Engage Fans with Data-Driven Marketing: Insights from Eyal Arad

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• Transcript

  Sebastian Schieke (00:00.078)
  Hey, I forgot to ask Eyal. Eyal, Eyal, Eyal. you, Eyal. Eyal. Hey, Eyal, welcome to the show.
  
  Eyal (00:07.603)
  Yeah.
  
  Eyal (00:16.244)
  Hi Sebastian, great to be here.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (00:17.678)
  Yeah, it's great to have you here. And we already had a quick pre -chat, and you were dialing in from Israel at the moment. You run a very successful startup. And today is all about content creation and how content creator can get more visibility on their content and obviously also leverage reach and generate more income. So I'm really.
  
  happy and interested to talk to you about this today. But before we start and getting into the detail, maybe tell the audience a little bit about you, where you're coming from, your journey, and what your organization is really helping with.
  
  Eyal (01:04.275)
  Sure, thank you. So first of all, I'll talk a bit about the history of video sites, because I think it's interesting to know how we got here. We started the company almost 10 years ago with this amazing technology that we initially called it the Shazam for video type of technology. It's a video AI that can track every copy or every single reuse of your content across all social media. It took us about almost six years to develop the code.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (01:21.038)
  Mm -hmm.
  
  Eyal (01:33.299)
  the core engine and it's an amazing technology. It's patented. And initially we took it directly to anti -piracy. We're talking about fair engagement, we'll get there, but initially we started with anti -piracy, working with studios, with leagues, helping them identify infringing content immediately, like within a minute. And especially with live sports and live content, this is a crucial capability that was not there until...
  
  Sebastian Schieke (01:34.445)
  Mm -hmm.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (01:53.102)
  Yeah.
  
  Eyal (02:01.491)
  until we launched our services. But I think the most interesting involvement we had three years ago is when we took this technology and we took it into what we call the positive side of copies, meaning FAN created content, especially focused on social media. And I'll give you the example. If FAN reuploads a highlight of Lebron's dunk,
  
  It doesn't have to be piracy. It's actually a legitimate fan engagement that you never knew about. But if this copy of this or this fan highlight got a million views, that's something you would want to know about. And it's actually something you can actually you can even make additional value with. So you can measure this additional million views as part of your engagement. You can see that in this video.
  
  the brands and logos of your partners are getting more visibility, so it's actually increasing your media value. And effectively, in this way of tracking all of the UGC and all of your partners and how they post content on social media, you are seeing what we call the full picture or the full social footprint that you really have on social media. And this could be 10, 20 times bigger than what you have.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (03:00.782)
  Mm -hmm.
  
  Eyal (03:23.635)
  seen on your own channels. And actually there's been a blind spot for brands and rights holders. Until today, they were measuring everything according to their own channels while effectively there's so much content around every type of brand, league, team, or any rights holder across social media. They were just blind to it and no one even thought about how can I use my fans? How can I reach my audience that are outside my network?
  
  Sebastian Schieke (03:33.87)
  Mm hmm. Yes.
  
  Eyal (03:52.275)
  and disconnects me to where you started about creators and fans, a major part of what we do today with our clients, which are, by the way, the biggest leagues in the US and in Europe and teams as well, is to help connect them and help them find the best user -generated content, the UGC creators out there. How can they prospect them?
  
  Sebastian Schieke (03:52.59)
  Very interesting. Yes.
  
  Eyal (04:20.755)
  and work with them in a better way that will be a win -win for everybody.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (04:26.478)
  Okay, so let's break it down into small bits and pieces that everyone can follow. So let's say we talk about a typical creator, someone who creates, say has YouTube channel. So they put out a video and they use the normal YouTube.
  
  statistics, some tools to see what reach they get, how many viewers, and all these KPIs. You say there's a blind spot. Can you explain this a bit more in detail for the audience? Where is this blind spot, and how do you identify, or how do you see and track the
  
  consumption of the content.
  
  Eyal (05:26.707)
  Great. Let's take an example of, let's take a real example of NBA. NBA are a great partner of ours. When we started working together, they were measuring NBA exposure on social media by using their own NBA YouTube channel, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and so on. And this is how they were reporting their exposure. This is how they were showing it to the brands and so on, measuring their own channels, maybe some of their partners.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (05:43.086)
  Mm -hmm.
  
