MIPCOM 2023 is the world’s largest entertainment content market, where buyers and sellers from over 100 countries come together to discover, buy, and sell TV and digital content. The event took place at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes, France, from October 16-19, 2023 and brought together over 12.000 delegates from over 3600 companies and included networking events for content producers and distributors exploring new and innovative ways of monetizing their content catalogs. 

Whip Media returned to MIPCOM this year with a strong presence at the Palais, presenting a whitepaper in partnership with MIPCOM on “The Data You Need to Build a Thriving FAST Channel.”

FAST: Transforming Content Providers into Channel Architects

It is not coincidental that FAST & GLOBAL Talk Series took central stage and returned this year again, following the highly successful summit launched at MIPTV 2023, featuring roundtables and talks that gathered worldwide experts to provide a blueprint and discuss opportunities to distribute and programme FAST channels across international markets.

Free Ad-Supported Streaming Television (FAST) is revolutionizing the media landscape, transforming content providers into channel architects. This new paradigm requires content owners to master the art of channel scheduling and ad inventory management to create compelling channels that captivate audiences and maximize revenue.

With FAST, content providers are no longer simply licensing their content to distributors. Instead, they are becoming channel editors, responsible for crafting daily schedules, curating playlists, and building ad inventories. This shift requires a deep understanding of audience behavior, programming principles, and advertising strategies.

One of the biggest challenges facing channel editors is the lack of data transparency. Many FAST platforms manage monetization themselves, providing editors with rudimentary monthly revenue reports based on revenue sharing. This limited visibility makes it difficult to optimize schedules, ad break placement, and monetization strategies.

Despite the challenges, FAST presents an exciting opportunity for small and mid size content providers to ascend the value chain and take greater control of their revenue streams. By leveraging technology solutions that bridge technological gaps, smaller providers can create and manage their own FAST channels, competing with the biggest names in the industry.

Whip Media now helps small- and mid-tier distributors track the granular performance of titles across all distribution models, including FAST, AVOD, SVOD, TVOD/EST, social media clips, and linear channels. This provides a single view of how each title is performing in terms of popularity and revenue.

The service automatically ingests and normalizes data from all of these platforms, maps it to the title master ID, and, in the case of FAST, also ingests schedules and ad revenue. This gives you a definitive view of content performance across all distribution platforms.

FAST is reshaping the media landscape in ways that are only now being fully realized. It is blurring the boundaries between content providers, distributors, platforms, and monetization players. New media conglomerates will emerge, and innovative technology providers will thrive in this dynamic ecosystem.