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Curious how top brands build loyal fan communities and shine on social media? Join us as Eyal Arad, CEO of Videocites, reveals his strategies on The High-Performance CEO Show. Learn to use advanced monitoring tools and data analytics to boost your digital marketing. Eyal's tips will help you make smart, data-driven choices and find new opportunities online.Find Eyal: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eyal-arad/Website: http://www.videocites.com/Check out our other channels: ...
Curious how top brands build loyal fan communities and shine on social media? Join us as Eyal Arad, CEO of Videocites, reveals his strategies on The High-Performance CEO Show. Learn to use advanced monitoring tools and data analytics to boost your digital marketing. Eyal's tips will help you make smart, data-driven choices and find new opportunities online.
Find Eyal:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eyal-arad/
Website: http://www.videocites.com/
Check out our other channels:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sebastian.schieke.official
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thpcshow
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/sebastianschieke
Website: https://www.sebastianschieke.com
Welcome to the 'High-Performance CEO Show,' hosted by Sebastian Schieke.
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They were just blind to it, and no one even thought about how can I use my fans? How can I reach my audience that are outside my network?
Sebastian Schieke:Ever feel overwhelmed by the fast paced changes in the digital marketing world? Today, we reveal how to thrive in this changing world with expert, Eyal Arad, CEO and cofounder of VideoSites.
Eyal Arad:The the most interesting involvement we had 3 years ago is when we took this this technology and we took it into what we call the positive side of copy, meaning fan created content especially focused on social media.
Sebastian Schieke:We explore the challenges and opportunities in social media strategy, fan engagement, and making data driven decisions.
Eyal Arad:If we could show you that you can make more money effectively by honusing these creators and using them, monetizing with them together, then it's a different balance.
Sebastian Schieke:Yael shares practical tips to help you use user generated content and data analytics for better marketing, ready to take control of your digital marketing success. Welcome to this week's episode of the High Performance CEO Show. Hey, Eyal. Welcome to the show.
Eyal Arad:Hi, Sebastian. Great to meet you.
Sebastian Schieke:It's great to have you here. We already had a quick, pre chat that, you were dialing in from Israel at the moment. You run a very successful startup. And today is all about content creation and how content creator, yeah, can get more visibility on their content, and obviously also levering reach and generate more income. I'm really happy and interested to talk to you about this today.
Sebastian Schieke:But before we start in getting into the detail, maybe tell the audience a little bit about you, where you're coming from, your journey, and, yeah, what your organization is really helping.
Eyal Arad:Sure. Thank you. So first of all, I'll talk a bit about the history of video sites, but I think it's interesting to know how we got here. We started the company almost 10 years ago with this amazing technology that we initially called it the Shazam for video type of technology.
Sebastian Schieke:The
Eyal Arad:video AI that can track every copy or or every single reuse of your content across all social media. It took us almost 6 years to develop the code the code engine, and it's it's an amazing technology. It's patented. And, initially, we took it directly to anti piracy. We're talking about fair engagement will get there, but, initially, we started with anti piracy, working with studios, with leagues, helping them identifying fringing content immediately, like, within a minute.
Eyal Arad:And especially with live sports and live content, this is a crucial capability that was not there until we, launched our services. But I think the the most interesting involvement we had 3 years ago is when we took this this technology and we took it into what we call the positive side of copies, meaning fan created content especially focused on social media. I'll give you the example. If a fan re uploads a highlight of LeBron's dunk, it doesn't have to be piracy. It's actually a legitimate fan engagement that you never knew about.
Eyal Arad:But if this copy of this fan highlight got a 1,000,000 views, that's something you would wanna know about, and it's actually something you can actually even make additional value with. So you can measure this additional million views as part of your engagement. You can see that in this video, the the the brands and logos of your partners are getting more visibility, so it's actually increasing your media volume. And, effectively, in this way of tracking all of the UGC and all of your partners and how they post content on social media, you are seeing what we call the full picture or the full social footprint that you really have on social media. And this could be 10, 20 times bigger than what you have seen on your own channels.
