Ryan Gould: Over the past couple of years, we found a lot of success under this One WBD approach, and within that, we also had a handful of clients who leveraged our library of IP to help their brand messaging, both on and off of our platforms. If it happens once, it’s unique. If it happens twice, it’s a coincidence. If it happens three times, it’s a trend. And if it happens four more times, we made it a product.
In the past year, we’ve had a handful of partners who’ve come and leveraged our IP to build cultural, relevant, creative messaging and partner with us in deeper ways. So we just wanted to make a broader announcement [for WBD Storyverse] to the advertising community and just let them know that we’re open for these types of partnerships. And again, [at the upfront], we tried our best to balance the art and the science of advertising. That’s definitely more in the art silo. When we go over to DemoDirect and NEO, that’s more science.
Bobby Voltaggio: We have the content, and then we want to make it as efficient and streamlined in terms of the buying process for our clients and our partners. So, DemoDirect and NEO are to facilitate the ease of the activity. A big theme is to offer more and more transparency around how they’re buying, where their ads are running, the frequency in which they’re running, and the audience targeting elements—that’s all wrapped up in DemoDirect and NEO.
We’re trying to provide enhanced technology to meet our clients where they are, and just be as streamlined in the operational process as possible.
How important is that transparency and streamlining to a product like WBD Storyverse, where you’re offering an entire company’s worth of titles and properties but narrowing it to a brand’s specifications?
Gould: If you take the Hellmann’s example, which is essentially a romcom scene, we can take that creative and use our Moments [AI-driven content] product to align around similar scenes that feature a romantic, comedic tone.
Voltaggio: Our content lives everywhere, so ease of use for our clients to bundle it and find those ideal matches with the technology that we’re implementing here. It’s one cohesive offering.
