The first year of most relationships can be tricky to navigate once the ‘honeymoon period’ is over. That doesn’t appear to be the case with Tubi and News Corp, which celebrated their one year anniversary this month.
In the past year, the free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) service delivered record growth across key viewing metrics, with viewed hours up 40 per cent year-on-year, daily active users climbing 30 per cent, and monthly active users rising 27 per cent.
Tubi doesn’t publicly release its viewing figures but has a goal to become the dominant AVOD in the Australian market. In Canada it is watched by a third of the adult population, and it’s one of the largest streamers in the US.
“In every market that we’re in, we have the same ambition, which is we want to help consumers find their next fandom,” Tubi’s international markets managing director and EVP David Salmon told B&T.
“The growth that we’ve seen in the past 12 months indicates that Australians really are starting to gravitate to Tubi for particular types of programming and go really deep. Because we offer the largest on demand catalogue (more than 125,000 TV shows and movies) we are finding the Australian market a really nice fit.”
Salmon said that Australian audiences are embracing programming targeted to Gen Z and millennials, such as its Tubi Originals How to Lose a Popularity Contest and Kissing is the Easy Part, which both went to number one on the platform.
They are also lapping up Tubi’s long-form creator programs that can be found in its ‘Creatorverse’ catalogue (see below). Tubi is the exclusive home of the vodcast series Good Trouble with Nick Kyrgios.
“More and more we see our audiences shifting between long form scripted Hollywood movies and TV shows, and creator content. What we find is that our audiences go deeper and deeper into their fandoms,” Salmon said.
The News Corp partnership
A year ago News Corp secured a deal to become Tubi’s sales representative in Australia.
Salmon said that it has “massively benefitted” from News Corp’s availability to promote Tubi through its various media outlets as well as a marketing campaign.
“News Corp has consistently proven to be able to deeply understand the Tubi value proposition and constantly evangelise to advertisers in the market that they can buy a full funnel advertising solution, which combines traditional brand advertising channels like CTV alongside highly focused performance and outcome driven traditional publications,” he said.
“They’ve really exceeded our expectations.”
Although the first year of this relationship has gone well, it has been a standing start for News Corp’s sales team, which is starting to gain momentum.
News Corp Australia partnered with Tubi after agency groups had committed client budgets for the year ahead, which meant that part of the first year was spent laying the groundwork for ad budgets this year.
News Corp Australia’s managing director of national sales, Lou Barrett, told B&T that her charges had done “an incredible job” doing a lot of heavy lifting in selling the Tubi proposition to media buyers and brands.
“The agencies are really open to it. You know, they’re starting to see the Tubi brand out there in the market as well all over our papers and digital assets,” she said. “They’re now starting to see it and the growth in audiences reflects that. They’re very receptive and really keen to work with us.
“We’ve had some great clients on it and what we’re finding is that once a client comes and dips its toe in the water on Tubi, they are staying on it.”
Woolies, CommBank, Samsung on Tubi train
Brands that have advertised on Tubi include Woolworths, Target, K-Mart, Commonwealth Bank, Lion, the Federal Government and Samsung.
“For brands that are building their CTV strategy, Tubi is becoming an essential part of the mix,” Barrett continued. “The beauty of Tubi is that it’s not there to compete or replace other streamers, as it’s free and there to compliment. It’s an ‘and’ not an ‘or’.
“Tubi offers brands incremental reach and we are having discussions with clients that might not have necessarily had before, those that typically advertise on TV or CTV.”
It also allows News Corp to offer multi-channel and full funnel packages to brands across its suite of newspapers, digital websites, short-form and long-form video.
For example, Viking Cruises, a long term News Corp Australia client, has now added Tubi to its channel mix.
Samsung used Tubi to promote its new Galaxy 26 smartphone, taking advantage of the new Thematic and Title Takeover formats.
Thematic Takeovers (see above) allow brands to secure 100 per cent share of voice within a specific genre by combining strategic pre-roll and display placements, while Title Takeovers offer a value-exchange model where brands sponsor individual Tubi Originals.
Salmon was speaking to B&T just after it held its New Fronts event in New York.
At the event, Tubi rolled out a new contextual targeting feature called Scene Sense, which enables advertisers to target using visual cues, tone and sentiment, when viewers pause content, providing contextually relevant display messaging that aligns with what’s on screen.
It has also broadened its Pause Ad experience with new interactive features.
“Tubi offers not just reach, but a lot of precision attached to that reach with a lot of the ad formats that we offer. We’re now starting to execute these features for Australian advertisers,” Salmon added.
“Scene Sense takes a semantic understanding of what’s happening within a particular piece of programming and then passes those as data signals to advertisers to be able to make sure that the kind of placements really suit what is happening in the action on screen.
“Brand marketers want to make sure they’re showing up at the perfect time to drive impact.
The new advertising features are due to arrive in Australia within the next 12 months.
