Ad Money Enters the Pitch Room: ‘It’s Clear Where We’re Headed’
In the ‘Skip Ad' era, producers reveal how brands are helping budgets cross the finish line and into a greenlight: ‘It’s an answer to our prayers’
I write about TV from L.A. and host The Ankler podcast. I interviewed a top agent about the unscripted market, wrote about what insiders expect from new Amazon TV head Peter Friedlander and covered the agency using an AI assistant. I’m elaine@theankler.com
As a reporter, there’s something icky about seeing the words “advertorial” or “sponsored content” at the top of an article, indicating something that isn’t a reported news story but rather a brand-driven bit of marketing copy skinned as editorial. Brands shouldn’t ever influence content, is my knee-jerk reaction.
For a while, people who made TV shows felt the same way. Product placement was one thing — what’s a Coke cup or two on the American Idol judges’ desk? — but letting a consumer goods company drive the bus was a creative no-no.
Then a global pandemic hit. And a pair of labor stoppages. The industry insisted on consolidating and shrinking. And slowly but surely, as fewer series were being bought and sold, the idea of allowing a brand benefactor a seat at the development table didn’t seem quite so tacky after all.
Now, the emerging financing model of brand-funded entertainment is being eyed ravenously as a lifeline and booster to the world of unscripted content… and, as my colleague Manori Ravindran reported last year on the phenom, it’s also moving into scripted TV. And of course film too.
Over the last weeks, I’ve given you an unfiltered look into a top unscripted TV agent’s thoughts on the current market and a sellers’ guide that covers which reality genres are hot at which networks. In my conversations with agents and producers for those stories, the topic of brands financing unscripted production kept coming up.
“Production companies see it potentially as their salvation and answer to our prayers,” says Jennifer O’Connell, co-founder of Velvet Hammer Media and CEO of Pantheon Media, the latter of which houses about 20 unscripted labels, including Done + Dusted, Asylum Entertainment and Tyler Perry’s unscripted efforts. Adds the former HBO Max unscripted chief, “The past two years, all of a sudden, it just kind of caught on fire.”
And it’s still quite the Wild West out there.
As one senior-level agent says, “I’m not even going to begin to pretend that I can tell you how we’re going to crack the code, but brand-funded is definitely on the forefront of what we’re trying to uncover. We are spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to make this commonplace, because it’s very clear that that’s where we’re headed.”
In today’s Series Business, I’ll tell you:
Which buyers are embracing brand-funded projects — and which streamers are still holding back
How the “Skip Ad” era shoved brands out of commercial breaks and into storytelling
The new playbook: when to bring brand money in, how to secure distribution — and how flexible these deals can be
The Side Hustlers experiment: how Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine, a bank, and Roku rewrote the rules for getting a show made
What percentage of budget brands have to invest to earn creative input
How producers are keeping creative control and integrity intact
The messy part: what happens when buyers and brands both want a say — and how producers keep the peace