” she says.

“The reality is that FAST is an ad sales business model,” she continues. “It’s monetized primarily through programmatic advertising, so an important element is making sure you a) have the technology in place to be able to optimize your performance and b) set up your partnership and understand what advertising opportunities are coming up.

“From a technology perspective, you need effective inventory and rights management tools,” she adds. “You need comprehensive, highly automated, virtual planning solutions. You need a data platform to be able to use that data from different sources and display it in a single view. You need compliance handling – because FAST is a branded service, the compliance element is extremely important, not only from a programming perspective but also from an advertising perspective.”

“It’s a growing industry and the underlying ad sales model means you need to make sure advertisers feel comfortable advertising on your channels, so compliance needs to be in place across the board. You also need automated ad break creation and a presentation for analytics on your ad breaks. It’s a complex model if you want to make sure you get it right. Most importantly, you need to make sure whatever you’re using is scalable, because it’s effectively a long-tail play.”

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Perfect partners

On the commercial side, according to Jablonska, those entering this market must ensure the right strategy for a mix of commercial partners.

“The BBC has some of the highest quality content and highly recognisable IPs in Top Gear, Doctor Who, Call of the Midwife And Death in Paradiseand it’s content that distributes very well,” she says. “We want to make sure that when we monetize our IPs on FAST, we get the right return and that our IPs are treated properly. So we always make sure that the FAST platforms we work with are reputable and recognized and offer the right level of compliance, but also that they have a comprehensive, established advertising pipeline.

“We always spend a lot of time, both with our partners’ account management teams and the advertising teams within those platforms,” she continues. “We want to understand what the mix of ad sales from media houses and programmatic is: what is being sold where? We want to understand the underlying metadata of ad sales to make sure advertisers can actually identify that it is BBC content flowing through the programmatic offering. We want to understand the mix of CPM rates in each market; even though the programmatic platforms are sometimes quite reluctant to give that information away, it is important for us to understand it. In fact, we spend a lot of time developing a very clear commercial strategy around FAST and the supporting technology to deliver that.”

At IBC, Jablonska will seek to stimulate discussion with her panel colleagues and the audience on how the industry can be further developed from a European perspective.

“We want to figure out how we can develop our own FAST model across Europe that is suited to the way European markets work,” she says. “Hopefully we can agree on industry standards and discuss compliance issues and requirements. And we can continue to look at the underlying technology to streamline, automate and scale FAST and turn it into something that better fits the Broadcast Video On Demand (BVOD) model that has been developed here.”

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