//// Special Report / Parrot Analytics By Alejandro J. Rojas, Parrot Analytics’ Regional Director (ale@parrotanalytics.com)
What do genre trends tell you about your show? genres. Though comedy Marvel’s Iron Fist global demand and horror are losing ground everywhere, Latin American demand for comedy is falling at a faster pace while demand for horror is dropping at a slower rate. Drama and content for children are barely growing while action, adventure and animation are accelerating rapidly. Identifying such pockets of growth can act as a valuable input for content decision making, for example, hellocal culture as a tactic to gain an edge over ping media networks and production compacompetition. Narcos and Club de Cuervos nies look for fresh ideas to acquire and develop are banner examples of this strategy working content within genres that are gaining traction. in the crime drama and comedy drama subHowever, growth opportunities are not negenres. In Latin America, digital originals are cessarily restricted to expanding genres. Deeper enjoying spectacular growth in sci-fi drama analysis has revealed that digital originals in and crime drama, sub-genres where traditioLatin America are gaining ground on declining nal network originals are having difficulty genres like comedy, and multiplying their deholding on to their existing audiences. mand in low-growth genres like drama. In hiMeasuring and tracking demand within a gh-growth genres like action and adventure and genre and sub-genres, and across markets, animation, digital originals are increasing their uncovers hidden value to both traditional demand at a much faster rate than the rest. and new entrants. It helps them test hypoDigital originals are outgrowing their trathesis to identify engaging ingredients and ditional network competitors in key genres in more importantly, to generate actionable reLatin America, in part, because they are starcommendations to grow their audiences. A ting from demand levels that are significantly recent finding regarding Marvel’s Iron Fist smaller. Closer insillustrates this point: it was falling faster pection reveals, howethan comparable titles within the sub-genre Global vs. Latin American Genre Demand Chart ver, that they are also of Superheroes in the US, but in Latin Amedoing a fantastic job at rica, Brazil was bucking the trend. converting overlooked Our hypothesis is that the demand for this sleepy sub-genres like show is being sustained by a loyal set of sci-fi drama into engifans with close ties to Brazilian martial arts nes of growth (Stranger like Capoeira and Jiu-Jitsu. Similar demand Things or Sense8), and trends were found in markets where martial in doing so, widening arts have strong followings like China with the sub-genre’s appeal. Kung-Fu, Japan with Karate and South Korea In other sub-genwith Taekwondo. Comparing demand across res, digital players are geography and genres and sub-genres is esproducing content emsential to dissect always-connected global aubedded in the region’s diences that engage daily with any TV show.
In 2016 global audiences not only demanded less funny content but also, perhaps paradoxically, less scary content. Comedy and horror, as genres, both exhibited declining total “Demand Expressions”, the industry -standard metric that Parrot Analytics has developed to measure the multiple ways that consumers express their demand for content. As TV content is increasingly being watched on-demand over multiple screens, platforms and devices, linear ratings are falling exceedingly short in capturing the whole picture of content consumption. In parallel, consumers naturally interact with content brands through a wide array of online services that let them research, comment, like and even download or stream trailers, or entire episodes, of their favorite shows. Measuring all this activity from all content consumers, Demand Expressions provides a standard to compare TV shows that people watch around the world. It also serves as a currency that values the interest that each genre generates by aggregating and consolidating demand from thousands of TV shows that belong to each genre. Over a billion Demand Expressions are captured real-time and across countries, so it is possible to identify genres that are trending up or down in any geography of interest. When comparing Latin America with global markets, we found across the board similarities on the relative size and annual growth for most
110 PRENSARIO INTERNACIONAL