Natan EdelsburgThe Dodo, the digital media brand for animal people, is having a big year. The Group Nine Media owned brand is developing it’s video content both digitally and on linear. The investment in content is paying off as their numbers continue to grow and a partnership with Animal Planet starts to broaden their audience.
Found Remote interviewed The Dodo President YuJung Kim about their video expansion, growth numbers and Spanish-language channel El Dodo.
Found Remote: How is The Dodo programming on Facebook Watch?
YuJung Kim: We were thrilled to be chosen as one of Facebook’s launch partners for Watch last summer. Watch was our first foray into developing longer form content and it’s enabled us to continue to tell the meaningful stories that The Dodo’s community knows to expect from us, but in a deeper way. Our fans are really loving our new shows!
FR: How is it different than other video platforms?
YK: Our Watch presence is an extension of the Facebook experience that we deliver for our 17M followers everyday. What’s really interesting with Watch is that we’re able to build new communities of deeply engaged audiences specifically around The Dodo’s Watch show pages. Our Odd Couples show page has amassed nearly 2M followers in just three months.
FR: What are the key shows on FB Watch?
YK: So far, we’ve launched five shows specifically for Watch including Comeback Kids: Animal Edition, Odd Couples, Pittie Nation and more, which have made us the no. 1 media publisher on the platform.
Comeback Kids: Animal Edition is one of the most successful shows on Watch with over 140M views and over 164M minutes watched (Source: Facebook Insights).
We’re proud to have:
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3 of the top 5 shows on the entire platform for shares/episode and engagements/episode (Source: CrowdTangle)
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3 of the top 6 shows on the entire platform for views/episode (Source: CrowdTangle)
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The top 3 shows in the Animal category (Source: CrowdTangle)
FR: The Dodo is going linear, what are the plans?
YK: We just announced our first TV series, Dodo Heroes, premiering on Animal Planet later this year. This marks Group Nine’s first expansion into linear and Discovery Communication’s first TV partnership with a digital-first brand. Dodo Heroes is a 6-episode hour-long TV series that explores the personalities and emotions of both humans and animals while highlighting their unique connections.
FR: Why did you decide to invest in linear? What are the goals?
YK: Our goal generally is to tell inspiring stories across all the platforms where audiences live. With Dodo Heroes, we’re aiming to reach the massive TV audience, while continuing to build upon The Dodo brand.
FR: Anything else?
YK:
Couple of interesting stats to share:
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2.4B total monthly video views (Source: Dec. 2017 Internal platform analytics including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat and Instagram)
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#1 most loved page/publisher on Facebook (Source: internal via CrowdTangle for December)
We recently launched our first non-English presence with our new Spanish language channel, El Dodo:
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Rapid audience growth — 643K followers since the launch of the Facebook page two months ago (Source: Facebook Insights)
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Strong presence in Latin America — 40% of audience based in Mexico, with 55% of the audience coming from other countries in the region (Argentina, Colombia, Peru) (Source: Facebook Insights)
Adam Flomenbaum
