TechBytes with Guillaume Clement, Chief Product Officer, Dailymotion

Guillaume Clement
Chief Product Officer, Dailymotion

By the end of 2017, 2.6 billion social network users will have been exposed to an average of 32 videos. By 2020, mobile video will generate more than 75% of mobile data traffic by 2021. However, video marketing and advertising technologies haven’t evolved much in the last two years, even as programmatic and intelligent content discovery platforms continue to grow at scale. Increasingly stringent brand safety and transparency standards to protect advertiser interests could disrupt the video content experience.  To understand how brands should build a video-focused mobile-first business landscape, we spoke to Guillaume Clement, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Dailymotion.

MTS: Tell us about your role at Dailymotion and the team you handle.
Guillaume Clement: I lead the product and technology realms of the business as a hybrid Chief Product & Technology Officer. At our company these two units reside within the same umbrella, since our player technology is what powers our broader video discovery platform. Dailymotion is a technology company first and foremost, and that’s a great competitive advantage for us as compared to other video destinations.

Specifically, my global team includes engineers, product managers, and product marketers spanning all aspects of product: from our best-in-class player technology, to streaming and hosting tools and services, which include livestreaming and 360-degree video.

MTS: How have premium video discovery platforms evolved in the last two years?
Guillaume: The short answer is: not much, which is why we’ve revamped our entire user experience and created the best, most premium environment for discerning entertainment-seekers who are looking for a place to surface new content daily from the professional storytellers they love.

While user-generated videos are certainly a staple on the internet, our hypothesis is that affluent 25 to 49-year-olds prefer to consume content from publishers and brands they trust, and they do not want to wade through a stream of amateur videos to get these kinds of experiences. Whereas younger consumers are more conditioned to (and frankly, have more time to) curate their own experiences, consumers 25 and older are looking for curated, personalized content experiences from trusted publishers—and that’s what we’re providing.

Also Read: Why Video is Your Safest Platform to Increase B2B Sales Opportunities

MTS: In an era of brand safety and ad fraud, how should video sharing platforms instill trust among publishers and networks?
Guillaume: Brand safety is on the mind of nearly every marketer and was perhaps the biggest buzzword among brands and advertisers in 2017. Our movements with regard to brand safety have been proactive, rather than reactive, and we have been sowing the seeds of our new experience long before advertisers began to put pressure on the major platforms.

Our strategic focus on trusted content from premium publishers (instead of user-generated content) means that brand advertising is placed within a safe and premium ecosystem, alongside some of the best storytellers on the web. It’s an equation that benefits all parties involved: advertisers, publishers, and users.

MTS: How does Dailymotion intend to maximize video consumption and drive sustained engagement?
Guillaume: We spent a long time on the product side thinking how we could create an optimal experience for our core target. The first big consideration was crafting a personalized experience that delivers on the unique tastes and interests of our individual users. This means providing suggested content based on what you’ve demonstrated as your interests, and also personalized methods for saving and organizing your videos within a library.

A second consideration was discovery, and as you’ll see in the new app, our experience is tailored to lean-back experiences—those daily instances in which you’re seeking entertainment or information from trusted sources. Within our new “Explore” tab, users can browse trending topics and channels via an endless feed of videos from great publishers like VICE, CNN, BBC, Bloomberg, Cheddar, and Genius among others.

Also Read: 5 Ways to Disrupt Video Marketing in 2017

MTS: How do you prepare for a mobile-first business landscape?
Guillaume: We’ve invested heavily in creating a mobile app that delivers on consumers’ expectations when it comes to video content. The app features an intuitive UI that prioritizes what we call “lean back,” content experiences—that is, instances where viewers are seeking entertainment in a nonspecific fashion, rather than searching for a single piece of content.

For example, within the new app, a personalized “For You” tab pairs trusted content that’s relevant to a user’s unique tastes, and multiple explore features that make it easy to discover content that’s trending in the world around them. We’ve also created a library in which users can organize their favorite pieces of content, and even bookmark them to watch offline.

MTS: How deep is Dailymotion into Artificial Intelligence (AI)/ Would you tell us more about your AI roadmap?
Guillaume: Artificial intelligence is certainly top of mind at Dailymotion, and we have teams exploring future uses cases for how we can leverage data to create even better consumer experiences on our platform. One way that we’re already doing this is through our algorithmic approach to personalization. Our users each engage in an onboarding process designed to learn their unique tastes and interests, and the more they use our platform (and the more content they engage with), the better we’re able to help them discover the content they love.

AI will also continue to be exceptionally powerful when it comes to ensuring creators’ rights are respected in our platform. We employ multiple tools and technologies to enforce our best in class standards for content. Once an issue is reported, we have the resources in place to remove all associated assets within two hours.

MTS: Thanks for chatting with us, Guillaume.
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