Distribution : Is Tubi cool or what? by Mike Boas

Define "a good bit of that" Do they pay anything upfront for titles? Do they provide any metrics on views?

never heard of them

Reached out to support for answers to some basic questions. No response. Typical for most platforms. You probably need a distributor who is partnered up with them to get your film or show on the site.

I have one film with Gravitas, another with Indie Rights, each distributing to Tubi. I don't have the data in front of me at the moment, but as I recall it's hundreds of dollars a quarter compared to the dozens Amazon Prime pays.

I'll try to get some more specific metrics when I'm in the office next.

How'd that work out? Did Gravitas or IndieRights ever get you any direct contact info with the platform or does all your communication with Tubi go through the distributor? I ask because it's 2 months later and still no response from Tubi.

I have had no direct contact with Tubi. I suspect they only talk to aggregators -- but if you don't have one you may want to try going through Filmhub (it's free). My aggregators give us numbers on where the films make money and how much. So one of my other films made $120 last quarter from Adrise (TubiTF/Roku), compared to $236 on Amazon/Amazon Prime US. In that case, Amazon is still leading.

How's tubi treating you recently? I just had my film uploaded to there and curious on how the reception has been for the platform

Hey Mike, Tubi's been blowing up over the past year. Has your experience stayed positive?

Tubi is definitely cool. :)

Mike Boas As this thread is over 3 years old, I would love to hear your experience with Tubi, espcially since the recent purchase by Fox(Disney). I have noticed much fewer indie titles being highlighted on my Tubi dashboard since then... you now have to look for them. What is your experience? Please DM me here - any anyone else who has experience with Tubi.

I'm curious too. I can only imagine Tubi would be like Prime as a target to draw your audience to. But all of their information is cryptic and I have no concrete information. Except that I hope they pay their content providers more than a penny per hour of streaming...

Ben Rood To my knowledge, Tubi's rep is that they pay reasonable in comparison to other streamers, especially Amazon. But then their business model is AVOD and Amazon, like Netflix, has a subscriber based model which is mathematically unustainable unless they stop paying for their content. I haven't found anyone yet to get actual details but independentproducersguild.org is researching as many streamer practices as possible.

Hey all, I used to run a distribution label and we had a few horror titles on Tubi and we saw upwards of a few thousand dollars a quarter if the title did well. This was about 5 years ago. I recently got my doc on there for last Halloween. I should be seeing the numbers soon. I will report back and let you know how it did. https://tubitv.com/movies/622647/halloween-home-haunts?start=true

@Jonathan Morken - Tubi was bought by Fox about 2 years ago now and since then the viewer experience is quite different. They are leading their lists and search results with mainstream content (albeit older content) and it's getting progressively harder to find independent titles there without actively and painstakingly searching them out. I would love to learn more about your experience, and the Independent Producers Guild is conducting ongoing reviews of platforms like Tubi - inidependentproducersguild.org

Yes, I heard about Fox acquiring Tubi. My doc, should make a decent case study. When you search tubi it's results are sorted by popularity (now I'm not saying there aren't some shills in there, I am sure there are). So when you search just the word "Halloween" my doc has always been showing showing up between row 3-8, out of 28 rows, currently row 4. Not bad, for a doc from 2013 that only had a small DVD and Blu-ray release. But I implemented some techniques that have proven to work no matter what the format or platform the film is released on. A) Timing the release with Halloween, the release date was the first week of October, although Tubi got it up a week late, and B) using Halloween in the title. This will ensure it indexes well and the intended audience (people obsessed with Halloween) can find it. The other good thing about my results is my distributor is MVD and they are direct with Tubi, so there aren't a bunch of middlemen taking the profits. Will keep you all posted.

All right, so here's an update. I got the Q4 (Oct-Dec) 2021 royalties for Tubi and it is pretty bleak. Especially knowing the film performed decently within the Halloween niche of films on Tubi. I will also say that September should be good a month for the film as people are getting into the Holiday mood. But even bearing that in mind, it still doesn't give you much hope. The royalties were $119.00 and some change. I will say Tubi still paid three times higher than any other platform the film was on for the same time period. But in the DVD days I would have only had to sell 9 copies to make that much money, I wonder how many thousands of people watched it on Tubi... With Tubi being the best streaming platform I know of for indie and vintage films, I don't see how small films have much of a fighting chance these days.

That's valuable info Jonathan, thanks a ton for posting. Are you doing anything for marketing? FB ads can go a long way if you're able to spend some time targeting your audience.

Hey Ben, no marketing since this is an older catalog title. I have had success in the past using Facebook ads when sending people to buy physical discs or a download (in the VHX days, now Vimeo). But in today's market spending money on Facebook ads to send people to a streaming app like Tubi, where you are making pennies or fractions of a penny per view, would be difficult to recoup costs. Especially for a niche film. And the problem with selling downloads, is not very many people buy them. The customer base prefers to stream.

NICE!!!

@Jonathan Morken - I really would like you to join the dialog at the independentproducersguild.org - one of our mandates is to address issues in distribution and profitability for independent filmmakers.

Interesting perspectives.

In our experience, Tubi has been a hit/miss. We have a bunch of titles up there but quickly discovered that (as Ben Rood pointed out), success of the title entirely rests in the hands of the producers/distributors. We spent just $100 on marketing for highly targeted FB, instagram, and twitter campaigns around Christmas for our family titles - and saw some encouraging results on Tubi. I would highly recommend doing this. You have to undertake marketing yourself just given the shear size of the catalogs on AVODs these days.

@Wamiq Jawaid - That is the way of things these days. Tubi, especially since being bought by Fox, is now using indie content as a draw for mainstream content - the same game as all streamers owned by players who make their own product. As well, Mar Vista Entertainment was just acquired by Fox and now will be making content exclusively for Tubi Originals. So don't hold your breath that they will be changing any time soon. On the other hand, the IIPG is moving onto "Act One" of it's "Direct To Audience" initiative designed to help independent producers grab their share of the audience.

We distributed our film "Diamonds in the Dirt" through Filmhub and our Tubi numbers are amazing. First we brought in a few hundred dollars, which was very disappointing. But once our marketing kicked in, it took a turn for the best. We are going to pay off the investment and start making a profit all in the first quater. Don't sleep on Tubi. I just wish they had better analytics. Which is what brought me to this thread.

My movie Noxious 2: Cold Case is doing very well on Tubi. I pulled it from Amazon last year due to the poor payout. We are starting a marketing campaign this month.

I love TUBI- I love all things AVOD for indie filmmakers this is the way to get fast revenue and test your audience.

@JoeMexican Do you receive analytics directly from Tubi or does FilmHub provide it? I've been interested in FilmHub for a year now but haven't used them yet?

Adding these movies to my Tubi list.