  Eyal (05:56.339)
  but they really had no idea about, first of all, how all of their affiliates are posting content. And of course, NBAs and there's a lot of partners, influencers, players are posting content, teams are posting content, all broadcasters globally are posting NBA content. Nobody ever tracked it. Plus all NBA fans that are just posting either by being in the venue and taking out the phone and post content about it, or some of them are really great creators.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (06:12.366)
  Yes.
  
  Eyal (06:26.355)
  creating great mashups, creating great game recaps, creating great analysis of Steph Carey this year compared to the last year compared to whatever. And these videos are amazing. No one ever knew about them. No one in the NBA ever knew about them and was able to, in a very organized way, measure them and see how much is it. Is it growing? Is it a lot? Is it impacting my total exposure? Now, our tool is built
  
  Sebastian Schieke (06:40.014)
  Mm -hmm.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (06:46.606)
  Mm.
  
  Eyal (06:55.923)
  to measure, to identify, and I'm continuing with the NBA as an example, but to identify everything NBA. The AI is trained to identify everything NBA, every video that has NBA content within it, the AI will know and will tag it. So eventually NBA can look at the report and say, my own channels did that, but all of my different partners, influencers and so on gave me an additional chunk of.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (07:00.526)
  Mm -hmm.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (07:19.278)
  Mm -hmm.
  
  Eyal (07:24.819)
  exposure and value and my fans in their own creation created an additional and again it could be three, four, five, ten times what I used to measure. So eventually the NBA can now show the numbers are actually super, super large, much bigger. They are huge already and they create great content on their own, but they are able to say, hey, I have three, four times the exposure that you thought because of that.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (07:45.902)
  Yes.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (07:52.718)
  Mm -hmm.
  
  Eyal (07:54.323)
  additional exposure to the time I'm capable. It was always there by the way. We are not taking any responsibility for it. It was always there. No one had the capability of measuring. That's why I call it the blind spot. It's just something that no one had the tool to measure. And I'm saying NBA, but in the same way I can tell you NFL, MLB and so on, they're all blind to that ability.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (07:59.214)
  Mm hmm. Yeah.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (08:16.686)
  So basically it's content that is shared by third parties on their own channels and repost. Okay. And how do you, I mean, technically, how do you identify and find this content?
  
  Eyal (08:24.019)
  It is not selling, it is either reposted or posted.
  
  Eyal (08:36.499)
  So I like to explain it without going into how the AI works. I like to describe it as teaching someone who knows nothing about basketball. Think about taking a person who knows nothing about basketball, put him in front of the screen, give him a bunch of official videos of the NBA and tell him this is NBA. And he will see another video and another video and another video. He will get it. Now you show him something different, he will be able to tell you.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (08:41.486)
  Yeah, yeah.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (08:48.814)
  Mm -hmm.
  
  Eyal (09:03.347)
  this is NBA, this is not. Why? Because he knows the players, he knows how a basketball court looks like, he will be able to understand if this is an NBA tournament or not. It's exactly the way we train the AI so it will be able to identify everything a person would see.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (09:20.206)
  So that means that whenever you take a new client on, you have to train the AI to identify the content of the client.
  
  Eyal (09:30.259)
  Yes, it's a short process we're doing internally. We are very well trained on how to do it. So it's a very quick process we do in the back end. The client doesn't even need to do anything from it because every client of ours already has content on social media. He posts it on his own channels. We can always take it and train from that. And plus we are already building it as wide as possible so new clients can come on board with it.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (09:33.422)
  Mm -hmm.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (09:37.614)
  Yeah.
  
  Eyal (09:59.859)
  very little effort.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (10:01.87)
  So now we talked about MBA. There are not many MBAs out there, as content created in this size. When small or medium sized companies listen to that, or even solopreneurs who create a lot of content, are you a good match for them as well? Or you say, OK, I'm only playing with the big twerks.
  
  Eyal (10:10.259)
  Yes.
  
  Eyal (10:23.411)
  Every brand, every team, even players and athletes are brands in some way. So I'll give you the example. In the Lebron highlight I used as an example earlier, not only the league has value in that million views of this UGC creator, Lebron himself can find value to say, hey, I get an additional exposure from my fans without reposting it.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (10:27.758)
  Mm -hmm.
  
