Step 1: Build a Bulletproof Content Strategy

You can’t buy the right content if you don’t know what “right” means for your platform. A weak or vague strategy is the fastest way to waste your budget. It’s time to get surgical.

Know Your Audience (Really, Really Know Them)

Who are you buying for? If your answer is “everyone,” you’re setting yourself up for failure. You need to go deeper.

• Analyze Your Subscriber Data: What content formats do your most loyal users watch? What genres have the lowest churn rate? Identify the common threads.
• Identify Content Gaps: Look at your current library. Where are the holes? If your subscribers love true-crime documentaries, but you only have two, that’s a clear opportunity.
• Build Audience Personas: Go beyond demographics. Are you targeting “Thrill-Seeking Millennials” or “Comfort-Craving Gen X”? Each group has vastly different content tastes.

Spy on Your Competitors (Legally, of Course)

Your content strategy doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Knowing what your competitors are buying is crucial for positioning your own service. You need to ask:

• What major deals have they announced recently?
• Which genres are they doubling down on?
• Where are their libraries weak? A competitor’s weakness is your opportunity.

Manually tracking this is a nightmare. This is where using a real-time project tracker becomes a game-changer, giving you a clear view of the entire entertainment landscape.

Step 2: Hunt for High-Performing Content

With a clear strategy in hand, it’s time to find the content. The days of relying solely on major festivals and old-school relationships are over. The best deals and hidden gems are often found in less obvious places.

Where to Discover Content to Buy

The global content market is massive. To be effective, you need to look everywhere. This includes:

• Film & TV Markets: Events like Cannes, TIFF, and MIPCOM are still important, but they are crowded and competitive.
• Independent Producers: Thousands of smaller production companies are creating incredible, high-quality content that might be a perfect fit for your audience.
• Global Distributors: Look beyond Hollywood. Content from markets like South Korea, Turkey, and Scandinavia is driving huge engagement worldwide.

Finding and vetting these global suppliers is a huge challenge. You need a centralized, global database to efficiently source and connect with them. Without it, you’re flying blind.

Step 3: Evaluate and Value Content Like a Pro

So you’ve found a title that looks promising. Now comes the million-dollar question: What is it actually worth? Gut feelings and hype are dangerous. You need data to back up your decisions.

Key Metrics for Content Valuation

When evaluating a potential acquisition, you need a scorecard. Here are the metrics that matter:

Gathering and analyzing this data for hundreds of potential titles is impossible to do manually. A robust content intelligence solution is essential for making smart, fast, and defensible decisions.

Step 4: Negotiate and Close the Deal

Once you’ve decided to move forward, the negotiation begins. The structure of your deal is just as important as the price you pay.

Understanding Deal Structures

Buying content for streaming isn’t a one-size-fits-all process. The main deal types include:

• Exclusive Licensing: You get the exclusive rights to stream the content in specific regions for a set period. This is the most common model.
• Non-Exclusive Licensing: You can stream the content, but so can other platforms. This is cheaper but offers less competitive advantage.
• Co-Productions: You partner with a production company to fund and develop new, original content. This is higher risk but offers massive upside and ownership.
• First-Look Deals: You pay a premium to get the first right of refusal on content from a specific producer or studio.

Your choice of deal structure should align directly with your content strategy. For a tentpole title, exclusivity is key. For filling a niche content gap, a non-exclusive deal might be more cost-effective.