ParshipMeet Group
Pink Unicorns & Creator Economy: How ParshipMeet Group Combines Dating and Livestreaming
In times of a global pandemic, being by yourself feels even lonelier. Liza* ended her last relationship right before COVID–19 hit and tried several dating apps before finding the perfect community for her: Tagged, an app with particularly strong retention and engagement in the Black community. Excited to meet people, she logs into her account after dinner. Comfy in her pajamas, she can date right from her sofa! She responds to a few chats and sends some new ones to interesting people nearby she found on the app. She waits a few minutes for a new chat to come in – but she wants to connect with people right away! This is exactly what she missed with many other dating apps she used before: Like lots of other users, Liza was often very disappointed when there were no reactions to her messages. Sometimes, even dating apps can feel like the loneliest place on earth. You swipe right and left, wait for the perfect match, and think of the right conversation starters – but while hopeful for a response from a potential date, you are still alone sitting in front of your smartphone. Tagged counters exactly this feeling with its “Live” function: Liza taps on the Live section of the app where instantly she sees creators broadcasting streams right now as well as the accompanying flurry of chat activity happening in real-time. Liza finds a feeling of belonging and community while watching and interacting with her favorite content creators. This new form of user experience is called Social Entertainment – and is part of many apps in the ParshipMeet Group offering.
*fictional protagonist
Back in 2016, The Meet Group saw livestreaming video as the perfect match to their core dating apps business – and has been working to seamlessly combine the two areas ever since. The company became a pioneer in the field when they first implemented livestreaming video in their apps as part of their user experience. Meanwhile, livestreaming video is available on their social apps in their portfolio and excites many users throughout Europe and North America. Since 2020, The Meet Group also provides its livestreaming solution vPaaS (video-Platform-as-a-Service) to other players in the field and beyond. This livestreaming video expertise was a big advantage when Parship Group acquired The Meet Group in September 2020 to become ParshipMeet Group, now forming the Dating & Video segment of ProSiebenSat.1 Group. The segment fits synergistically with the other areas of the company, one of them being the Group’s Entertainment business.
After all, the consumption of entertaining content in apps is growing and opens new potential for the Group. Consumers worldwide spend over 500 billion hours livestreaming in the top social apps in 2021. “To create a valuable experience for members, no love potion is needed,” explains Sean Lawrence, Director Product Monetization of The Meet Group: “For livestreaming video, four different aspects play a key role from a product standpoint: The unique video format; the interactivity, enabled by text comments and gifts; the gamification – meaning playful elements that we bring in by reaching levels or giving badges; and lastly the creators, helping to build an entertainment business on top of a technology business. At ParshipMeet Group, we work hard to succeed in all these aspects.”
For livestreaming video, four different aspects play a key role from a product standpoint: The unique video format; the interactivity, enabled by text comments and gifts; the gamification – meaning playful elements that we bring in by reaching levels or giving badges; and lastly the creators, helping to build an entertainment business on top of a technology business. At ParshipMeet Group, we work hard to succeed in all these aspects.
Director Product Monetization at The Meet Group
When Liza starts browsing through the live section, she swipes from stream to stream looking for a topic to grab her attention – just like zapping between different TV programs. She sees someone showing magic tricks, a comedy show, and others playing music. As Liza continues browsing, she stops at a weekly streamed show on celebrity gossip, which she really enjoys. To create a video experience unlike any other app, ParshipMeet Group curates some of the streams into live shows. Currently, ParshipMeet Group runs over 100 shows in their apps from fitness to talent, from magic to interview talks. Three new shows are launched every week, aiding to increase the time users are spending on the apps with engaging content.
What Liza particularly appreciates in the streams: How the creators interact with their audience. Some are just chatting along and answering questions from their community, others are playing dating games, such as NextDate. The dating game brings together two core competencies of ParshipMeet Group, dating and social entertainment, as Lawrence explains: “NextDate is an example of gamifying the dating app experience for livestreaming video. It lets anyone be the star of their own dating show by doing two-minute speed dates. The creator must then decide whether to pass on them and hit “next” or to hit “date” while their audience watches. More than 50 million dating games are played in a year.”
