“The profile of the audience that watches Shudder—Audience+ is showing us what else they’re watching,” said Adlman. “We see those audiences pop up in other areas: watching movies on one of our linear networks or watching something on our FAST channels. We know what they’re watching now and we can size that audience and ‘addressably’ target that audience across all the platforms.”
AMC’s Content Room will also get a push during the media company’s upfront presentation. The branded content studio, which previously focused on short-form and digital-native content, will expand its most popular shows to run on linear and in long-form formats. “Show Me More”—a behind-the-scenes feature that’s paired with AMC’s popular series and includes shoppable capabilities for its “Killing Eve” edition last year—will now air after season finales on linear TV as well as digital assets. AMC announced that seven additional Content Room series are in development.
“[Content Room Originals] are all really built through the lens of partnership,” said Kim Granito, who was recently promoted to head of marketing at AMC. “So we know exactly what the categories are that we’re going to be targeting for them. We know who this is built perfectly for at the time of early development conversations.”
A six-part short-form series called “Night Island” merges the worlds of Anne Rice’s “Interview with the Vampire” and “The Queen of the Damned” which involves witches and vampires at a swanky island resort, with opportunities built in for luxury auto and alcoholic beverage brands, said Granito. The episodes of each Content Room series are flexible to the audience and can be short-form on social and long-form on linear as well.
Despite these bespoke offerings sounding like big bucks during a time of economic uncertainty, Kelleher said this year’s upfront offering is geared toward serving advertisers’ needs at any scale.
“We’re here to transact any way our partners want,” said Kelleher. “I think the level of sophistication is ratcheting up. ROI is being redefined, and it’s not just about spots and dots anymore and it’s not just what Nielsen spits back. I really think [advertisers] want to matter, they want engagement, they want to last and they want to hyper-target.”
