This month on the BookNet Canada podcast we talk with Ashleigh Gardner, Head of Partnerships at Wattpad about the evolution of Wattpad as a company, their models for monetizing content, and some of the things Wattpad has learned from their largest audience - the under 30 set. Ashleigh also talked to us a little bit about Wattpad's newest app, Tap, and it's freemium, candy-crush-like model.
(Scroll down for a transcript of the conversation.)
Transcript
Ainsley: Welcome to the BookNet Canada Podcast. I'm Ainsley Sparkes, the marketing associate of BookNet Canada. And this month, we're talking with Ashleigh Gardner, head of partnerships at Wattpad Studios. Ashleigh will be a speaker on March 24th at Tech Forum in Toronto. Her talk is called, "Mining for gold, how Wattpad uses data and discovery to spot the next bestseller." We wanted to talk to her in this month's podcast about the evolution of Wattpad as a company, their models for monetising content, and some of the things Wattpad has learned from their largest audience, the under 30 set. Ashleigh also talked to us a little bit about Wattpad's newest app, Tap, and its premium Candy Crush-like model.
Hi, Ashleigh. Thanks for joining us today to talk about what Wattpad has been up to recently, and what you've been learning from it.
Ashleigh: Thanks so much for having me.
Ainsley: First, can you tell us a little bit about Wattpad and your role in the company?
Ashleigh: Sure. So, my role at Wattpad right now is head of partnerships for Wattpad Studios. And primarily, what that means is looking at a lot of the stories on Wattpad that are attracting huge audiences and that have a huge amount of potential. We're regularly looking at data and what's making stories over-index, and things that are unique about their following or their fans' behaviour on them. And looking for those stories that have great potential to become amazing books, or film, or TV, or even be adapted for video games or VR, in other areas of the world, we're always, you know, looking, not only for that great story but things that already have an audience that's gonna be excited to go out and buy that book or tune in on day one to help publishers and producers kind of de-risk the projects that they purchased, to know that there's already an invested fan base that's gonna be excited about this.
Since I joined Wattpad, I think I've been at Wattpad almost four years now, both my role and the company have changed a lot since I started kind of in what we've learned, and how we go about monetising, and also the size of the company. I think, just to talk a little bit about Wattpad, both in what we are and by the numbers, Wattpad it's more than just a reading and writing app. That's definitely where we started, but it's really developed into a full entertainment company using our understanding of community and insights to help, you know, produce new projects and some of those books, TV shows, and movies that I talked about before.
Ainsley: And that sounds like a large part of one of your talks at Tech Forum is gonna be about data leading to figuring out which books are gonna be bestsellers, which books are gonna be the right fit for partnerships and other developments.
Ashleigh: Exactly. I think the goal of the talk at Tech Forum, which I'm really excited about is sharing what we've learned about our data and, you know, the different stats that we've started to look at, and how those are different from some of those public stats, as well as, you know, some of the questions that editors should be knowing. I think every part of this industry has had to become so much more data-driven and literate in the language of data and the questions to be asking around it. And well, I know there are so many editors that are aware of that and asking those questions, you know, we wanna share some of the things that we hope that publishers know in working with us and acquiring stories, not only from Wattpad but from other places where there are digital influencers.
Ainsley: So, moving on to monetising content, which you mentioned a little bit. Do you see an interest from your readers to pay for subscription-based services? Do you think this is maybe a model of the future away from ad-based towards subscription, kind of, like, medium is experimenting with right now?
Ashleigh: Yeah. Well, you know, on Wattpad, we don't just have one revenue stream, which is really great for giving us the space to explore new revenue streams and new monetisation opportunities because we do have pretty steady income coming in other categories. We do have advertising on the site as far as, you know, basic display ads, which is something that exists in most places on the internet. We also do branded content, you know, to touch on what you mentioned about medium and the different ways that we see both the demand coming in from the advertising world. And also from the possibilities of our user base is, in branded stories, we are looking to work with our writers to create a story that fits a brand's message. I think my favourite campaign within that world is one that we did very recently for H&M, where they approached us and they wanted to have some of our writers that had huge followings in different genres that they'd identified that had overlap in their own target markets to write a story, a new chapter that featured some of their popular characters where the characters were wearing H&M clothes.
H&M has a wide variety of styles and fashions. They provided the catalogues to our users. Every chapter ended with a bit of a mood board that showed you those items of clothes that were described in the chapter, along with the ability for people to purchase those items themselves. And it was a really big success for all of us. I think, you know, the brand really loved to see that type of engagement. I think the writers really liked it because they were given full creative control to write what they wanted to as long as they were incorporating in these items. And the readers loved it because they were getting more of what they loved already. They were already following these stories. They loved these characters. For the writer to be encouraged to come back and give them, was something that really excited them, too.