Eyal Arad:And, actually, there's been a blind spot for brands and rights holders. Until today, they were measuring everything according to their own channels while effectively there's so much content around every type of brand, league, team, or any rights holder across social media. They were just blind to it, and no one even thought about how can I use my fans? How can I reach my audience that are outside my network? And this connects me to what you started about Yes.
Eyal Arad:Creators and fans, a major part of what we do today with our clients, which is which are, by the way, the the biggest leagues in the US and in Europe and teams as well, is to help connect them and help them find the best user generated content or UGC creators out there. How can they prospect them and work with them in a better way that would be a win for everybody?
Sebastian Schieke:Okay. Let's really break it down into small bits and pieces that everyone, can follow. So let's say you talk about a typical creator, someone who create, say, has YouTube channel. So they put out a video, and they use the normal YouTube statistics and some tools to see what, yeah, what reach they get, how many viewers, and all these KPIs. You say there's a blind spot.
Sebastian Schieke:Can you explain this a bit more, in detail for the audience? Where is this blind spot, and how do you identify or how do you see and track the concern of the content?
Eyal Arad:Right. Let's take a real example of NBA. NBA are a great partner of ours. When we started working together, they were measuring NBA exposure on social media by using their own NBA YouTube channel, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and etcetera. And this is how they were reporting their their exposure.
Eyal Arad:This is how they were showing it to the brands and so on, measuring their own channels, maybe some of their partners, but they really had no idea about, first of all, how all of their affiliates are posting content, and, of course, MBAs. And there's a lot of partners, influencers, players are posting content, teams are posting content, other all broadcasters globally are posting NBA content. Nobody ever tracked it. Plus, all NBA fans that are just posting either by being in venue and taking out the phone and post content about it, or some of them are really great creators, creating great mashups, creating great game recaps, creating game great analysis of Steph Curry this year compared to last year, compared to whatever. And and these videos are amazing.
Eyal Arad:No one ever knew about them. No one in in the NBA ever knew about them and was able to, in a very organized way, measure them and see how much is it. Is it growing? Is it a lot? Is it impacting my total exposure?
Eyal Arad:Now our tool is built to identify everything in the AI. The AI is trend is trained to identify everything NBA. Every video that has NBA content within it, the AI would know and will tag it. So, eventually, NBA can look at the report and say, my own channels did that, but my all of my different partners, influencers, and so on gave me an additional chunk of exposure and value. And my fans, in their own creation, created an additional and, again, it could be 3, 4, 5, 10 times what I used to measure.
Eyal Arad:So, eventually, the NBA can now show the numbers are actually super, super large, much bigger. They are they are huge already, and they create great content on their own, but they are able to say, hey. I have 3, 4 times the exposure that that you saw because of that additional exposure that now I'm capable it was always there, by the way. We are not taking any any responsibility for it. It was always there.
Eyal Arad:No one had the the capability of measuring. That's why I call it the blind spot. It it's just something that no one had the the tool to measure. And I'm I'm saying in NBA, but in the same way, I can tell you NFL, MLB, and so on. They are all they're all blind to that ability.
Sebastian Schieke:So, basically, it's content that, shared by third parties on on their own channels.
Eyal Arad:It is not service. Repo either repost it or both of them.
Sebastian Schieke:I mean, technically, how do you identify and find this content?
Eyal Arad:So I I like to to explain it without going into how the AI will Yeah. Think about taking a person who knows nothing about basketball, putting it in front of the screen, give him a bunch of official videos of the NBA, and tell him this is NBA. And he would see another video and another video in Navi. He would get it. Now you're showing something different.
Eyal Arad:He wouldn't be able to tell you this is NBA. This is not. Why? Because he under he knows the players. He knows how a basketball court looks like.
Eyal Arad:He wouldn't he would be able to understand if this is an NBA comment or not. It's exactly the way we we train the AI so it will be able to identify everything a person would see.