  Eyal (10:49.555)
  the team could see value in it and can use it for their own brands, for their own value. And in many ways, and again, we talked about how we help rights holders prospect the, what we call super fans. So with all of the big data of videos and images that we find on social media, we start seeing patterns. So if you are a team, and by the way, we have many teams as clients, if you are a team, we can help you find your local or international fans.
  
  that are constantly posting content around you. You never knew about them. They could have 10 ,000 followers. But if you are in one city in the US and you are finding a great influencer in a different city or even internationally, if that's your aspiration to expand, we can help you find these creators that are your fans already. They are already creating content around you. They have an audience that are effectively also your fans.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (11:22.862)
  Hmm.
  
  Eyal (11:49.555)
  and help you make the connection. So all of a sudden you can tap into the audience of a fan that is in the UK and tap in and start pushing content through him, help him. And by the way, there are many methods that our clients are using into how to collaborate. Give him more footage, for example, bring these audience to the venue to create content from the venue. And they pull their, they pull their, their fan, their audience. And so you increase ticket sales, you can push merchandise. There's so many ways.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (12:05.742)
  Mm -hmm.
  
  Eyal (12:18.675)
  You can start collaborating with those micro influences once you get them. You don't have to be a Kardashian in order to, to get the exposure and the recognition from the team that you like. Like if you're a city fan or, or, many United fan. If, if many United comes to you and tell you, I see that you are creating great content around me. First of all, it's great for the creator to get the recognition from the team that he likes. And then.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (12:27.342)
  Yeah.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (12:30.958)
  Mm -hmm.
  
  Eyal (12:48.787)
  doing this collaboration will increase his channel, will increase the number of followers and subscribers that he's getting just because of if the team likes or engages with his content, it's already something that builds his channel and make him a bigger micro influencer.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (13:08.526)
  Sure. Yeah, I mean, it's a very, it's a crowing business and there's so much content out there now. Sometimes, I mean, probably everyone asks themselves, hey, I mean, where is this going to? You know, I mean, no one can consume all this content, which is created. And what's your view on the crowing content space?
  
  Eyal (13:34.003)
  I think it's incredible. I think you don't have enough time to consume everything that you want to consume. Not to mention things you don't want and the platforms push your way. I think it's getting into a point where creators are starting to create content that is in a way more interesting than the full length. You see that in younger generations, they don't have time or the bandwidth.
  
  even to see a full game. So the ones that are getting bigger, and I'm focused on sports, by the way. We can talk on other types of our clients. But when we talk about sports, any type of sports, the younger generation would much rather see a very well -edited game recap than the game itself. And we see a lot of creators, UGC creators, that are focused on that. And they're doing an amazing job.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (14:24.718)
  Mm -hmm.
  
  Eyal (14:32.531)
  amazing job, sometimes better than the league itself would ever be able to do. And this is something that you should harness. And it's funny because as we started with piracy and we're still hoping a lot of leagues also fight live streaming and piracy, and that's a big chunk of what we do, we are also helping them find the balance between what is piracy? Because I want to say the old days.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (14:43.086)
  Mm -hmm.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (14:50.062)
  sure.
  
  Eyal (15:01.843)
  In the old way of thinking, every UGC content was piracy. But what we are helping our clients to see is that, hey, these guys are actually fans. They're creating a 30 seconds, three minute video. It's not really stealing your content. They're using it. They shouldn't, but they're using it. But they're doing it so well and they're getting so much audience. You should actually work with them. And you should find the balance.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (15:24.366)
  Yeah. How is it an illegal site when I take a game and cut parts of it out, comment on it and put it on my YouTube channel?
  
  Eyal (15:36.179)
  It's a matter of policy. So if it's a game from last week, I'm guessing no one would ever care. If you're doing it in real time, that's more of a problem. And it really depends on the type of client. We have a gaming e -sports client that really are looking at it as effectively as extra engagement, which is great. We have a client that is a premium sports that
  
  Sebastian Schieke (15:38.542)
  Yeah.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (15:44.43)
  Mm.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (15:49.006)
  So.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (16:01.23)
  Mm.
  
  Eyal (16:05.267)
  that want everything down immediately, and that's fair. I'd say the clearest way to see it is live streaming or even short form VOD or non -live content that is uploaded during the game. In most cases, it could be seen as piracy. Not always, but in most cases, it has some limitations. But everything that fans upload after the event should, in our opinion, of course, something otherwise.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (16:21.55)
  Mm -hmm.
  