And you did mention medium, I think, to address where we are really playing in a different space, and I know there's been a lot of concern about branded content when it comes to news and journalism and the interference of that. I think that, you know, where it's very different for entertainment is that, you know, it's fictionalised. I think that that makes it a lot more interesting and a lot more accessible for a lot of our readers. I think why it's also been such a great avenue of revenue for us is that it's not taxing our readers or our users. Our users are doing the behaviour that they already do. They love to read stories. And they're spending over 30 minutes a day reading stories on Wattpad. So, for our advertisers to be able to benefit from that attention in those eyeballs, it's a really great fit all-around. And for our writers, there are huge benefits to working with brands financially. I think that brands have a lot more money than publishers. And for a short story of five words, some of these authors participating are making money than they would on an advance on a book.
Ainsley: So, what do you think Wattpad can teach traditional publishers about new ways to monetise content?
Ashleigh: Yeah. You know, I think I'd love to see publishers engage in the branded content space on Wattpad. I think that, you know, they have amazing huge pools of writers, and they own a lot of IPs that I think those types of partnerships with brands to bring content to an audience to read, I think that's a win all-around and a great way to create new monetisation of streams for existing content. One of the other things that, you know, I didn't mention this also in the advertising world, something that we've introduced in Wattpad this year called Wattpad Futures. So, for a lot of our top writers, we've introduced a programme where we show video ads in between every few chapters on their stories. It's a short video ad, similar to what you see in other places on the internet, you know, some of the pre-roll for entering certain new sites, or short advertising videos you see before certain YouTube clips.
The reason that we chose video is that, you know, ad format between chapters is that it's the most beneficial to our content providers because video ads CPMs are some of the highest in the business right now. So, these ads are shown in between every few chapters for our writers. The writers share significantly in that revenue and, you know, are able to make a lot of money through that attention, and through that readership on their stories. I think it's a great opportunity for publishers to post backlists that might not be performing as well on sales compared to the new titles that are pushed and promoted every week. But these stories could find a new audience on Wattpad. And without those readers having to risk purchasing a title that they've never heard of, they'll find it and discover it, and read it naturally, and publishers will get incremental revenue on that new audience, met new attention.
Ainsley: Do you find publishers are doing that?
Ashleigh: We're definitely seeing publishers experiment with posting stories on Wattpad. To date, we don't have any publishers participating in Wattpad Futures, but it's also a new programme that's still in beta. Right now, we're still doing it with a closed group, but we are absolutely, you know, exploring how did we scale this and open this up to more. So, it's something we absolutely wanna explore in the next year. We do have lots of publishers posting content on Wattpad to drive sales and to create awareness. I think, especially when you're looking at a lot of YA stories, stories that came out that are even three, four years old, the teenagers that are are of today, maybe have never heard them. We've seen a lot of publishers post the first in a series as a way to engage a new audience. Scott Westerfeld of the Uglies posted the first story of that series to give the series a new life with a new group of teenagers. And it was very successful with him interacting with his fans. Another one that was a favourite when I was a teenager, Christopher Pike, I loved his books. He posted his stories on Wattpad as well with the rerelease of the series to get new fans excited about it. And it was really successful in both cases.
Ainsley: 13 to 30 is your largest audience, correct?
Ashleigh: Yeah. Our audience is primarily millennials. It's about 45% 13 to 18. We're very popular with teenagers. And then the other 45% is 18 to 30, which is also one of our fastest-growing areas right now.
Ainsley: So, what are some of the most surprising things you've learned from that young audience?
Ashleigh: I think some of the things I find so interesting is the fanfiction element. The fact that we're able to monitor what people are tagging their stories as, and what celebrities they're writing about. And it's definitely something that I feel keeps me young as I see these reports and people, you know, week after week and month after month. It's also something that I think is of great interest to the entertainment industry and the publishing industry to see who are those emerging figures that young people are really interested in today and interested in so much, to the extent, that they're spending hours a week writing stories about them or reading stories about them, for example. I think that's... You know, a huge knowledge of which influencers and celebrities, publishers should be approaching for book opportunities. You know, there's been tons of YouTuber books in the past year that have done very well. And YouTuber fanfiction is very popular on Wattpad. You know, we definitely see those early leading indicators of who we think the next digital influencers will be based on what people are writing about.