To keep track of her most beloved streamers and shows, Liza follows her favorites on the app. She gets notified as soon as one of them goes live or starts a show. Just now a notification appears on her screen: “Foreign Mami is live.” Foreign Mami is one of Tagged’s most successful streamers. This also is a specialty of ParshipMeet Group: By creating its talent community from scratch, the company now has creators in its portfolio that are strongly committed to the platform. The company invests into the community to attract and retain talent. “We have a dedicated talent team with more than 30 employees who recruit new creators, identify and promote home-grown organic talent, and train and coach creators to ensure they are getting the most they can from the platform and building a strong community. We work hard to retain our creators by helping them create featured shows and developing new tools for them to use. Additionally, we use sophisticated AI and a full-time team of over 500 human moderators to monitor livestreams proactively for safety reasons,” Sean Lawrence says. In 2021, over six million creators were active, sharing their lives and passions with their community in The Meet Group’s Live network which includes The Meet Group’s apps as well as its vPaaS partners. By putting the creators in the center of its streaming universe, ParshipMeet Group taps into a trend that we have been seeing on other platforms for a long time – and that ProSiebenSat.1 has been harnessing with its digital media and entertainment company Studio71 as well: the creator economy. The creator economy which monetizes creators and social influencers is estimated to be a USD 100+ billion market today. The Meet Group’s Live creators produce nearly 200,000 hours of livestreaming content every day, and the community watches 1 billion minutes of livestreaming content every month across the Live network of owned-and-operated and vPaaS partners, earning both the group and its creators money.
One of them is the London-based streamer ForeignMami: She enjoys make-up and shares her beauty knowledge on Tagged. The London-based creator used the app to build up a loyal community – and to fulfil one of her dreams: “Being on Tagged helped explode my business in makeup. With the support of my community, I was able to launch my own beauty products, including the Streamer Heat eye shadow palette, which was featured by British Vogue.” Foreign Mami has earned over 47 million diamonds on the app – an in-app measure of the number and value of virtual gifts she has received from her dedicated viewers. In a busy stream, giving a virtual gift is a great way to stand out and get the attention of the creator as well as support the content they are creating. This gamification approach is a powerful engine for driving monetization. Liza uses gifts to show her appreciation: When she really likes a streamer’s content, she usually buys a gift for the creator – pink unicorns, colorful castles or funny-faced plants are some of her favorites. The virtual gifts on the platform range in value from about USD 0.05 to over USD 1,000 and are monetized both for the company as well as for the creator – creating a margin-strong revenue stream. But just like dating, livestreaming video is a people business: The active users create the experience on the apps – and they can find way more than just love, as Foreign Mami sums up: “As much as it is a dating app, you don’t always have to message someone and flirt your way to their hearts. I see so many people connecting beyond love and relationships on Tagged, which is amazing.”
As much as it is a dating app, you don’t always have to message someone and flirt your way to their hearts. I see so many people connecting beyond love and relationships on Tagged, which is amazing.
Streamer
Quiz
In the live video streams of the ParshipMeet Group’s social media apps, users can buy their favorite streamers token virtual gifts, ranging from pink unicorns to small flowers. How much does the most expensive gift cost?
Correct! Viewers can bestow virtual gifts valued between USD 0.05 and 1,000 on streamers. The gifts not only add a playful element to livestreams but also monetize them. Both the streamer and the company receive a share of the proceeds from this high-margin business.
Unfortunately not correct! Viewers can bestow virtual gifts valued between USD 0.05 and 1,000 on streamers. The gifts not only add a playful element to livestreams but also monetize them. Both the streamer and the company receive a share of the proceeds from this high-margin business.
SALES
“Total Video based on CFlight” – maximizing reach with full comparability
A contact is not just a contact. What sounds like a strange question at first has been a longstanding concern for advertising customers. While TV commercials air with sound from beginning to end, it’s often enough for a digital video ad to display for just two seconds, sometimes even on mute, to be considered successfully served. Since the requirements for TV and digital exposures are often very different, it is virtually impossible to make comparisons across media. Considering how high-impact video campaigns are increasingly served across different media, this can present a real challenge. With “Total Video based on CFlight”, Germany’s first fully integrated advertising product, ProSiebenSat.1 Group’s sales company Seven.One Media has found a solution that not only makes cross-media video campaigns more measurable but, even more importantly, ensures that they reach the desired target groups to optimum effect.
