Canela Media’s recently launched Club Canela loyalty program – which rewards users for watching, sharing and interacting with content on the company’s free ad-supported streaming platform – is showing early signs of traction.
Canela Media, which has a flagship Canela.TV AVOD platform targeting US Hispanic audiences and over 40 free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels, provided an update and initial results of the effort during an Upfront luncheon in New York City this week as the company made its annual pitch to ad buyers.
What is Club Canela?
For those who aren‘t familiar, Club Canela is a new, free loyalty program launched last month that gives registered users of the Canela.TV AVOD platform a chance to earn points and badges that translate to rewards (like access to exclusive content, sweepstakes and digital gift cards) simply by watching content on the platform and by interacting with gamified experiences. Notably, it also provides an opportunity for brands to get in on the action and engage with consumers through customized branded challenges and rewards.
The program is free for users, who just need to download the Canela.TV app and create an account or profile to join. Then they can lean back and earn points by watching FAST channels or the Hispanic media company’s ad-supported video on-demand content. Viewers can earn extra points through interactive elements like challenges, quizzes and external links to brand’s e-commerce platforms, as well as rack up competition badges. As mentioned, all of the experiences can be gamified and customized for brand partners and at different levels of participation, including co-branded and enhanced ad units, among other options. And Canela signed up some big names as launch partners from the get-go including The Coca-Cola Company, McDonalds, and Hyundai.
“It is a 100% free loyalty program for our users, total lean back, where the more they watch the content that they love, the more they win,” said Canela CMO Oswald Méndez at the event. “And this is where watching becomes gamification.”
What’s the aim?
Club Canela – which the company touts as the first fully integrated in-app streaming rewards program – has a few aims.
One is deepening engagement to get viewers to watch more and keep coming back – hence the loyalty aspect - while also gamifying the experience.
Another is to get more information about Canela users and their viewing and consumption habits. Unlike subscription streaming services, Canela’s content offerings are free to consumers – which, while part of the appeal, means it doesn’t always get the customer data that comes from a user signing up for a service and being logged in to a user profile as they watch content. So driving Canela.TV account signups or profile creation is a main goal of the program.
And of course, piquing interest and participation from brands and advertisers – and generating sponsorships and ad dollars - by helping them to connect with audiences and integrate in unique ways is also part of the picture.
Initial traction
During the Upfront event, Canela’s Méndez disclosed very initial results for the two weeks after Club Canela launched on April 15.
“It's so wonderful to see that we saw 2 million of incremental minutes watched, 2 million points earned within the first two weeks” Méndez shared at the event in Manhattan Monday. That equates to roughly 33,000 more incremental hours watched in just two weeks from the program.
The marketing chief also said that Club Canela “saw increase across all of the KPIs we set ourselves.”
That includes 76% and 119% increases in daily new and win-back registered profiles, respectively, “which is what we wanted,” Méndez said.
And those that have registered for Club Canela are watching more, as he noted Canela “also saw an increase in daily watch time of the registered profiles.”
“What we’re so proud of is the fact that this is engagement that is turned into a gamified experience. It is a cross-platform opportunity that can be fully branded and it lives within the entire ecosystem of Canela TV,” Méndez said.
Canela Media at the event touted growth in general for its content offerings that cater to US Hispanic audiences, including on AVOD, FAST and social platforms.
Canela now counts 60 million monthly active users across its entertainment ecosystem and the media company’s audience product for advertisers can tap into over 76 million unique devices.
Engagement has also been growing, with average time spent on the Canela AVOD platform increasing 28% year-over-year, according to Luis Romero, head of sales at Canela Media. That figure is even higher for heavy users, amongst which time spent has grown over 60%, he said.
“A lot of that is really driven by our Canela Originals, which make up five of the 10 shows every single week, every single day,” said Romero of Canela’s growth. “So the originals are really coming through for us as well. When you take a look at the audience, our audience is younger, it's higher income, it's balanced, it's bilingual - though they're consuming the content in Spanish.”
And brands participating in the rewards program also see benefits of aligning with Canela’s original content.
"We're thrilled to sponsor Club Canela, a first-of-its-kind experience that allows us to deepen our connection with the U.S. Hispanic audience," said Sean Gilpin, Chief Marketing Officer at Hyundai Motor America, in a prior statement about sponsoring the rewards program. "This unique platform is the perfect complement to our role as the presenting sponsor of Secretos de Parejas, the newest spinoff of the Secretos franchise, a series we've proudly supported since the beginning. Together, Club Canela and Secretos de Parejas represent an exciting new chapter in our ongoing commitment to celebrating authentic, culturally resonant storytelling."
Article updated to change the name of Canela's rewards program to Club Canela throughout. An earlier version incorrectly stated Canela Club.