CTAM President & CEO Vicki Lins recently interviewed Marcien Jenckes, president of Xumo, who shared insights into Xumo’s holistic approach aimed at captivating audiences and monetizing content through advertising.
Xumo’s strategy spans the distribution of streaming devices, collaborations with TV manufacturers, and the expansion of FAST channels. Their swift adoption underscores the platform’s appeal and effectiveness in addressing the dynamic demands of consumers and operators alike, making Xumo a leader in transforming the streaming experience.
Gain insights from the Q&A below.
Vicki Lins: Why don’t we start with a level set. Give us an overview of Xumo.
Marcien Jenckes: The best way to describe Xumo is we are engaging audiences and monetizing those audiences. And the way we do that is in four different paths:
- The first essentially is a new streaming device, the Xumo Stream Box.
- We work with operators to distribute Xumo stream boxes to their subscribers to drive streaming engagement and ultimately monetize those audiences.
- We also work with TV manufacturers to put our software on TVs to drive consumer engagement with streaming content and monetize those audiences.
- And through the distribution of FAST Channels, we engage in two ways. We have a product, Xumo Play, which has 300+ fast channels and is available on devices with free-ad-supported content. The goal is to drive consumer engagement and monetize audiences.
Across all four, whether it’s our IP streaming boxes, a television, our fast channels, or we’re powering them from somebody else, we are engaging with consumers as much as possible and then monetizing those consumers through advertising.
Vicki Lins: How is Xumo different than some of the other platform solutions out there? Roku, Amazon, some of the others that have taken the portal approach to helping consumers get into their space and curate their space.
Marcien Jenckes: We are much more live TV-focused. Our operating system puts a consumer in front of a live offering almost from the start and leans into lean-back behavior. It doesn’t get in the way of finding other on-demand content they want, but it makes it easier for them to access that live, lean-back experience. So that’s different than what other people do.
The second thing is the discovery piece. We follow shows first, to wherever, whatever app or experience those shows live in. Think about a popular show like “Survivor.” There are 40 plus seasons of “Survivor”, and they’re scattered across different content services. We make it easy for a consumer to find the specific season of “Survivor” that they want, wherever it’s shown, favoring the content the subscriber already has a subscription to.
And that again, leans into this consumer pain point and trying to solve that as a value proposition in ways that other people don’t.
Listen to the entire interview with Marcien Jenckes on CTAM’s Thinking Out Loud Podcast episode #51.