Advertisers wishing to run their video campaigns on both TV and digital formats notably with a view to tapping into younger target groups dream of maximizing reach despite increasingly fragmented media use. Together with licensor Sky Media, Seven.One Media’s CFlight concept is offering the German-speaking advertising market transparent standards for top-quality, cross-media campaigns for the first time. Video ads must not only be viewed and heard in their entirety but also served to the correct target group in order to be regarded as billable impressions. In line with this quality concept, “Total Video based on CFlight” ensures that advertising customers’ TV and digital campaigns are truly comparable, enjoy the highest media quality, achieve maximum reach and deliver their full impact.
Following the launch of this innovative solution in July 2021, the market was quick to recognize its advantages. Last September, the German DIY retail chain OBI was the first customer to book the fully integrated advertising product for its TV and digital campaign “1.000 Ideen – Was ist Deine?” (1,000 ideas. What’s yours?). “'Total Video based on CFlight' provided us with a very flexible method of serving our commercials across media and optimally reaching our target group,” says Benjamin Schulz-Adamos, Head of Media & Digital Marketing at OBI. Since OBI only paid for advertising exposures to the selected target group in keeping with CFlight’s premium media quality, the retail chain could count on “100 percent certainty in terms of costs and achieving the agreed quantitative and qualitative performance targets,” adds Schulz-Adamos. “As we see it, 'Total Video based on CFlight' is a logical step toward device-independent media planning.” Part of that is how easy booking is. Once OBI had predetermined a fixed number of exposures for the campaign period, Seven.One Media served the cross-media commercial on all the Group’s stations and digital channels, including Joyn and Studio71, until the defined exposure total had been reached.
That means “Total Video based on CFlight” not only combines numerous advantages for advertisers and their campaigns but also reunites target groups, bolsters TV’s complementary role especially for young target groups and guarantees that one exposure is just that.
For us, "Total Video based on CFlight" is a logical step toward device-independent media planning.
Head of Media & Digital Marketing at OBI
Seven.One AdFactory
“The silted bottles are a piece of German history.”
The images of the devastating floods in the Ahr valley get under your skin – huge expanses of water flow through the picturesque wine region and destroy everything in their path. The family of Daniel Koller, Director Strategy, Content & Creation of Seven.One AdFactory, which owns a guesthouse in the region, is also facing the ruins of their existence. A few days after the flood, Koller and the Seven.One AdFactory team initiate the Flutwein fundraising campaign together with local victims and other partners. In this interview, he explains how the idea for the campaign arose, how it was realized at AdFactory’s Creative House and why Flutwein has become a piece of German history.
A well-known German proverb says that one should make a virtue out of necessity. How did you come up with the idea for the Flutwein campaign?
Daniel Koller: The idea was simple. A few days after the flood, when the water receded, people in the region ventured back into their homes for the first time to take stock of the damage. My aunt sent me a photo of 300 mud-streaked wine bottles, all neatly lined up. That was all they could save. Immediately it was clear that this can be seen through the entire Ahr valley. The idea was to unite the independent businesses of the wine industry and to make the wine that was no longer saleable the core of a fundraising campaign as a symbolic thank you. In this way, we combined the two things people now associated with the Ahr valley – the floods and wine. Only hours later, I spoke with my colleagues at AdFactory, who were instantly on board. The very next day, the idea and thus the basic framework of the Flutwein campaign was in place.
How did you realize the campaign?
Daniel Koller: That was all done at our Creative House, which is a kind of full-service creative agency under the umbrella of Seven.One AdFactory, where we work across platforms and formats. We are strategy, creation, digital and production experts and want to tell stories with our campaigns. At Flutwein, it’s the bottle itself that does just that – because it is not only the protagonist, but also a witness to this devastating night of flooding. These silted bottles are a piece of German history. They are unique and have a certain contrast. Thus, on the one hand, we present the “original silted” wine in the advertising materials as a desirable, artistic object. On the other hand, we show the unbelievable destruction of the night of the flood and, for example, use the original audio in the commercial, featuring sirens, rushing water and the victims’ screams. In this way, Flutwein appeals to people on a creative level and also touches their hearts. At the same time, we drew on typical wine jargon with expressions such as “leaves a bitter aftertaste in the mouth.” In just one week, we produced the entire campaign with spots, posters and social media assets. Normally, something like this takes weeks or even months. The quick realization was only possible because we have direct lines of communication in Creative House, a strong network within the Group, and we were joined by other external partners such as startnext and WallDecaux.
In just one week, we produced the entire campaign. The quick realization was only possible because we have direct lines of communication in Creative House and a strong network within the Group.
Director of Strategy, Content & Creation at Seven.One AdFactory
What have you achieved with Flutwein?
