Wunderkind Success Story: Trusted Media Brands

Emily Christner, Chief Product Officer, Trusted Media Brands: TMB is the world's leading community driven entertainment destination. Our users come to us because they trust us. It's in our name, it's in our DNA, but when they come, they're part of a bigger community that makes them feel like they belong somewhere, that they can really connect with other people who have similar likes and interests.

Mike Richter: We as humans interact with content every single day for multiple needs, whether it be functionality, tools, education, entertainment. We have so many of those within our lifestyle and entertainment brands where we want to meet our fans, where and when they're in need of whatever that might be.

Emily Christner, Chief Product Officer, Trusted Media Brands: TMB is a really unique set of brands that span all kinds of different verticals. As we all know, media is a very fast changing business. We have needs that we need to meet very quickly often, and Wunderkind has proved to be a very flexible and dynamic partner when it comes to our changing needs, whether that's from a seasonal perspective, whether that's from an industry perspective, there's a lot of tools at our disposal so that we can deliver our users not only the best experience, but what it is that they need at that particular moment.

Mike Richter: Media distribution, media creation is not free. It's not free to write, it's not free to film, it's not free to produce, and nor is it free to distribute, but we want to be able to make it free for those to consume. In order to make that free for those to consume, we have to be able to support that with revenue driven opportunities. And that rose revenue driven opportunities can be through the forms of subscriptions should people feel inclined to pay for that, which Wunderkind helps us do signups by driving emails or newsletters and hopefully sales through those needs or through the realms of advertising. And when we're presented with those distractions, we want to make sure that user experience is the most useful experience in that moment.

Emily Christner, Chief Product Officer, Trusted Media Brands: Wunderkind's able to draw a line between what our users are doing on our sites, the types of information that we know about them, and to take that information and to be able to offer up a better experience, a better offer, so it ties into what we know about a particular user, so what their identity graph might be. And so when I think about Wunderkind I think about it being a flexible platform for us to be able to reach our users where they are when they are, and give them the message that will resonate the most with them in order to provide that value exchange where they're going to be willing to give us more information in return.

Mike Richter: Ooh, identity solutions. It's kind of like Oprah with cars. Everybody gets one. Every corner you turn, there's another identity solution. One of the unique things that we find with working with Wunderkind is where Wunderkind was born. Wunderkind was born on the e- comm and retail media side of that universe. The side of product and goods that we're advertising on our sites every single day. The breadth of audience that they've built through their identity solutions match with our audience solutions that we've built, creates a holistic and unique experience to meet that viewer and reader in the moment and provide them an opportunity of engagement for something they were either already in market for or might be in market for.

Emily Christner, Chief Product Officer, Trusted Media Brands: TMB has a wide swath of brands that reach over 250 million consumers, and so as you can imagine, there's a lot of different information that we can gather about our fans, our readers. And so while we know a little bit about a lot of people, there's some gaps that often need to be filled when we're looking to deliver the best content, the best messaging and a platform like Wunderkind can come in and help us fill some of those gaps. Particularly with the headwinds that we face in the industry today. It's very easy to be shortsighted to only look at revenue in the short- term. However, we believe that you have to really keep an eye on the long- term and the health of your users, and so it's always a balancing act of making sure that we're bringing in maximum revenue, but also providing the best experience for our users. It's not an easy thing oftentimes, but it's something that we're hyper- focused on at TMB and continue to evolve on all of the time.

Mike Richter: Silos work well in only one industry, farms. That's it. To a consumer, when they come to a media brand, that media brand is just that media brand. They don't see it as being an ads business or a affiliate marketing business or a consumer products business or a content business. They see it as one holistic experience. We have to be able to service our consumers with that holistic strategy as well. Working together build opportunities for moments of engagement that will carry our brands and other brands in this ecosystem much further into the future than ever before. Look, e- comm is really exciting. E- comm means collecting one of the most important parts of that experience. Building that login, building that connection point, building that data point. It helps create a relationship that goes deeper than just somebody clicking into the site. And we provide so much content that is about lifestyle such as food content or home content. That comes with so many different consumer product goods that we can provide through our e- commerce opportunities. Whether they be goods that our books that we produce or be partner goods, like the tools that we utilize in those projects and recipes. Wunderkind helps us 365 days of the year. They help create an experience when that viewer or reader feels as though they might be inactive or be ready to leave the experience, and it helps us offer up an opportunity to continue that experience or/ and build that relationship. Of course, during more busy times of the year, we have higher traffic, which helps us meet those needs and allows us to continue that relationship into the parts of the year where the traffic might not be as high. So by helping us collect additional emails and build newsletter lists and build deeper connections, we can reach out to our consumers in times where we see less traffic and engage with them and show them opportunities to further engage with our content that can help them in different times of need. When I first saw Wunderkind outside of just our newsletter collection, I saw it just being an ad that just pops up and I thought, okay, this is great. It's great revenue, great CPMs, but what can we do to take this to that next level? What can we do to make this feel a little more part of our DNA? What I learned at Wunder was all the things that Wunderkind does for all the retail sites that I didn't even know they powered. And I thought, okay, how can we make what they do for retail sites but for publishing? And so we talked about creating a product that allows for us to recirc internally. So when we're presenting an ad, why not also present that accompanied with additional articles that will allow for that consumer to continuously engage in that experience. And what do they do within eight months? We had a demo in front of us and now we're getting ready to launch it onsite, which is super exciting. I love the ability to be able to give feedback and receive a solution based on that feedback. Just like when our consumers give us inspiration, they receive content in return for that as well. What I love about working with Wunderkind, is the dedication and breadth of team support that we get. This company shows us that we are a customer to them that matters. And we are able to go above and beyond with our experience to our consumers to come to our sites by utilizing this tool. We believe our partnership started for just one need many years ago, and it's blossomed into multiple needs and multiple solutions all through one holistic tool that helps us continuously connect and build that relationship with our consumers in that moment of engagement that matters.