How ‘Friends’ anniversary is creating new ad opportunities for Max around IP

The 30th anniversary of “Friends” has created an opportunity for Warner Bros. Discovery’s streamer Max to sell advertisers interactive sponsorships. State Farm is one of the anniversary sponsors, granting the insurance brand a 20% share of voice. This includes an interactive trivia ad format created with the ad tech company Brightline. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs Before episodes of “Friends,” longtime and first-time viewers alike are prompted to answer questions related to the show with their remote as a State Farm ad plays. Questions include, “What was the name of Ross’s pet monkey?” and “What did Jack Geller tell Monica he spent her wedding fund on?” The trivia ads have been airing since Aug. 19 and have seen a 7.5% engagement rate per impression delivered, the highest for a WBD campaign to date and 10 times Brightline’s benchmark rate, according to the partners. Of the four questions in each ad, the average viewer is completing two questions and 90% have correctly identified Ross’s monkey as “Marcel.” Planning for the 30th anniversary of “Friends” has been underway for more than a year, said Ryan Gould, head of streaming, digital and advanced advertising sales and client partnerships at Warner Bros. Discovery. WBD’s ad sales team prioritized the trivia format for advertisers to align brands with the extensive knowledge of “Friends” diehards returning to watch while also sustaining engagement across multi-episode viewing. “We really built a unique creative execution that lends itself to this audience,” said Gould. “I don’t think that every library title warrants a trivia unit, but there are different types of interactivity that we could execute,” such as co-creating bespoke creative with brands curated for different characters in a show that viewers could select, said Gould. In addition to the State Farm sponsorship, typical run-of-platform advertising will continue to play during “Friends.” This is different than the sponsorships Max sells for its HBO series, which give select brands exclusive messaging for a show without other commercial interruptions. Those sponsorships can start at around $3 to $4 million. It was not clear how much the “Friends” sponsorships cost or what other companies were sponsoring it. Seasonal or franchise hubs provide opportunities to present library content through brand-sponsored packages, such as Food Network content during the holiday season, or a collection of DC series and movies during the launch of a new installment, such as the recently launched show “The Penguin,” Gould said. Much of streaming viewership is devoted to rewatching library content, a behavior that streamers lean into. Marketers from top platforms have previously told Ad Age that flashy new releases are important for drawing new subscribers in, but vast content libraries are critical for keeping them paying by filling time between new shows, which in the world of streaming can be pricey and far between. In the first half of the year, five of Netflix’s top 10 most-watched series (when combining all seasons) were licensed shows, including “Young Sheldon,” “Suits” and “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” according to a recent Bloomberg newsletter. More recently, shows from AMC Networks, including “Dark Winds” and “A Discovery of Witches,” have taken a portion of Nielsen’s weekly top-streamed shows after being licensed to Netflix. While licensing shows to Netflix can be lucrative, it could hurt media companies’ ability to find new subscribers on their platforms. Exclusively streaming “Friends” is a valuable pitch to potential Max subscribers, so boosting ad revenue around it at key times, such as the anniversary, is meaningful as media companies seek ways to close the gap between their linear and streaming businesses. While WBD will always sell “run-of-Max and media-by-the-pound offerings ... the more that we can really be thoughtful of brands and aligning with the right content and weaving those brands into the fabric of the experience, we feel like those efforts are worth it in market, because they’ll pay off in the short, mid and long term,” Gould said.

How ‘Friends’ anniversary is creating new ad opportunities for Max around IP

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