Daniel Koller: Tourism and the wine industry are the Ahr valley’s economic lifeblood, but the flood destroyed hundreds of small family businesses. The strategy behind the Flutwein fundraising initiative was to draw the attention of the media to those businesses’ rebuilding activities and to position the region as a tourist wine destination in the long-term. And I think we succeeded because the campaign went around the world for months. The remarkable donation amount of EUR 4.5 million, which went directly to the donation account of a non-profit organization, founded by the local vintners and associations, makes Flutwein to the biggest crowdfunding campaign ever carried out in Germany. We are especially proud of the almost 50,000 supporters whose contributions are showing solidarity with those affected by the floods. What’s most rewarding for me personally: the realization that something like this is possible in our society is actually the greatest thing!
How does this campaign exemplify the work of Creative House?
Daniel Koller: Flutwein was one of the first campaigns of the new Creative House and shows very well what this units stand for: effective strategies, creative excellence, great flexibility and high speed – and that regardless of the size of the project, its genre and the client. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the idea of creating a kind of full-service agency, because the market increasingly demands fast and creative solutions. What’s more, Creative House addresses highly relevant social topics. In addition to Flutwein, this is also evident in many other projects, such as the #machdichlaut (speakup) campaign created for Weisser Ring, an association which helps people that are affected by crimes. The efficiency behind of these campaigns combined with our proximity to the Entertainment sector are optimal prerequisites here.
Studio71
The youth demographic’s brightest stars: Influencer power around the globe
They are young and at home in the digital world. Influencers are not just huge stars to those in young target groups but also partners no company can do without anymore. Whether serving as the figurehead for a campaign encouraging first-time voters to go to the polls in Germany’s 2021 federal elections, the face of mass-market products ranging from pizza to coloring books, or providing testimonials for socially relevant initiatives: influencers are some of the most compelling brand ambassadors of our time. Studio71 boasts one of the world’s largest rosters of the most popular social media stars with the broadest reach. Within ProSiebenSat.1 Group, the global digital media and entertainment company specializes in creating, producing, distributing and marketing digital content on a global scale – usually in collaboration with its influencers. From its offices in the US, Canada, UK and Germany, Studio71 distributes content from thousands of creators across various global platforms, including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat, on a daily basis. Nowadays, influencer marketing is important to any brand seeking to reach a young demographic or to use social media as a key marketing channel. In fact, not only companies but also institutions work with Studio71: An influencer campaign specially conceptualized and produced for Germany’s Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb) around musician and Studio71 artist Eko Fresh informed young first-time voters about election manifestos in the fall of 2021 as part of the German parliamentary polls. Studio71 has also worked for German ministries, including the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth
Adam Boorstin
Co-CEO of Studio71 International
“In 2021, we were able to scale and adapt our business for the multi-platform media landscape to ensure long-term success. In North America alone, we now publish video content from hundreds of creators that generates up to 13 billion views each month across social video platforms. We also have an in-house production division that produces thousands of original videos annually as well as a podcast studio that releases over 100 different podcasts each week. To tie it together, our multi-platform sales division sells advertisements across our video and audio content to maximize revenue for both our talent network as well as our own digital properties.”
Matt Crowley
Co-CEO of Studio71 International
“In 2022, Studio71’s US and German teams will collaborate closely as we expand partnerships with global platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat and Tik Tok. Studio71 creators serve millions of fans in both English-language territories as well as in Germany, and we are excited to continue growing audience reach and revenue opportunities for talent internationally.”
Katharina Frömsdorf
CEO of Studio71 Germany
“Studio71 is the leading digital media and entertainment company in Germany, too. Thanks to ProSiebenSat.1 Group’s closely interlocking structure, the influencers in our network enjoy excellent content and business opportunities – from TV integration through marketing to individual artist support. In Germany, we are the first address for influencer marketing and offer customized concepts with a focus on youth demographics. We reach this target group on a daily basis via our major (TV) brands as well as through our social media and YouTube creators and artists. By virtue of our networked approach – above all within Seven.One Entertainment Group – we create increasingly profitable synergies between our Licensing, Artist Management and Podcasts divisions. That means we can put together an even more attractive package for our artists and customers. Considering our multinational reach and the synergies between our teams around the world, we are in a position to build truly global partnerships with YouTube and other video platforms going forward. From this basis, we intend to roll out new projects and business ideas on a global scale with a view to offering our international talent added value.”
