ABOUT FANDOM

Fandom is an entertainment site with 250,000 different communities. Fans gather to learn about TV, movies, streaming, and gaming, then discover what they should watch or play next. CRO, Ken Shapiro, always uses Game of Thrones as an example.

“I was a huge fan of the show, but it was easy to get lost and find myself Googling questions like who are Jon Snow’s parents? What house was he in? The more detailed your searches, the more likely you’re going to end up on Fandom,” said Shapiro. “We have 40 million pages of content, 250,000 different communities, and 300 million fans come to us every month.”

CHALLENGES AND OBJECTIVES

Entertainment access and fandoms exploded tremendously during Covid. People were spending so much more time-consuming content, whether that was streaming or gaming.

Shapiro and his Fandom sales team worked to bring advertisers to Netflix and Hulu subscribers or gamers with a new Xbox or Playstation. Fandom knows what shows consumers are watching and the games they’re playing.

HOW WINMO HELPS FANDOM SUCCEED

“When I joined, we had a very small subset of advertisers,” said Shapiro. “I was tasked with bringing in more Fortune 500s, but how do you find out where they are? Where are they spending? How are they spending it? Are they spending with our competitors? That’s where Winmo has been super helpful.”

Fandom works with Winmo to identify tracking. Specifically, establishing a baseline with competitors and their price points. When Shapiro looks at the end of Q1 and his team’s goals, they’re able to track it against a competitive set.

“About half of our audience is outside of the US. Verizon is a top-five advertiser in the US, but doesn’t exist in the UK, so how do we find the British version? We’ve tapped into Winmo for that and it’s been super successful. And, by the way, the Verizon of the UK is British Telecom,” said Shapiro.”

FUTURE PLANS

The fans are the backbone of Fandom’s platform. They’re the ones that have created 40 million pages of content and take such pride in their accuracy. There’s no agenda. It’s not about getting likes, so it’s different from traditional influencers.

As new content comes out, executive producers are going to Fandom for information, too.

“There was a Star Trek movie that came out a couple of years back and a producer was quoted in the press saying, ‘I had to go to Memory Alpha, the Fandom Star Trek community, to make sure we are doing everything authentically,’’’ said Shapiro. “We chronicle so many movies, television episodes, and characters — it’s the key to our platform. And we’re the only people that can bring that information to the fan base.”