Content Is King, but the King Has Become More Demanding

“It’s not hours a week, and it’s not hours a month. We need hours a day.”

Those words, from Warner Media’s chief executive to HBO’s team shortly after the network’s acquisition by AT&T, demonstrate what we already know to be true. On top of getting the attention of viewers at home, you need to prove that you can hold onto it.

And while an increased breadth and depth of programming has become table stakes in our industry, we’ve also seen a rise in quality in recent years that has created its own new expectation. 

To get those “hours a day” that everyone is chasing, development and release schedules have tightened to fit it all into an exhausting cadence. Additionally, content is diversifying to target increasingly niche audiences and crossing genre lines in defiance of traditional categorization. 

The pressure is on. As the rules change, we’re going to need to work differently to succeed, with new tactics and tools to match.

Insights that hit the ground running

Your companies are being pushed to create, create, create like never before to meet the ever-growing demand.

We frequently hear from some of our media clients that the process for developing expedient, meaningful insights was a bottleneck before working with us — especially in the age of viral successes and overnight competitors. Now, Discover provides them insights that keep up, so they can react in real time.

Tools that can look at new shows and provide that instant feedback are no longer nice-to-haves. Social listening is essential, but you also need to understand the audience carrying on the conversation to make smart promotional choices. 

Our platform can provide that context for smarter, faster decisions.

New and niche is no problem

As programs tighten their focus and bring in more niche audiences, marketers and researchers are faced with an additional roadblock as they try to find effective ways of reaching them. We love to hear how our clients are solving this problem by building creative and complex audiences within our platform.

To maximize success, you need to understand why your audiences are interested in your content, what else they care about, and what motivates them on a deeper level. 

Shows like HBO’s planned adaptation of Lovecraft Country refuse to fit cleanly into any single category and even challenge the idea of genre itself. The period piece, set in 1950s Jim Crow America, brings in elements of both horror and fantasy, as well as the racism of the time that was all too real. 

Traditional ways of understanding audiences don’t work in situations like this, but AI is useful here for finding unlikely connections. You can find the overlap of interest between the different ideas presented in the show and develop an audience from that starting point.

Bringing research into the 21st century

Here at TelmarHelixa, we provide faster, smarter paths to the insights that solve the pressing research challenges facing our partners.

We help brands and marketers connect in a more deep and meaningful way with the audiences that matter most by using AI and machine learning to uncover unique insights — all in minutes. 

The attention is there for the taking, but to hold it for “hours a day,” you’ll first have to capture it by understanding your audiences better than anyone else. We’re excited to attend The Media Insights & Engagement Conference to share how you can do that more quickly than ever before.

Whether you are comparing their social and linear audiences, translating hype into audience insights, or tapping into new trends, we have solutions to help. Contact us today!