Sebastian Schieke:So that means, whenever you take a new client on, you have to train the AI to identify the content of the client.
Eyal Arad:Yes. It's a short process we're doing internally. We are very well trained on how to do it. So it's it's a very quick process we do in the back end. The client doesn't even need to do anything from it because every client of ours already has content on social media.
Eyal Arad:He posts it on his own channels. We always we can always take it and train from that. And plus, we are already building it as as wide as possible so new clients can come on board with very little effort.
Sebastian Schieke:So now we talked about MB. There are not many MBAs out there. Contact tracing this small and medium sized companies listen to that, or even solopreneurs who create a lot of content. Are you good match for them as well, or you say, okay. I'm only playing with the big talk.
Eyal Arad:Every brand, every team, even players or and athletes brands in some way. So I'll give you the example. In in the LeBron highlight, I I used as example earlier. Not only the league has value in that million views of this UGC creator, LeBron himself can find value to say, hey. I get an additional exposure from my fans that are reposting it.
Eyal Arad:The team could see value in it and can use it for their own brands, for their own value. And, again, we talked about how we help rights holders prospect the what we call super fans. So with all of the big data videos and images that we find on social media, we start seeing patterns. So So if you are a team and by the way, we have many teams as clients. If you are a team, we can help you find your local or international fans that are constantly, posting content around you.
Eyal Arad:You never knew about them. They could have, I don't know, 10,000 followers. But if they are but if you are in one city in the US and you are finding a great influencer in a different city or even internationally, if that's your aspiration to to expand, we can help you find these creators that are your fans already. They already created content around you. They have an audience that are effectively also your fans and help you make the connection.
Eyal Arad:So all of a sudden, you can tap into the audience of a fan that is in the UK and and tapping and start pushing content through him, help him. And and by the way, there are many methods that our clients are using into how to collaborate. Give him raw footage, for example, bring these audience to the venue to create content from the venue, and they pull their fan, their audience. And so you increase ticket sales. You can push merchandisers.
Eyal Arad:So many ways you can start collaborating with those micro influences once you get them. You don't have to be a Kardashian in order to to get the exposure and the recognition from the team that you like. If you're a City fan or, or a a Man United fan, if Man United comes to you and tell you, I see that you are creating great content around me. First of all, it's great for the creator to to get the recognition from the team that he likes. And then doing this collaboration will increase his channel, will increase the number of followers and subscribers that he's getting just because of if the team is like, likes or engages with his content, it's already something that builds his channel and make him a better a a bigger micro influencer.
Sebastian Schieke:Yeah. I mean, it's a very it's a growing, business, and, there's so much content out there now. In or everyone asks themselves, I mean, where is this going? No one can consume all this content which, which is created. What's what's your view on on on the growing content space?
Eyal Arad:I think it's incredible. I think you don't have enough time to consume everything that that you want to consume, Not to mention things you don't want and the platforms push your way. I think it's getting into a point where creators are starting to create content that is in a way more interesting than the full length of getting younger generations. They don't have time or the bandwidth even to see a full game. So the ones that are getting bigger and I'm focused on sports, by the way.
Eyal Arad:We can talk other types of our clients. But when we talk about the any type of sports, the younger generation would much rather see a very well edited game recap than the game itself. And we see a lot of creators, UGC creators that are focused on that, and they're doing an amazing job. Sometimes better than the league itself would ever be able to do. And and this is something that you should harness.
Eyal Arad:And it's funny because we as we started with privacy and we're still helping a lot of leagues also fight live streaming and piracy. That's a big chunk of what we do. We are also helping them find the balance between what is piracy. Because in I'd say I wanna say the old days. In the old way of thinking, every UGC content does piracy.
Eyal Arad:But what we are helping our clients to see is that, hey. These guys are actually fans. They're creating a 30 seconds, 3 minute video. It's not really stealing your content. They're using it.
Eyal Arad:They shouldn't, but they're using it, but they're doing it so well, and they're getting so much audience. You should actually work with them, and we should find the balance.
