In this episode of The Future of Consumer Marketing, host Roman Kirsch interviews Nelly Voukaki, Co-Founder and Chief Customer Officer at Looper Insights. Looper Insights revolutionized how major entertainment studios track and optimize their content placement across streaming platforms, connected devices, and digital storefronts. Starting from a compliance problem in transactional stores, Nelly and her team built a platform that monitors pricing, availability, and merchandising placement for thousands of titles across 30+ countries and multiple platforms. Through innovative hardware solutions that mimic human behavior to track connected TV interfaces, they provided studios with unprecedented visibility into how their content competes for attention in the streaming ecosystem.

Topics Discussed:

• Building a technical solution to solve content compliance and placement tracking across streaming platforms

• Creating hardware solutions that mimic human behavior to monitor connected TV interfaces

• Developing weighted share of voice metrics to assign dollar values to editorial placements

• Correlating content placement data with performance metrics to optimize marketing spend

• Navigating the shift from editorial to algorithmic content placement on streaming platforms

• Understanding the competitive landscape of content merchandising across different streaming services

• Leveraging AI and data analytics to optimize content marketing strategies

Lessons For Consumer Marketers:

Invest in Quality Technical Infrastructure from Day One

Nelly learned the hard way that going cheap on developers costs double in the long run. Her team initially chose an offshore development shop that delivered slow, buggy code, requiring a complete rebuild. The lesson: find developers who understand both technical requirements and business context, even if they cost more upfront.

Include Technical Teams in Customer Discovery The best developers

Nelly worked with had business acumen and wanted to understand how their code impacted customers. By showing developers customer demos and feedback sessions, she found they became more motivated and contributed valuable product ideas. Technical teams perform better when they understand the business impact of their work.

Track Competitive Intelligence Systematically

Studios were completely blind to competitor placement strategies across streaming platforms. Looper Insights created competitive intelligence dashboards showing how competitors were being merchandised, what promotional opportunities were available, and how to negotiate better editorial placements. This data-driven approach to competitive analysis gave studios negotiating power.

Correlate Placement Investment with Performance Metrics

The breakthrough insight was connecting placement spend with actual viewing performance. By creating weighted share of voice metrics and assigning dollar values to editorial placements, studios could correlate their marketing investments with streaming performance and optimize their spend toward the most effective placements.

Optimize for Algorithmic Discovery Early

With platforms moving from 95% editorial to 95% algorithmic placement, metadata quality becomes crucial for content discovery. Studios that invest in sophisticated metadata strategies and understand how algorithms surface content will have a significant advantage as human editorial placement disappears.

Don’t Neglect Smaller Platform Partners

While everyone focuses on Samsung, Netflix, and other major players, smaller platforms are often “thirstier” and more willing to provide prominent placement opportunities. Nelly found that emerging TV brands and streaming services offered better marketing opportunities and were more collaborative partners.

Build Cross-Platform Campaign Strategies

Studios with multiple distribution channels (streaming, download, theatrical) often had internal teams competing against each other rather than coordinating holistic campaigns. The most successful content marketing happened when all distribution channels worked together rather than optimizing for individual channel metrics.

Use AI to Connect Data Points Across Complex Systems

With millions of data points across platforms, regions, and timeframes, AI becomes essential for connecting performance with placement. Agentic AI can help marketers answer complex questions like “Did Wonder Woman perform well on Samsung TV yesterday, and did it drive Max subscriptions?” without requiring data science expertise.