A CTV or streaming platform's website has to serve agency buyers researching measurement methodology and subscribers researching what to watch tonight – often in the same week, sometimes on the same page. Winston Francois builds content programs that split those audiences cleanly instead of blending them into copy that serves neither one.
Why CTV Content Programs Underperform
Advertiser-education content and subscriber content get written by the same team with no separation
A platform's content team is often asked to produce a benchmark report for media planners in the same sprint as a 'best shows to watch in October' listicle for subscribers. Those two pieces have different keywords, different tone, different distribution channels, and different success metrics. When one editorial calendar tries to serve both, the advertiser content reads too promotional for agency buyers and the subscriber content reads too corporate for viewers. Neither audience gets what it came for.
Research reports get built once and never reused for analyst relations
Most CTV platforms that publish a benchmark report – ad load tolerance, completion rates, household reach by device – treat it as a one-time PR push and move on. The same underlying data, packaged correctly and pitched directly to the analysts who cover CTV at eMarketer, Omdia, and MoffettNathanson, becomes the primary source those firms cite in the reports agency buyers actually read before they commit budget. Skipping that step means a platform did the research work and left the highest-leverage distribution channel – being the cited source in someone else's report – on the table.
Subscriber-facing SEO is competing against sites built entirely to rank, not to stream
JustWatch, Reelgood, and a long list of streaming-guide sites exist for one purpose: rank for 'where to watch X' and 'is X on Netflix' queries. They publish faster, cover more titles, and update more frequently than a platform's own content team ever will, because content production is their entire business model instead of a marketing line item.
Executives have opinions worth a byline but no pipeline that gets them into Adweek or Digiday
CTV measurement, identity resolution, and ad load are genuinely contested topics right now, and a platform's CMO or Chief Revenue Officer usually has a real position on them from sitting in enough advertiser conversations. That position rarely turns into a bylined piece in AdExchanger or a quoted response to a Digiday reporter's question, because nobody owns the process of turning an executive's Tuesday-afternoon opinion into a pitched op-ed or a standing relationship with the three or four reporters who actually cover this beat. The opinion exists. The distribution pipeline for it doesn't.
How We Build Content Programs for CTV and Streaming Platforms
We start by mapping the domain, not the content calendar.
On the advertiser-education side, the core deliverable is a research and benchmark program – not a one-off report, but a recurring cadence (typically quarterly) covering the metrics your buyers and the analysts covering CTV both care about: ad load tolerance, completion rates, household reach by device type, identity match rates.
On the subscriber side, we don't try to out-publish JustWatch or Reelgood at their own game – we pick a narrower set of queries where being the platform of record actually matters and build those out properly instead of spreading a small content team thin.
Thought leadership is built as a pipeline, not a one-time push – we identify which executive has a genuinely defensible point of view on a live industry debate and build the submission process and reporter relationships that turn it into placements.
Distribution gets built into the plan from day one, not bolted on after content ships. Advertiser-education content routes through your sales team, trade press relationships, and analyst outreach. Subscriber content routes through the app, on-platform placements, and SEO. Different channels for different content, tracked separately.
Measurement follows the same split. Advertiser-side content gets measured against pipeline influence and analyst citations – did the benchmark report show up in a media plan or an eMarketer footnote.
What we deliver
- Dual-audience content architecture – separate keyword, tone, and distribution plans for advertiser-education content and subscriber-facing content
- Quarterly research and benchmark report program – ad load, completion rate, reach, and identity match data packaged for both buyer education and analyst pitching
- Analyst relations pitch calendar – direct outreach to the eMarketer, Omdia, and comparable analysts who cite platform data in reports agency buyers read
- Subscriber SEO content plan focused on queries where the platform is the authoritative source, not queries dominated by streaming-guide sites
- Executive thought leadership pipeline – byline placement in AdExchanger, Digiday, and Adweek, plus a maintained relationship list with beat reporters
The mistake isn't writing too little content. It's writing one version of content for two audiences who have nothing in common except that they both landed on your domain. Split the architecture first – everything else about a CTV content program gets easier once advertiser education and subscriber content stop competing for the same editorial calendar.
Our Methodology
Winston Francois content engagements for CTV platforms run a 90-day build, then move to an ongoing production cadence. The first 30 days are the audit and architecture split – reviewing what content already exists, mapping it against advertiser-buyer research behavior versus subscriber search behavior, and deciding what belongs on which side of the domain. We also inventory what research or usage data the platform already has that could support a benchmark report, since most platforms have more usable data internally than they realize.