Sebastian Schieke:Yeah. How is it on the legal side? Take a game, cut parts of it out, comment, and and put it on my YouTube channel.
Eyal Arad:It's a it's a metal policy. So Yeah. If it's a game from last week, I'm guessing no one would ever care. If you're doing it in real time, that's that's more of a problem. And it really depends on the type of client.
Eyal Arad:We have gaming, esports client that really are looking at it as effectively as extra engagement, which is great. We have client that is at, yeah, premium sports that that want everything down immediately, and that's fair. I mean, I'd say the clearest way to see it is live streaming or even short form VOD or non live content that is uploaded during the game. In most cases, it could be seen as piracy. Not always, but in most cases, it has some limitations.
Eyal Arad:But everything that fans upload after the event should, in our opinion, of course, some some think otherwise, but should be something that you you would consider as legitimate fan engagement. Now there there are different ways that, broadcaster look at it and the rights holders look at it. And I would say that we have some clients that are very open and very advanced in looking at their fans and how to harness them with these short forms. And we have some that are very strict and say, take everything down. Again, it's a metal balance.
Eyal Arad:If we could show you, and that's what we do with a lot of leads, by the way, also studios and white folks. If we could show you that you can make more money effectively by harnessing these creators and using them, monetizing with them together, then it's a different balance. No one ever thought about that it's even possible. But I think now that you can measure everything, you find many ways to monetize.
Sebastian Schieke:Exactly. I mean, it's when you when you really get data on comments, on shares, the generated color from your fan base, then you really can see what is working and what is not working. And as you said, find new ways to monetize the content, which is a no brainer for me.
Eyal Arad:No. No. But I can tell you one thing. One of our clients has done a research. He hasn't published it yet, but so I won't mention names, but I'm really anxious for it to to come out.
Eyal Arad:He showed that if you can create great teasers of short forms during the match itself, more people will actually open the TV. The old way of thinking what our bot business was, there's something online, people won't open the TV. It's the other way around. Social media is actually driving more linear and not the other way around in these groups. You have to encourage fans to create something like that instead of Mhmm.
Eyal Arad:Blocking.
Sebastian Schieke:They're stuck on their TikTok, feed or Instagram feed, and then suddenly say, oh, there's an amazing game or whatever going on right now.
Eyal Arad:Yeah. They cut now with the Ewels. If you see an amazing play happening right now and you get a tweet or TikTok about it, you will open the TV to see it happening. You wanna catch up. So I think it's actually a good driver, and and there should be much more synergy between the two domains.
Sebastian Schieke:Yeah. But then companies like, bring those parts together, create a platform where they see what benefits they basically bring to each other. Do you also have a kind of community or a way that they can engage with each other in your system?
Eyal Arad:This is in many ways, this is what we come in today, we hope, reach the gap. It It really depends on the client. Some clients have a lot of bandwidth in terms of manpower to contact directly these creators. Sometimes we are taking the more active role in helping you connect with your fans and create this bridge. So it really depends.
Sebastian Schieke:Looking at your organize when you look, in the last, you said 10 years. Right? You're running it. Where do you see turning points, and and and what kind of challenges or major challenges did you face in your journey?
Eyal Arad:So I I think our main turning point was, as I mentioned before, taking our technology from anti piracy into user generated content to into the analytics and measurement and the all of that legitimate fan engagement.
Sebastian Schieke:Or why what? I mean, why did you do
Eyal Arad:We always knew we're gonna do it, but it came with a requirement from a client. And Okay. That was interested to see how it looks. So we quickly built, I would say, I would call it the prototype. We quickly built it.
Eyal Arad:And once it once we saw how what's the incredible impact, I think we didn't even evaluate how big this is going to be in terms of impact to the client. But once we saw it, it was and once the client saw it, it was unstoppable. You asked about our main challenge. It's I think it's it's a two dimensional it's an educational discussions when we have every time we come to a client that that is hearing about us for the first time, first of all, saying, holy shit. Can I really measure fan engagement?