And I also find the speed at which people react to things happening in the world to be something that's so interesting on Wattpad. When you see the genres that people choose to write about, or new trends emerging, or fiction about, you know, memes and seeing some of that, you know, catch on so quickly. That's something that I don't even think could happen in the traditional publishing industry with the speed that these things become huge and then fizzle out. Like, for example, Alex from Target. Do you remember that meme? But there was thousands of fanfiction about him within a day and it kind of, you know, slowed down and fizzled it within a few months. So, I think seeing that creativity in those trends around different memes and different internet phenomenon, I think is really interesting. We're always learning more about what our readers want in that way. But also I think, you know, most importantly, one of the things that we're learning so much about from our user base, especially our young user base, is how they're choosing to interact online, how they want to share content, what they wanna do. I think when we look at Wattpad on other social networks, it helps us come up with new ideas for the product when we see how they're using it. When we looked at Instagram and we looked at what users were tagging in as Wattpad, it was frequently just screenshots of their phone with lines that they'd highlighted, which led to us, you know, finding ways to make that more artistic and easy through approach sharing to put it over like a nice image. I think that more learning about Wattpad ourselves from how our users are using it.
Ainsley: So, what do you find is the difference between Wattpad readers and Wattpad writers?
Ashleigh: In a lot of ways, there is no difference. I think when we look at a lot of our top writers on Wattpad, they didn't join Wattpad to become writers, they joined Wattpad to read. And the more stories they read and saw posted and interacted with, the more confident they felt in starting to put their own stories out. I think that, you know, those of us that work in the publishing industry, I think it's easy to forget that, you know, most people don't see stories before they're finished. Most people read a finished book that's been edited and worked on by multiple people. And that's also by someone, you know, right at the top of their game that's made it through so many hurdles to get there. But most people don't see those first drafts. Most people don't see the first story that the finally published author ever wrote and see that path to how to get better and how to improve your writing. And I think the more that readers on Wattpad are engaged works at different levels of completion and different levels of skill, especially young users that are growing up seeing that, it makes it a lot more accessible and it feels like something less magical of this author or this person doing this skill that feels so far away. And it feels more like something that you could do or that your friends could do. And it feels like something a lot more accessible when you see the positive reactions to people that are sharing something that they wrote for the first time. And I think that's definitely the behaviour that we see on Wattpad. The longer someone's on the site, the more likely they are to write something themselves, whether it's a story or a 100, 000, you know, work of fiction. And that's I think one of the biggest differentiators of Wattpad is that people on the site are writing for a variety of reasons. There's a huge variation of their experience at their own skill.
Ainsley: And so you've just launched Tap by Wattpad. Can you tell us a little bit about that new product?
Ashleigh: Of course. So, you know, speaking of what we learned from our users, especially the young ones, one of the things that we've been seeing on Wattpad happening for a while was we were seeing a lot of these stories that were rising to the top of our fanfiction list and other lists being chat stories.
We were seeing people, you know, write entire stories on Wattpad that were just text messages back and forth that they were indicating or writing and describing. There's a very popular one about text with Justin Bieber. And, you know, we're always looking to find ways to give our readers something new and give them something that they want. And that led to the launch of Wattpad Tap, which is chat stories. Basically, it looks just like your text message screen on your phone. Every time you tap the bottom, you see another new line of text, and there's something very, you know, voyeuristic of watching these conversations. One of my favourite ones on site right now is a fanfiction called Drunken Hangry with Chrissy Teigen. It's a very entertaining read. And there's also some really scary ones. Our most popular story so far since we've launched Tap is a horror story called Hide, which is about a creepy little girl, which is also very good.
Ainsley: I started reading that one on the site. And there's something just so fun about tapping too, to get the next segment.
Ashleigh: I completely agree. And that also leads into, you know, a new way that we're helping writers monetise. On Tap, it's our first subscription model site. So, you know, it's very much the Candy Crush model where people can keep tapping and see the rest of the story. But once they run out of there allotted taps for that set period of time, they have to wait half an hour before they regenerate, and then they can continue going through the story. If they don't wanna wait, they can purchase one of our subscription plans. And those plans are either, for a week, for a month, or for a full year.
Ainsley: It'll be interesting to see how that plays out.
Ashleigh: Yeah, we're really excited about it. I think, you know, we're always experimenting and looking for new ways for our writers to make money, but also, you know, we wanna make sure that it's a good experience for all of our readers as well. And the feedback has been amazing so far. You know, we're thrilled with the reviews in the App Store and the comments that we've had. And we're really looking forward to seeing that community grow as well.
Ainsley: Well, thank you for joining us today. It's been really great chatting. And I'm looking forward to your Tech Forum presentation about, "Using data to identify best sellers."
Ashleigh: Yes. I'm looking forward to it as well. I will see you at Tech Forum.
Ainsley: Thanks to Ashleigh for joining me on this month's podcast. If you're interested in hearing more about how Wattpad uses data to spot the next bestseller, join us March 24th in Toronto for Tech Forum. Visit techforum.booknetcanada.ca for more details. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for this project. And, of course, thanks to you for listening.
