In today’s digital landscape, technology is finding a place in every aspect of a publisher’s daily workflow. More and more publishers are hiring tech teams, partnering with tech companies, or both in order to keep up with the constantly evolving needs of their digital audience. Understanding how technology works, and how it can be used to simplify, speed up, and improve processes, is now just as important as investing in new technologies in the first place.
The Wibbitz team has always been dedicated to providing ongoing education, support and transparency around our AI video platform. We’ve found that, by working directly with our partners, we’re able to ensure our technology generates as much value as possible for their digital video needs. That’s why we invited three of our premium French partners – Le Figaro’s Cédric Gerey, Le Parisien’s Anne De Kinkelin, and Lagardere’s Sébastien Petitjean Roget – to a day-long workshop at the Wibbitz R&D office in Tel Aviv, in order to show them all the ins and outs of the technology that’s been powering their video strategies.
Throughout the day, our parters had the chance to take a deep dive into the workings of our powerful AI platform with our CTO Uri and the rest of the development team; to pair up with Daniel, Morgane and Laura from our French editorial team to compete in a video creation challenge; to learn about the video advertising space from our monetization experts Milen and Roman; and to meet with our VP Product Yaron and the rest of the product team for a one-on-one feedback session. They left the workshop with some great takeaways (and videos) that they were happy to share with us:
Sébastien Petitjean Roget, Digital Video Manager at Lagardere
“Publishers’ core business activities are going through a heavily digital disruption phase. By understanding the inner workings of tech companies, publishers can learn how to move fast in a constantly evolving competitive and technological landscape. The level of complexity of tech in various aspects of publisher’s daily activities has drastically risen in the last couple years – from monetization with programmatic and so called AdTech, to marketing analysis of large data sets thanks to MarTech and IA solutions, to content distribution, and now, content creation with Wibbitz.
It’s no secret that print circulation is going down, and information consumption is now primarily happening online, with an audience fragmentation on distributed brand assets. Publishers use tech to grow their audience, to make users go to and stay on their websites, to monetize their inventory through adtech solutions, and now to distribute content at scale across multiple destinations to reach their audience wherever they are. But digital also provides a wonderful opportunity for publishers to reinvent the way they tell stories – whether that’s using video instead of text, providing immersive experiences through VR, or by broadcasting live breaking news events. Tech is a success enabler for publishers that are not afraid to try new things in order to innovate and connect with their audience.
We are very pleased to work with a partner that values our feedback and that has a constant open dialogue on how to make their product better for us. It was great to understand the perspective of every team, from Product, Editorial, Development to Monetization. I am impressed by how fast our feedback and new feature suggestions have been taken into implementation.”
Here is the video that Sébastien created with Laura from our French editorial team:
“It is important for media companies to interact with digital startups – to be in constant contact with market innovations, and to be increasingly aware of form, product and user experience. It is about understanding how the success of content also depends on its navigation, the way the information is presented, and the technologies that allow it to happen.
In order to be more efficient and fast in the processing of information, it is important for publishers to develop their own tools and technologies. It’s also important to invest in other products and tools that are autonomous and turnkey, perfectly adapted to our needs and able to evolve along with them. Technology has a large affect on a product’s performance and the experience of the user. It is not more important than the content, but it participates greatly and probably equally to the success of a site.
It was particularly rewarding to meet Wibbitz’s product managers and be able to present our operations and objectives in more detail, and explain our expectations and use cases more directly. I also appreciated being able to see how attentive the team was to our feedback, and our hopes for the future of the platform. It really gave me the impression that we’re co-constructing this product together.”
Check out this video Cédric created with our French editor Daniel:
Anne De Kinkelin, Head of Le Parisien TV
“The best way to succeed is to understand all levels of strategy – and tech is a part of it. It’s important to understand a tech partner’s way of thinking, and understand their technology’s use case, in order to create the best product together. All editors have same wishes: more views, more money, more watchtime, etc. Building a partnership between tech and editorial partnership is the best way to reach these goals and be as productive as possible.
When le Parisien partnered with Wibbitz two years ago, it was a real kiss and cry partnership. We shared both the risks and successes, experiences and goals, and really learned from one another. It was just cool to see the team two years after, and stronger than ever. The product workshop was also great – it’s amazing to be able to share an idea and see it developed within 10 minutes. I’m excited for all the new surprises that will come from Wibbitz within next year! All in all, I had an amazing time with the entire team, and I’m so proud to be a small part of it.”
And here is Anne and Morgane’s video creation:
Case Study: How Wibbitz Helps Legacy Publishers Transition into a Digital Video Brand |
Sophie Douillet, French Customer Success Manager at Wibbitz
“It was a great experience to host our leading French partners in Tel Aviv for the first time. We set up different workshops with each of the teams, to give our partners a bigger picture of our technology’s vision. Our goal was to better understand their expectations and desires about the video market developments we’re facing. We want to support them in their video strategies and anticipate changes, grow, learn and work together. We also want to constantly improve the communication between our different teams in order to improve our exchanges and work even faster and more productively. Beyond the professional setting, we spent great moments together that solidified our partnerships even more.”
The Wibbitz Tech Workshop in action:
And after the workshop, was the Wibbitz Roaring Twenties Bash!