13ÈMERUE France (NBCU), the French TV channel, called on us to launch its very first original series: Trauma. Great news, but who cares in a “netflixed” world surrounded by content overload! Our biggest challenge was to find a way to make Trauma stand out, in a tough competitive area, with a limited budget & awareness. Indeed, no one knows 13e rue is also a content producer…thank god Trauma is a high level thriller and super addictive. Our job was to hook audiences with the first episode to make them crave for the second one and the whole season… how? By outsmarting the system…

2019, so many big shows launched this year. How to stand out among famous TV series launches such as Casa de Papel, Stranger Things, Game of thrones… How can we compete with the biggest, when we are the smallest (in terms of visibility and media investment)?

We decided to put our creativity into hacking the system, turning Youtube prerolls into the biggest streaming platform ever, offering the entire 1st episode to everyone. Everyone? Nope only those who where targeted and who didn’t skip. And because we are nice, we played with the retargeting system offering a 2nd and a 3rd one to people who skipped the first time to enjoy our full first episode of Trauma.

We live in a world of content overload. We launch a TV series, we are 13e Rue, we don’t have money…but we know the tv thriller Trauma is great and addictive. Our job is to make sure people watch the first episode to make them crave the rest of the season… but how? First, we hacked the audience, targeting people looking for tv show trailers on Youtube, then we put the entire first episode of trauma with its crazy cliffhanger into a Preroll format just before those trailers. 45 minutes of suspense ending with a 13e Rue subscription offer. Then we retargeted them — well those who skipped a first and second time — to give them the opportunity to enjoy the full first episode of TRAUMA until the end.

The execution is seamless and simple and this is the key factor of our success. We put the entire first episode of our tv series Trauma into a streaming platform, ending after 45 minutes of pure thriller with a subscription offer giving the opportunity to watch the full season.

A world premier for Google and a TV channel

5 Million views just for the 1st episode

Leading to +35% new 13ème Rue subscriptions the following days

Reaching +35% viewers for the rest of the season

Biggest success of 13ème Rue’s history