‘We’re watching the war’: Tubi hits growth spurt, but isn’t part of the streaming wars, CMO Nicole Parlapiano says

“I feel like we’re watching the war,” she said. “The relationship in entertainment [between streaming platforms], which took me a lot to understand was, we’re not all at war because we all need each other in a way.”

On the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Parlapiano shares her perspective on the so-called streaming wars, pitching Tubi’s multicultural viewers and the streaming platform’s growth track.

Below are highlights from the conversation, which have been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Tubi’s place in the streaming wars

We are in a category of our own in that way. A lot of people like to put us in the same grouping with the other free streamers. But our product experience is so different because the Roku and Pluto [platforms], all the linear, FAST channels, it’s not really VOD viewing. Then the other comparisons are being drawn to the other ad-supported tiers. At Amazon and Netflix, people are still paying to watch ads, but it is also very different. I’ve seen the war. Some people are winning and some people, it’s been a rough go. It’s been hard on the industry as a whole. We have a lot of empathy for everybody. There’s certain things, like people getting into the ad-supported game that are actually good for the whole business because dollars need to shift out of certain channels and into streaming. I don’t think there is a war anymore and I think we were kind of always like the country that was on the war border that was like, “Do you need us to buy some of this stuff?”

Converting eyeballs into ad dollars

When you’re trying to think about where to put your media dollars, you’re looking for scale. When you’re talking about an ad-supported audience, the size of ours, when it comes to reaching millennials, Gen Alpha and Gen Z, we are second to YouTube, in terms of an ad-supported audience. As some of the streamers have added ad-supported tiers, they’re not necessarily at the scale that it makes sense for your business just yet. You can get that scale on Tubi. Those audiences are interesting and we understand them. For brands that either haven’t been as focused or don’t understand the value — especially of younger, multicultural, female audiences. Those are the biggest supporters and advocates of brands and culture. That is where culture lives.

Pitching a multicultural audience

It’s kind of crazy that we still have that in a box. It is your core marketing. At this point, 54% of people under 30 are non-white. Shouldn’t that just be your general market strategy? Do we have to put it in a box with a budget over there? There’s just a lot of misconceptions. This is something that our agency, Worthi, has really helped us with, is understanding that these are underestimated audiences. This is not, “Put it over there and see how it does.” This is a business growth and it’s a business impact opportunity. At Tubi, that’s how we have gotten to where we’ve gotten, because we’ve leaned in there.