Barbara Sacchitiello
May 3, 2024 – 3:09 p.m.
Vicente Varella: “We are living in a very special moment, which is the beginning of the era without cookies. In this sense, the potential of content producers tends to be intense” (Credit: Disclosure)
For decades, executives in the advertising and media markets have become accustomed to measuring the reach of TV programs solely through data provided by audience research institutes.
Over the years, however, the logic of consumption is no longer linear, which has forced media outlets to seek new ways of knowing and understanding the public.
Building a database about the viewer’s journey has become as – or even more – valuable than traditional audience data. Better understanding when, how and what type of content a person consumes allows not only to design more targeted strategies but also to provide the advertising market with precise information about the target audience intended for a given campaign or action.
TV and digital: how does SBT want to structure programming in 2024?
This transition from a media vehicle to a sophisticated data and information center is the process for which SBT has been structuring itself. To this end, the company carried out a strategic move in March, when hire Vicente Varellaa professional with a long history in the media department of advertising agencies, to occupy the unprecedented position of director of operations and commercial development.
Varella himself recognizes that the most common movement is for media professionals to migrate to social platforms and not to communication vehicles classified as traditional. However, it was the vision of SBT as a multiplatform content production and distribution operation that led him to make the career move.
“All of the SBT content that is on television today is also on the app, on social media and other platforms. If we look at the number of people who interact with us, whether through consumption of content on TV or digital or even who comes to the broadcaster’s headquarters, watching recordings of attractions in caravans, we have a complete sociodemographic research, with the potential to be transformed into business for advertisers”, explains the director.
Content and data across all channels
The creation of the post occupied by Varella is an even more strategic move if the current context of SBT is considered. In the last two months, the vehicle has aired five new programs – Enough More, It’s Time, Tiru Circus, It’s All Ours and Sabadouin addition to reformulating SBT Brasil.
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“Innovating around 40% of the programming schedule in the same period is an audacious move”, says Varella, highlighting that the new features that the public will see on the small screen are the result of other changes, which have already been undertaken in the house for some time.
Since last year, SBT has been led by Daniela Beyruti, who took on the mission of reformulating the programming and business strategy of the broadcaster founded by her father, Silvio Santos. Amid these moves, the company changed its commercial and artistic leadership and invested in a series of hires to compose a cast that mixes strong names from open TV with personalities with great appeal on social media.
This new structured programming schedule for the year 2024 already reflects, according to Varella, the proposal to plan and distribute content on different fronts in a scenario where the producer now has an even more strategic business advantage. “We live in a very special moment, which is the beginning of the era without cookies. In this sense, the potential of content producers tends to be intense, as we have the possibility of working with audiences and audiences in a more targeted way, which brings new commercial possibilities to personalities”, he summarizes.
Varella adds that the company is beginning to look at its structures as thematic verticals, which include products – and also commercial projects – aimed at an audience that can consume them on different fronts. As an example, the executive cites SBT Sports, an area that brings together sports broadcasts that are currently part of SBT, such as the Copa Sudamericana and the UEFA Champions League, but which also encompasses the broadcaster’s sports profile on social media dedicated to to the topic.
“There are content fronts that have a strong power of engagement with content that will not necessarily fit into the linear channel, but that can be used on social networks or other digital media. I no longer see television as an end, but as part of a distribution ecosystem that can, through data that flows in a liquid way, deliver programming and also commercial content in an increasingly personalized way”, he defines.