Eyal Arad:And and then what do I do with it? It's like all of a sudden you have so much new data. What can I do with it? And and it it takes time. It takes time for someone to incent this.
Eyal Arad:There's so many options. And even as we are finding new types of products that you we can find within this amazing amount of data and user generated content, so many types of patterns and so many types of content creators. Some are more funny, some are more highlight driven, some are more educational. And you and you can find so much new value in this data that it's it's, like, endless amount of of opportunities coming out of it. It's a gold mine of opportunities for our clients.
Eyal Arad:And I I'll tell you as an example, CMOs, let's take it for example, chief marketing officers in every brand and in every, legal team or studio or every media company, they create a lot of content. They have the same blind spot I mentioned earlier. They are if you're creating a commercial, you measure the success of the commercial test at least on social media on your own channel. But if you are a AT and T or an insurance company, nobody will go to your YouTube to see it to see the commercial. So you don't really have a way to measure the success of your campaign on social media.
Eyal Arad:And all of a sudden, you have a tool that exposes everything to you. How if it's a funny one, how it rip what's the ripple effect on social media? And all of a sudden, you have so much more data consumed to show your management, to to drive value out of. Sometimes it's overwhelming, and that's I would say that's our main challenge of how do I bring you this new capability without overwhelming you.
Sebastian Schieke:And there were you coming to place?
Eyal Arad:These are main Yeah. Discussions with clients.
Sebastian Schieke:Yeah. And you said you have, office I mean, your your headquarters in Israel, and you got office in in Europe and in US?
Eyal Arad:In New York, in Madrid. Opening now another one in the UK.
Sebastian Schieke:Are these offices primarily, sales offices, or you have developers there? How do you how did you build your and structure your organization?
Eyal Arad:It's mostly sales and marketing. We want account managers. We want our people to be close to the clients. Part of part of what we do with every type of client is to meet either weekly or biweekly and hope you understand the best insights within the data. We don't just throw numbers at you and say crunch it.
Eyal Arad:We crunch it for you, but we want our team to speak your language and explain to you how you can leverage on a week by week basis. Sometimes some of our clients and we've had some great case studies with different teams and leagues. They have changed their strategy on social media according to what they were seeing because they saw that some type of content echoes better on social media. And if you put your production efforts on this platform instead of the other, you can get 5 times more exposure than they they looked at at the at the at our numbers. We gave their recommendation.
Eyal Arad:Of course, they are doing the decision, but we give their recommendation. And all of a sudden, they grew significantly just by taking this one decision. Of course, it's it's it could be a trial and no, but but they saw great success in that. And the and all and and now you have a tool to measure, was my effort successful?
Sebastian Schieke:Can you share maybe 2 or 3 tips to, content creator? What what they should do to really grow their audience, leverage their content more apart, engage with your software? It's a
Eyal Arad:good question. No one has no one's ever asked me that. So it's a it's a very good question. No. Seriously.
Eyal Arad:I would say be original. Don't try to just copy whatever works with someone else. Be original and and do your thing. Just make sure that you are trying to understand the rules of engagement of the rights holder that you're using is. Don't do something that would tag you as a pirate because eventually, they would try to fight you.
Eyal Arad:If you do it legitimately from the start and gain your audience this way in a very original way, there are very good chances that this right holder, this team, this league, this media, I mean, will want to work with you. So that's my 2¢.
Sebastian Schieke:Yeah. Thank you so I think you opened a whole new world, to, many content creates. What is possible in terms user generated content, in terms of leveraging your audience, your fan base, really getting data and understanding how your content reaches other other groups which you are not aware of. I and I will definitely, also have your your system and help for us because we're also content creators. Thank you thank you so much for your time today.
Eyal Arad:Thank you, Sebastian.
Sebastian Schieke:Keep on growing the the world of content. Let's hope that it's too overwhelming in a couple of all the all the stuff we create. Great.
Eyal Arad:Thank you, Sebastian. It's been a pleasure.
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