SANTA MONICA — From where Mark Rotblat is sitting, life looks pretty good. And it likely isn’t just the glow from the fall California sunshine.
At Rotblat’s Tubi, a streaming TV service that is free to viewers, he is delighting in paid rivals’ current difficulties.
And, in this video interview with Beet.TV at Beet Retreat Santa Monica 2022, the Chief Revenue Officer, Tubi, says deepening cost pressures could bring the sun to shine even harder on free services like his this winter.
Free momentum
“You see NBCU and Roku and Google with YouTube, Paramount, Warner Discovery, and even just this week Disney reported earnings, and all of them saw pretty significant declines,” Rotblat says.
“Streaming growth in general hasn’t been what the market expected from those players, as well as the costs around content and marketing. Most of our competitors, the costs are more than 10 x the losses than Tubi.”
Rotblat says that premium subscription streaming TV providers were using their resources to spend hard on both marketing and content. Now that cost pressures are growing, in the absence of inflated outlay, real platform differentiators are easier to see.
“(After) the shiny titles and the loads of marketing budgets that are being spent, now … it’s becoming more clear,” he says.
“We expect that there could be more acceleration as we face economic headwinds. Nothing is really better than a free product when times are tough.”
Bigger Tubi
In September, the company announced a big 65% annual increase in monthly active users, up to 33 million in August, as well as growth and launches outside the US.
Tubi recently unveiled a FIFA World Cup FAST Channel.
Tubi’s Rotblat Plays The Simple Game With Ad-Supported Streaming
Lighter load
Why is Tubi growing? Rotblat credits the experience.
“Viewer experience has done a lot for us,” he says. “It’s not just about ‘how do we personalise the over 48,000 titles?’. It’s also the ad experience.
“The ad experience around having low ad load, having really well-timed breaks, good frequency management, and even we’re seeing that our choice-based video-on-demand, which is the prevalence on Tubi, it drives brand impact, it drives ROI. ”
You are watching coverage of Beet Retreat Santa Monica 2022, presented by Ampersand, MiQ, Nielsen, PubMatic, T-Mobile Advertising Solutions and The Trade Desk. For more videos from the Beet Retreat, please visit this page.
