Its not surprising that Little Dot Studios growth mirrors the surge in video consumption around the world. Established just over four years ago, the company was set up to by UK-based TV and film production and distribution giant All3Media to help the broadcasting industry grow their audiences and communities on social platforms using video.

If you go back to 2013, the main focus was on deals with the likes of Netflix, Amazon and Hulu to make money through the licensing of content, says Little Dot co-founder and Chief Executive Andy Taylor.

But YouTube was much harder; they needed to hire people and build their own audience. And even if they succeeded they didnt make much money, so very few broadcasters did anything.

Broadcasters are more innovative than they are given credit for - Andy Taylor

I had a view that even if the money was modest compared to deals with firms like Netflix, broadcasters would have to embrace YouTube and Facebook because they need to engage with younger audiences and their ability to market shows declining, so they needed to go on to new platforms.

Video growth

According to Ericsson, the amount of video being consumed over mobile networks around the world rose from just under 1,000 petabytes per month in 2013 to 7,500 petabytes per month this year.

Little Dots clients range from FremantleMedia to the England and Wales Cricket Board, and it has created content such as the Leap of Faith stunt (see image) for Formula E and the Channel 4s short form series Drones in Forbidden Zones.

It now counts 2.5billion views per month of its content on YouTube. And having launched with four staff members it now employs some 100 people, 60 of whom are editors and graphic designers making clips for the programmes such as chat show The Graham Norton Show or complications of the best moments of Gordon Ramseys Kitchen Nightmares.

Taylor explains that each video is tailored to the platform on which it is published.

For Facebook we use a lot of graphics, and the cut would be different on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Taylor refers to the growth in mobile video consumption as an explosion, with broadcasters leaping into the commissioning of short form content for their on-demand platforms. And while some may treat short form as a testing ground for ideas that could be turned into long form series for linear broadcast, the likes of Channel 4 treat it as standalone content to generate views and therefore more interest from advertisers for their online platforms.

Andy Taylor on YouTubers moving into TV

We are not a traditional multichannel network (MCN) that represent YouTubers, but when we do produce content we will often look at new emerging talent.

Lots are doing very nicely on YouTube, and while some may want to [move on to TV] they might not have the talent. TV requires a different level of expertise; speaking to a camera in a bedroom is very different to having a full crew around.

So can broadcasters learn anything from the online upstarts? While TV feels competitive, it has limited bandwidth; there are still only hundreds of channels whereas online there are millions of YouTube and Facebook pages, so the great online publishers are just incredibly agile and very data driven.

Unless they spend significant time worrying about how a video will be seen no one will see it, no matter how good it is. That makes all of us in this space incredibly data driven, and the great online innovators have combined skills that blend data audience understanding with creative gut instinct.

Little Dots approach is to produce video around a genre, keeping in mind why a site like the Huffington Post would chose to embed a particular video and making sure they use terms that are highly searched for while creating something that will keep a viewer watching beyond the first few seconds. And for every video it uploads, it can harvest an extraordinary amount of data.

Broadcasters are more innovative than that are given credit for, but they dont have that level of data. We have to be so hungry to get a view because it is so hard.

Broadcasters are finding it increasingly hard to keep hold of younger viewers. We search out new movements and genres and find out what younger audiences going to latch on to. That is hard for broadcasters who predominantly serve older audience and could be at risk of cannibalising their core audience.

Included in Little Dots headcount of 100 are six full time data analysts who sit next to Taylor.

They dont just look at the data, they also look at what Facebook and YouTubes algorithm is doing. These are living, breathing things that need to be monitored because if [online platforms] start to favour a particular type or length of content then we need to change the kind of video we makebroadcasters have tried YouTube in-house but they are usually uploading in a vacuum. We can grow on these platforms because we can upload videos that we know will become visible.

The rest is here:

Data is key to online video, says Little Dot boss - IBC365 (registration)