Days 30 to 60 build the first research report and the initial subscriber content set in parallel, along with the analyst and trade-press contact list for pitching both. The report gets built to hold up under scrutiny from a media planner or an analyst fact-checking it before citing it – vague benchmark claims get flagged and either sourced properly or cut.
Days 60 to 90 are distribution and activation – pitching the report to analysts and trade press, publishing the subscriber content set, and briefing your executives on the thought leadership pipeline including which reporters to expect outreach from and how pitch decisions get made. After the initial 90 days, the program moves to a standing quarterly research cadence and an ongoing subscriber content production schedule, because both a stale benchmark report and a frozen SEO content set lose value fast in a category that moves as quickly as CTV does.
How We Work
The first 30 days are almost entirely audit and planning, and we don't start production before the architecture split is agreed with your marketing and sales leadership – building advertiser and subscriber content on a shared, unsplit calendar is the single most common failure mode we see walking into these engagements, and fixing it after the fact costs more than getting it right up front.
We work with your marketing, sales, and data teams because the research report program depends on all three – data provides the underlying numbers, sales validates what advertisers are actually asking about, and marketing owns the pitch and distribution. For the thought leadership pipeline, we work directly with the executives who will be quoted, prepping them for reporter conversations rather than just drafting copy in their name.
Production runs on a monthly cadence once the initial build is complete – a mix of subscriber content, advertiser-education pieces, and ongoing analyst and trade-press pitching. We report monthly on both tracks separately, because a program that blends advertiser pipeline metrics with subscriber engagement metrics into one dashboard makes it impossible to tell which side of the content program is actually working.
Engagements typically run 6 months initially to cover one full research report cycle plus enough subscriber content production to show SEO movement, with ongoing quarterly programs after that as the research cadence and content calendar continue.
- Analyst citations – platform data referenced in eMarketer, Omdia, or comparable third-party reports that agency buyers read during evaluation
- Trade press placements – bylines and quoted commentary in AdExchanger, Digiday, and Adweek tied to a specific executive
- Advertiser-education pipeline influence – benchmark and research content that shows up in sales conversations with agency and brand buyers
- Subscriber content ranking and engagement – organic visibility and on-platform engagement for the specific query set the platform targets, rather than head-on competition with streaming-guide sites
If your ctv / connected tv company needs content marketing leadership, we should talk.
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Frequently asked questions
How much does a content marketing engagement cost for a CTV or streaming company?
Content marketing engagements for CTV platforms at Winston Francois typically run $10K to $25K per month, covering the research and benchmark report program, subscriber content production, and analyst and trade-press outreach. Cost scales mainly with how many research reports you want per year and how much subscriber content volume you need – a platform running one flagship report annually costs less than one running a quarterly benchmark series.
How long before content marketing produces results for a CTV platform?
The first research report typically ships within 60 days and can generate trade press or analyst interest within weeks of the pitch, since a well-sourced CTV benchmark report is genuinely useful to reporters and analysts covering the category. Subscriber-facing SEO content moves on a slower clock – meaningful ranking and traffic changes usually show up in the 3 to 6 month range, consistent with SEO timelines generally.
Do you split advertiser-facing and subscriber-facing content, or run it as one program?
We split them structurally from day one – separate keyword targets, separate tone guidelines, and separate distribution channels for advertiser-education content versus subscriber content. Running both off a single editorial calendar is the most common reason CTV content programs underperform, because the two audiences have almost nothing in common in what they're searching for or how they judge whether a piece of content was worth their time.
Can you get our executives into Adweek, Digiday, or AdExchanger?
We build the pipeline that makes placements possible – identifying which executive has a genuinely defensible point of view on a live industry debate, developing pitchable angles tied to real news cycles, and maintaining direct relationships with the reporters who cover CTV measurement and identity closely. We can't guarantee a specific placement, since that call belongs to the publication, but a platform with no pitch process gets essentially zero placements, and that's the gap this closes.
How does research report content also help with analyst relations?
The same underlying data – ad load, completion rates, reach, identity match rates – serves both purposes when it's packaged correctly. We build the report to hold up as a source document, then pitch it directly to the analysts at firms like eMarketer and Omdia who write the reports agency buyers actually reference during budget decisions.
What type of CTV or streaming company is the right fit for this service?
This works best for platforms at $5M to $100M ARR with a real advertiser sales motion and, in most cases, a subscriber-facing product on the same domain – the split-architecture approach is built specifically for that dual-audience situation. A platform with no advertiser business, or one that's still pre-revenue on the ad side, should prioritize product and measurement validation before investing in a content program built around advertiser research and analyst relations.
