MarketCast today announced the acquisition of Invoke, a research and content testing platform that serves many of the world’s top video streaming services and broadcasters. The addition of Invoke’s real-time audience research platform lets MarketCast expand its industry-leading media and entertainment research into audience testing for pre-release streaming and broadcast content, including series concepts and episodes.
The rise of streaming services has changed every aspect of entertainment, yet many areas of entertainment research have been slow to innovate. With competition growing for content and fans, it’s critical that researchers, creators, and marketers gather data and insights both faster and with more granularity across wider audience demographics. Invoke’s content testing transforms how streaming and TV content is screened with fans prior to release. It leverages the speed and scale of cloud computing to recruit diverse audiences from broader demographics, geographies, and fandom cohorts, and automates the process of analyzing their input and feedback.
“The acquisition of Invoke is transformative for MarketCast and the media and entertainment research segments we serve, helping the industry move fandom research for streaming and TV series completely online where speed and scale wins,” said John Batter, CEO of MarketCast. “With Invoke, we continue to invest in research innovation to provide our clients the very best platforms and tools to conduct research and advanced analytics smarter, faster and with more depth to meet the needs of a dynamically changing entertainment business.”
Invoke moves entertainment content research beyond physical screenings, allowing hundreds of audience members to participate in concept and episodic online screenings together in real-time. The platform includes chat and discussion features supported by advanced Ai to interpret and analyze fan feedback and commentary. Combined, Invoke provides studio leadership and creative talent near-instantaneous feedback about how their content is performing and resonating with fans, allowing them to make more informed greenlighting, storyline, character, and marketing decisions with speed.
“MarketCast’s focus on fandom research and entertainment and advertising content testing makes it a natural home for the Invoke team and platform,” said Gigi Wang, CEO of Invoke. “We are confident MarketCast can innovate and drive growth for Invoke’s people, products and platform, and will continue to realize our vision of leveraging technology to transform streaming and broadcast research.”
Today, MarketCast screens and tests more than 3,000 movie, streaming series, and TV ads annually with millions of fans around the globe. The company’s research methodologies, technology, and database of historic benchmarks are trusted by every major studio and streaming service. In addition, MarketCast’s quantitative and qualitative research helps shape the future of the most beloved movie and TV franchises, characters, and storylines on the big screen and beyond. The addition of Invoke lets MarketCast grow its online qualitative research capabilities for longer form content, from early creative concepts through series distribution.
Invoke’s product, technology, and research teams will join a growing MarketCast organization, which includes former leaders from Netflix, Nielsen, Gracenote, NRG, LRW, Dreamworks and Comscore. Last year, MarketCast integrated its acquisitions of data science leader, Deductive, social digital opinion measurement firm, Fizziology, custom research and insights leader, Insight Strategy Group, and Turnkey Sports Intelligence under the MarketCast brand and leadership team. Combined, the new MarketCast organization provides the scale to support the largest media brands and sports leagues on the planet with the speed and agility to focus on solving unique client business challenges.