  Eyal (16:32.531)
  should be something that you would consider as legitimate fan engagement. Now, there are different ways that broadcasters look at it and the rights holders look at it. And I would say that we have some clients that are very open and very advanced in looking at their fans and how to harness them with these short forms. And we have some that are very strict and say, take everything down.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (16:55.022)
  Mm -hmm.
  
  Eyal (17:00.915)
  Again, it's a matter of balance. If we could show you, and that's what we do with a lot of leagues, and also, by the way, also studios and whiteholders, if we could show you that you can make more money, effectively, by harnessing these creators and using them, monetizing with them together, then it's a different balance. No one ever thought about that it's even possible. But I think now that you can measure everything, you find many ways to monetize.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (17:28.494)
  Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's amazing when you really get data on comments, on shares, on user -generated content from your fan base. And then you really can see what is working and what is not working. And as you said, find new ways to monetize the content, which seems a no -brainer for me.
  
  Eyal (17:57.043)
  No better. I can tell you one thing. One of our clients is has done a research. He hasn't published it yet, but so I won't mention names, but I'm really anxious for it to come out. He showed that if you can create great teasers of short forms during the match itself, more people will actually open the TV. You know, the, the old way of thinking of what this is was there's something online. People want one of the TV. It's the other way around.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (18:14.734)
  Mm -hmm.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (18:22.093)
  Yeah.
  
  Eyal (18:26.835)
  So social media is actually driving more linear and not the other way around in this. So that's how it spans to create something like that instead of blocking.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (18:32.686)
  Yeah, they, they, they're stuck on their TikTok feed or Instagram feed and then suddenly say, there's an amazing game or whatever going on right now. Yeah. Boom.
  
  Eyal (18:46.707)
  Right? Think about now with the euros, if you see an amazing play happening right now and you get a tweet or a TikTok about it, you will open the TV to see it happening. So you want to catch up. So I think it's actually a good driver and there should be much more synergy between the two domains.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (18:56.43)
  Mm -hmm. Yeah.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (19:05.518)
  Yeah, but then companies like yours bring those two parts together and create a platform where they can see what benefits they basically bring to each other. And you also have a kind of a community or a way that they can engage with each other in your system.
  
  Eyal (19:31.859)
  This is, in many ways, this is what we come into play, what we hope bridge the gap. It really depends on the client. Some clients have a lot of bandwidth in terms of manpower to contact directly these creators. Sometimes we are taking a more active role in helping you connect with your fans and create this bridge. So it really depends.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (19:36.622)
  Mm -hmm.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (19:56.398)
  Sure. Looking at your organization, I mean, when you look back on the last, you said 10 years, right? You're running it. What do I see, where do you see turning points and what kind of challenges or major challenges did you face in your journey?
  
  Eyal (20:17.363)
  So I think our main turning point was, as I mentioned before, taking our technology from anti -piracy into user generated content, into the analytics and measurement and all of that legitimate fan engagement.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (20:26.765)
  Mm -hmm.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (20:32.366)
  Sorry, why was that? I mean, why did you do this pivot?
  
  Eyal (20:36.563)
  We always knew we were going to do it, but it came with a requirement from a client and that kind of was interesting to see how it looks. So we quickly built, I would say, I would call it a prototype. We quickly built it, built it. And once we saw how, what's the incredible impact, I think we didn't even evaluate how big this is going to be in terms of impact to the client.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (20:38.958)
  Mm -hmm.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (20:44.206)
  Okay?
  
  Sebastian Schieke (21:03.086)
  Mm -hmm. Yes.
  
  Eyal (21:06.355)
  But once we saw it, it was, and once the client saw it, it was just unstoppable. but, but I still would say you asked about our main challenge. It's, it's, I think it's, it's a two dimensional, it's kind of an educational discussions when we have, every time you come to a client that does hearing about us for the first time, he's first of all saying, Holy shit, can I, can I really measure?
  
  fan engagement and then what do I do with it? It's like, all of a sudden you have so much, so much new data. What can I do with it? And it's like, it takes time. It takes time for someone to understand this. There's so many options and even us, we are finding new types of products that you, we can find within this amazing amount of data and user generated content. So many types of patterns and so many types of, of, content creators.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (21:38.254)
  Hmm.
  
  Yes.
  
  Eyal (22:04.851)
  Some are more funny, some are more highlight driven, some are more educational. And you can find so much new value in this data that it's like endless amount of opportunities coming out of it. It's a goldmine of opportunities for our clients. And I'll tell you as an example.
  
