Since our last update, we have been listening to our users as to how we can improve the Vuulr platform… and so the next big thing for Vuulr is an enhancement that solves for an underlying trend in the industry that is, inevitably, growing.
With the proliferation of VOD services in recent years — and not all with the huge buying power of Netflix! — Buyers are now looking to ‘buy smarter’ when it comes to licensing content rights. One way they are able to do this — where traditional linear networks are less able — is to use their performance data to measure the success of the content they have acquired.
And not only after the fact; Buyers are now using performance metrics as the basis of their bids when sourcing rights for their channels. So, to solve for this trend, Vuulr has developed a big change to its functionality for Buyers: Performance Bidding.
What’s Performance Bidding?!
What exactly does it look like? Well, here are the models which VOD Buyers can now use to make an offer:
As you can see, depending on the nature of the VOD platform, we’ve enabled 3 new bidding modes that can be tied to the performance of an individual title.
We still enable a Buyer to bid on a ’traditional’ flat fee (only) basis, and even the Performance-based options enable a Buyer to bid with a Minimum Guarantee (MG) + a performance component.
To further help transparency, during the bidding process on Vuulr, Buyers can also provide a forecast of each of the variables, e.g. an estimate of total viewers over a given time period, so that the Seller can evaluate the potential resulting fee… or estimate a bonus upside.
Still not sure how it works? Here’s a 1 minute video that shows a sample Performance Bid:
Benefits for Buyers
This new style of bidding creates the following benefits for VOD Buyers:
- Acquire more content with less upfront cost, and therefore manage cashflow more efficiently
- Explore niche content that audiences might not find elsewhere, with less risk
- Diversify a catalogue with new genres and categories of content
Does this mean it’s all bad news for Sellers?!
No! This new pricing models will unlock more customers for Sellers (i.e. the new breed of VOD buyers) who will now be able to buy more content and explore new genres of content to diversify their catalogue. In other words, this bidding style gives Sellers an additional way to monetise their content. It will, however, require some adaptation to this new normal.
And of course, we would recommend that Sellers insist on regular reporting from the Buyers — in their agreements with Buyers — when accepting Performance-based bids.
That’s all for now. We’ve also pushed many more small improvements this week which you’ll no doubt find while browsing. If you feel that we can improve any area of the platform or service, please drop us a line to info@vuulr.com and we’ll look into your ideas.
Thanks for reading this and as ever we will keep you posted on significant updates to the business.
Best wishes/Team Vuulr
> To register — and start to buy or sell for free — browse to vuulr.com, submit your details (*including a corporate email if at all possible) then we’ll manually approve your account.