AVOD and FAST Streaming: Carol Hanley of Whip Media on Analytics, Revenue Operations, and the Future of Content Management

Vitrina

How does Whip Media define what it does — and who does it compete with?

Carol Hanley

We provide software and consumer-level sentiment and engagement data to some of the world’s largest entertainment companies. Our products improve visibility and intelligence, and drive efficiencies through automation — particularly in content licensing, planning, and financial operations. We cover linear, TVOD, AVOD, SVOD, and FAST.

On competition: the question we get often is whether we’re like Nielsen. The reality is quite different. Nielsen measures audiences for advertising. We streamline the business of content — replacing Excel sheets and AirTables with automated, scalable solutions. In most cases, when we replace something, it’s not another company — it’s a manual workflow.

We work with virtually all major studios, either fully integrated across software and data or in parts. We recently expanded into smart TVs — Vizio is one of our newer clients.

Vitrina

What makes content management so complex right now?

Carol Hanley

Messiness is the problem — especially with revenue aggregation and rights management. Content is now global with fewer boundaries. A great show from Latin America or Germany can be picked up and streamed worldwide. But managing that complexity — where it airs, who owns what rights, what financials apply — is messy. We help automate and organise that chaos, turning massive datasets into actionable insights.

Vitrina

Where does the dashboard fit in?

Carol Hanley

Dashboards are a strategic focus. The industry isn’t lacking data — everyone has tons of it. The missing piece is insight. We use AI, machine learning, and robotics to generate actionable intelligence from that data. Dashboards flag trends early and support smarter decisions in licensing, audience targeting, and platform strategy.

Vitrina

Can you give a concrete example?

Carol Hanley

We worked with two major streamers exploring specific European markets. They weren’t interested in what was already popular — they wanted to spot early signals of content showing emerging engagement. That lets them acquire content just before it peaks, at a more cost-effective price point. Then they track performance and decide how far to scale its distribution.

Vitrina

At what point do clients typically reach out?

Carol Hanley

It varies, but it often happens when companies hit a wall — usually around productivity. Teams are overwhelmed, doing too much with too few resources, often stuck with Excel. That’s when we get the call. For others, it’s about making smarter investment decisions: should this content go to linear or digital? Efficiency, better financial controls, and data-driven content strategies are the primary triggers.

Vitrina

How does engagement data factor in now that subscriber counts matter less?

Carol Hanley

The shift from subscriber counts to engagement is real. Platforms now need engaged viewers who stick around — especially for ad-supported models. Our TV Time data is uniquely suited for this: it measures content engagement and switching behaviour. We can see why audiences choose certain content, which fills a gap Nielsen wasn’t covering.

Carol Hanley

Cineverse uses our partner payments and royalty solution through FAST Enterprise. They publicly shared that our software helped them save $2 million in headcount by streamlining how they manage revenues and outgoing payments tied to content licensing. That’s a substantial operational impact — and it speaks to what happens when you replace a dozen spreadsheet-driven processes with one integrated system.

Vitrina

Where is international demand coming from?

Carol Hanley

While the US remains our biggest market, we’re seeing significant growth from Latin America, South Africa, and Asia. Europe continues to be a strong region too. There’s growing demand in emerging markets where streaming is accelerating and platforms are trying to modernise their systems — moving away from legacy manual infrastructure. These aren’t small opportunities: some of these markets have content ecosystems as complex as the US, but without any of the tooling.

Vitrina

What recent partnerships are worth highlighting?

Carol Hanley

Hallmark Media needed a robust solution to distribute its highly engaged content more efficiently. We’re providing performance tracking tools to replace manual Excel-based workflows — they have a deeply loyal audience base and needed the systems to match.

We also entered a strategic partnership with Amagi, where they’re now reselling our FASTrack product. That extends our solutions deeper into the FAST ecosystem — reaching operators who are already in Amagi’s stack and need revenue and rights management capabilities layered on top.

Vitrina

What are the top three priorities going into 2025?

Carol Hanley

1. More AI-native solutions — especially use-case-specific dashboards and predictive insights. New modules are being built ground-up with AI at their core, not as a layer on top of legacy architecture.

2. More vertical specialisation. Moving away from broad, one-size-fits-all approaches and tailoring tools to specific operational problems — royalty complexity differs significantly between a FAST operator and an SVOD platform.

3. Industry benchmarking initiative. Gathering anonymised data from across our customer base to provide transparency into content performance and revenue trends — a kind of ‘share of voice meets share of dollars’ model. It’s something the industry has needed for a long time.