  CMOs, let's take it for example, chief marketing officers in every brand and in every league or team or studio or every media company, they create a lot of content. They have the same blind spot I mentioned earlier. If you're creating a commercial, you measure the success of the commercial test, at least on social media, on your own channel. But if you are a...
  
  Sebastian Schieke (22:29.742)
  Mm -hmm.
  
  Eyal (22:55.827)
  AT &T or an insurance company, nobody will go to your YouTube to see the commercial. So you don't really have a way to measure the success of your campaign on social media. And all of a sudden you have a tool that exposes everything to you. If it's a funny one, what's the ripple effect on social media? And all of a sudden you have so much more data consumed to show your management, to drive value out of. Sometimes it's overwhelming.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (23:06.702)
  Mm.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (23:19.342)
  Yes.
  
  Eyal (23:26.131)
  And that's, I would say that's our main challenge of how do I, how do I bring you this new capability without overwhelming you.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (23:33.582)
  Mm.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (23:37.422)
  And there you come in the place.
  
  Eyal (23:39.603)
  This is our main discussions with Clam.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (23:42.286)
  Yeah.
  
  Yeah, good. And you said you have offices, I mean, your headquarters in Israel and you've got offices in Europe and in the US.
  
  Eyal (23:54.707)
  in New York, in Madrid, opening now another one in the UK. So yeah.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (24:01.614)
  And are these offices primarily sales offices or you have developers there? How did you build your and structure your organization?
  
  Eyal (24:10.675)
  It's mostly sales and marketing. We want account managers. We want our people to be close to the clients to be able to, part of what we do with every type of client is to meet either weekly or bi -weekly and hope you understand the best insights within the data. We don't just throw numbers at you and say, you know, crunch it. We crunch it for you, but we want our team to speak your language and...
  
  Sebastian Schieke (24:17.678)
  Yes.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (24:28.846)
  Yes.
  
  Eyal (24:37.555)
  explain to you how you can leverage on a week by week basis. Sometimes some of our clients, and we've had some great case studies with different teams and leagues, they have changed their strategy on social media according to what they were seeing because they saw that some type of content echoes better on social media. And if you put your production efforts on this platform instead of the other, you can get
  
  Sebastian Schieke (24:59.566)
  Mm -hmm.
  
  Eyal (25:06.771)
  five times more exposure than they looked at our numbers. We gave the recommendation, of course, they are doing the decision, but we give the recommendation. And all of a sudden they grew significantly just by taking this one decision. Of course, it could be a trial and error, but they saw great success in that. And now you have a tool to measure, was my effort successful?
  
  Sebastian Schieke (25:34.286)
  Hmm.
  
  Can you share maybe two or three tips to content creators? What they should do to really grow their audience and leverage their content more apart from engaging with your software?
  
  Eyal (25:59.827)
  question. No one's ever asked me that. So it's a very good question. No, seriously. I would say be original. Don't try to just copy whatever works for someone else. Be original and do your thing. Just make sure that you are.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (26:03.502)
  Hehehehe
  
  Mm -hmm.
  
  Eyal (26:21.427)
  trying to understand the rules of engagement of the rights holder that you're using his content. Don't do something that would tag you as a pirate, because eventually they will try to fight you. If you do it legitimately from the start and gain your audience this way in a very original way, there are very good chances that this right holder, this team, this league, this media company will want to work with you. So that's my two cents.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (26:23.886)
  Yeah.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (26:51.374)
  Thank you, thank you. Yeah, thank you so much. I think you opened a whole new world to many content creators, what is possible in terms of user generated content, in terms of leveraging your audience, your fan base, really getting data and understanding how your content reaches other groups which you are not aware of yet. So I will definitely...
  
  Also, have a look at your system and see if it is of help for us, because we are also content creators. And thank you so much for your time today. And yeah, keep on growing the world of content. And let's hope that it's not too overwhelming in a couple of years, all the stuff we create.
  
  Eyal (27:29.331)
  Ha ha.
  
  Eyal (27:33.459)
  Thank you, Sebastian.
  
  Eyal (27:47.955)
  Great, thank you Sebastian, it's been a pleasure.
  
  Sebastian Schieke (27:50.254)
  Thanks a lot, Ayad.
  
  Good. Let me stop this. It was a nice conversation. Thanks a lot. Really.
  
  Eyal (27:59.635)
  Yeah, I really enjoyed it.