Earlier this month, Dutch video agency team5pm acquired Lijm Amsterdam, a social media agency. The acquisition sees team5pm continue to evolve from a YouTube agency into a specialist in creating branded content for TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat.
team5pm was founded in 2018 by former RTL employees who saw the direction of travel (and ad spend) away from TV and towards YouTube. Since then the company has grown close to 150 staff across Amsterdam, Stockholm and Warsaw, moved into content production, and (most importantly) earned itself a European Video Award in 2022.
VideoWeek asked Jelmer Wind, Co-Founder & CEO at team5pm, about the agency’s approach to branded content, its use of data to inform creative, and the shifting social video landscape.
How is the shift from TV to online video changing branded content?
TV companies are still using branded content but often by producing influencer-driven series, in which they combine their brands with the audiences of the platforms that already have audiences. A really important shift is that the brands themselves now have their own channels where they are creating their series – or in our case, a lot of ‘how to’ content where they are helping their potential consumer by focusing on something that has a relation to their product or service. So the way those brands are looking at branded content is changing compared to the TV world, where it was always related to entertainment, more or less.
Is there scope for broadcasters to produce more content for social platforms?
What we’re seeing now in the Netherlands is that broadcasters are withdrawing a bit from social platforms. They still use them a lot in terms of the extension of their TV programmes, to reach audiences not only on Friday night, but seven days a week. But a real strategy in which they’re going to attract new audiences and connect them with brands on TV is a bit dead to be honest, in the Netherlands.
RTL has quite a big streaming service, and the effort on their digital side is moving to a streaming platform, which I think is logical because you can connect your free social with your paid subscription. And I think that’s one of the next big battles. Because the streaming platforms like Amazon and Netflix are all adding commercial propositions. And that’s one of the bets that we’re making at team5pm, that a lot of TV spend is going to move to streaming platforms and YouTube even more.
What kind of data do you use to inform creative?
Using data from YouTube, Google, Tik Tok, allows us to really see what people are looking for and what intention they have, and specifically what kind of content they want to see. Data can tell us if you want to reach this audience with this brand association, you should create these kinds of formats, because that’s what the audiences want.
We started five years ago by collecting search behaviour on YouTube, so search volumes, competition channels that other people in the target audience are watching. And along the way, we built that into our own platform, TopicTree, which shows us all this human data, not biased by audiences but real data from 2 billion people actually watching on these platforms. And TopicTree allows us to see that data, not only on YouTube, but also Google and TikTok and Pinterest, so we can make a complete scan of the trends, what are people watching in certain countries. And we combine that and deliver it to our creative teams, who can start creating campaigns or series or ‘how to’ content.
What insights into viewing behaviour can you derive from different video platforms?
I think the main metric for YouTube is watch time; the attention that your video is generating amongst the audience. On YouTube, you easily get five to six minutes that someone is watching your video on average, on an eight-minute video. So the attention and the quality time that you have with your potential consumer is really big. Obviously, the time spent on TikTok with your message is way shorter. So you get different KPIs. And what we often see is a lot of Gen Z and Millennial audiences are using short-form to discover long-form. So we always make sure that our long-form is the basis of our producttion, because that’s where we get the most time spent. And we use a lot of the short-form platforms to attract viewers and to get them aware of the things we’re doing in other places.
Do you adapt long-form content into short-form assets, or produce separate assets for each platform?
We do both. Amazon Prime Video is a big client for us. For them, we create tailor-made content for the platforms, but we also use their trailers that they send us for new title launches. And we repurpose them and make them ready in a slightly different storyline for the platform that we’re playing it out on. We also work for big sports brands that have their long-form content on YouTube. So, from an hour, we can make shorts of 30 seconds that are telling the story of an hour, only in a different form and at a different speed.
Do clients have concerns around brand safety on YouTube?
We help our clients manage and create content for their brand channels, and most of the content is search driven. If potential consumers want to find out how to repair their roof, that’s something people are using YouTube for massively, because they want to see a video of that, they don’t want to read text anymore. So we create a video about how to repair the roof, optimise it and make sure that it is ranking highly on YouTube and in Google, so the potential consumer will use that video and go to the brand’s DIY store to get the right tools. That whole process is completely controlled and completely brand safe, because you’re creating the content yourself.
In the past where YouTube was not brand-safe, the problem was placing ads on the platform, which could be a bit sketchy around where your ads will be shown. And a lot of brands had a problem with the fact that their ads were shown on channels where you don’t want to associate yourself. I think today it is way better. You have a lot of setups from YouTube, but also from companies offering more tech solutions to help them, or companies like us that are doing advertising management and putting the ads on specific sites. So you’re creating the filter in which you make sure that it’s only shown in brand-safe channels.
Is the prospect of a TikTok ban a concern to your business?
It doesn’t concern us because I’m pretty sure that if they ban TikTok, something else will pop up. Although we’re profiling ourselves as a YouTube or TikTok or social agency to help clients find us, the way we work and the set of teams we have are all based around video, and the platform where we’re actually playing our video is not that important in the end. Even if TikTok is not banned and the hype is over in two years, there will be another platform. So I think it’s just the dynamic of the market that we’re working in.
How are you using AI at team5pm?
We’re doing a lot with AI internally already. We have one client who have changed their logo and their products. We previously made ‘how to’ content for them, but now they want to show off their new logo. Two years ago we would have produced the complete series again. Now we’re running an AI script over it, and are able to not only repurpose the videos with all the new logos and with all the new products, but we’re also able to synchronise it in three or four different languages.
I think we haven’t seen anything yet, because especially in the video domain, when it comes to editing a lot of assets, using AI will be common practice for our team within half a year. I think it’s not going to take over what we do, only it’s going to make a lot of what we do way easier. So the setup of your agency will be way more about how you control AI and what you’re doing with it.
