Piracy-Derived Data can improve film distribution strategies
Digital piracy or online piracy is the biggest enemy of Content Owners, but could Piracy‑Derived Data & Business Intelligence be their greatest friend!!
Interesting insights could be obtained by Piracy-Derived Data.
“Data will talk only if you are willing to listen” and “Your data is only as good as your ability to process it” and “Data is just the beginning……” These 3 quotes more or less summarize what data is all about!!!
What is that we, as content owners, will have to listen to?
Which titles or movies are pirated the most? Which regions do they get most pirated in? When does maximum piracy occur; post-release, pre-release, post-nomination to awards, after being awarded?
What are the questions that we should seek answers to?
- Are our current distribution platforms adequately catering to the demand?
- Are the films released on time at these geographies or is there a delay?
- Are we promoting our movies or content adequately in these regions?
- Is our content reasonably priced to sell and is it easily accessible?
- Are there any blind spots we have in terms of marketing and promotion of our content?
- When it comes to our catalog content portfolios, which are the ones that are most pirated; where and why?
We did get the answers
Piracy was highest where the popular title/ movie release was delayed because of underestimating content demand in those geographies or various other reasons. No promotional activities were done to promote these movies in these specific geographies. The most critical factor was overpricing; the pricing was out-of-reach for a large number of potential customers.
Obviously, they resorted to watching pirate content, and pirates were more than happy to give them access to unlicensed content. Many assumptions with regards to popular catalog content were proven wrong based on piracy-derived data.
Piracy-Derived Data can Predict Blockbusters and Award-Winning Movies
What the Data Tells
- Highly pirated movies are potential blockbusters.
- Data on viewership/piracy of movies nominated for awards could predict which movies could eventually win the awards.
- Data on movies that do extremely well when released on OTT platforms but had lackluster theatrical release points at inadequate marketing and distribution theatrically.
- Data derived by keyword research on movie releases could give great insight into demand.
- The films that are nominated for awards get highly pirated.
- The film winning the awards remains in demand and has more shelf life.
- Data also gave direct inputs as to where the demand for such content is highest.
How we Could use This Data
- For projecting box-office collections.
- Focussing our resources on marketing and promoting the movies that have the best shot at success both in the box office as well as the awards circuit.
- Spotlight on key markets that were underserved and ignored.
- Piracy-derived data could be used for making strategy with regards to offline and online merchandising of film-related memorabilia.
- Entering hitherto unexplored new markets to improve business revenue and increase the fan base.
Paradigm Shift in Mindset-Converting Piracy to your Advantage
This approach to piracy and piracy-derived data is completely counterintuitive. As a result, pirates and piracy-derived data can be viewed as a feedback loop on how content owners could change distribution strategies. The mindset change is how can we use this data for converting potential customers to paying customers. Plugging marketing and promotional gaps in certain geographies and markets.
Reworking on pricing so that our content is accessible to the widest possible paying customers. Relooking our movie release date patterns across geographies where there is the demand for our content. Giving more attention to overlooked catalog properties based on data derived from piracy. Focussed marketing and distribution efforts towards such catalog properties. Laser-focusing our promotional, marketing, and lobbying efforts on movies that have the highest potential for success both in the box office and national and international awards.
Should we conclude by quoting Peter Drucker, “what gets measured, gets improved”. Use the insights from piracy data, i.e., illegal viewership/downloads, geographies, demand‑supply gap, etc. to see how you can improve business revenue.
