Kedoo’s Digital-First Approach

The inaugural edition of the Connected TV Festival wrapped today with Batyr Aidarkhan giving viewers insights on how Kedoo Entertainment is producing digital-native content for AVOD platforms and leveraging data analytics.

Aidarkhan, business development director at Kedoo, took part in a keynote conversation with World Screen’s Jamie Stalcup about the company’s slate of non-scripted series produced for YouTube. You can watch the session here.

“YouTube is a direct-to-consumer line to test different formats, subjects and content types,” Aidarkhan said. “So, for us, it was an ideal scenario to come up with five or six concepts and test them out on YouTube. It’s most important to track the performance and audience perception.”

Kedoo currently has three non-scripted digital-first series on its slate: Let’s Go, which has racked up 735 million views on YouTube; the brand-new The Wonder Guys, consisting of 12 45-minute episodes; and Faraway, which is in the travel space.

These are all self-funded, Aidarkhan noted. “We rely on existing monetization models. We do collaborate with brands as long as it fits the subject, the topic and the tone of each episode. Sometimes we work with nonprofit organizations as well. For The Wonder Guys, we partner with a nonprofit to support the social issues in this specific country and in return, they help our crew to dive into the real experience behind the scenes with the issues that happen in that particular destination.”

On syndication opportunities outside of the YouTube window, Aidarkhan noted, “We believe in the synergy of all distribution outlets, where YouTube, VOD and TV are complemented as multiple entry points. This is a particularly high priority focus for this year: to expand the TV and VOD distribution in specific regions. So, for our content slate, our main languages would be Spanish, English, Brazilian Portuguese and Arabic. For each region, we are focusing on multiplying the entry points for the audience.”

For its YouTube production business in the year ahead, Kedoo is “focusing on our existing formats, carrying on production, carrying on experimenting with the formats and expanding the distribution footprint: TV, pay TV, AVOD, SVOD and FAST channels. “Each of them has its own different strategy. If it’s a subscription platform, we can discuss special episodes or premiere windows. If it’s pay TV, we can select the specific episodes for the specific topic to run it as a cycle of documentary films.”