The current mantra for the screen entertainment industry – “do more with less” – isn’t going away anytime soon. And as media continues to fragment and audiences splinter off into various directions via myriad platforms, marketing budgets, like production budgets, aren’t immune to the squeeze.

Increasingly, the pressure – or, if you prefer, the opportunity – to drive eyeballs to content through innovative means is falling on producers.

Those new approaches, more often than not, are facilitated within the digital realm. Looking at the results from this year’s Indie List, of the approximately 21.6% of respondents who are working digitally, 90% are producing content solely in that space – meaning a web series with no broadcast component – and about 63% are utilizing a digital extension to complement, and cross-promote, the broadcast or film IP.

But just as the digital world is practically infinite in its size and scope, the strategies available to attract audiences online, either to promote your IP or have them engage with it, are also growing exponentially, with each new platform that emerges to take another slice out of the potential audience pie.

One such platform is gaming hub and game creation system Roblox – where Shaftesbury turned to promote its CBC Gem series Macy Murdoch.

The Toronto-based prodco, teaming with gaming studio Pears.gg, created an in-game activation for the series this past spring called Macy Roblox (pictured above) for the platform’s Teamworks Puzzles 2 game. Over its five-week span the project racked up 178 million impressions and 49,000 hours of playtime, according to a Shaftesbury spokesperson.

Jay Bennett, a senior strategic consultant for Shaftesbury and producer of Macy Roblox, tells Playback that he pitched the game integration to the prodco as a way to reach the eight to 12-year-old market – a key demo for the Murdoch Mysteries kid-friendly, digital series spin-off. He says the mix of the game’s puzzle-solving nature with the in-universe story was a “no brainer” for enticing that age group.

According to Bennett, CBC Kids was wholly on board with the integration, which was a six-month process from pitch to launch. While he declines to share specifics, he calls the budget “not insignificant.” For other companies looking to get into the Roblox space, he recommends deciding between an integration like Shaftesbury’s or building your own game from the ground up, which allows ownership of your Roblox game but also leads to a “12 to 18-month roadmap before you know what you’ve got on your hands.”

He adds that any prodco aspiring to take its IP to the platform should be clear on its intent. “I say that because I’ve been where people see it as a monetization opportunity, and it can be in the right circumstances, versus a marketing opportunity,” says Bennett.

While there are several ways to monetize such extensions on the platform – such as subscription fees or exchanging in-game currency for the real kind – this particular Roblox experience favoured the marketing muscle of the platform. Bennett says the company ties some of the increased audience response to the Macy Murdoch series on CBC’s YouTube channel and TikTok, as well as “noticeable upticks” in engagement across Murdoch Mysteries‘ own social platforms, to the Roblox activation. At a time when discoverability of content – digital or linear – is an additional challenge, that’s a win.

Of course, gaming platforms aren’t a catch-all for prodcos when it comes to building audience through digital strategy. Trilight Entertainment, for example, plans to eventually create its own OTT platform using its previous productions as well as those it has licensed.

“YouTube is not the best place to make money but if we’re starting to look at that same audience going to our OTT platforms … that’s going to go slow, and you really [have] to build your audience first,” says president and CEO Shayne Putzlocher.

Trilight, which has offices in Calgary, Regina and Vernon, B.C., plans to release its feature documentary Sideways in theatres this fall. The film tells the story of the Swift Current Broncos, the Canadian junior hockey team that suffered the tragedy of a fatal bus crash in 1986 that killed four members of the team.

But rather than relying solely on a theatrical release, Putzlocher says Trilight will release Sideways directly to the film’s website as a way to “keep that community growing.”

Putzlocher says the company is only at the beginning of its social media marketing journey. The company has recently hired a full-time social media manager to aid in this growth, with a particular focus on short films posted on YouTube. But the company sees the investment in its own OTT platform as a way to extend the longevity of its content.

Putzlocher points to the example of a project Trilight recently licensed – Ana Valine’s 2017 feature Once There Was a Winter (Violator Films, Rodeo Queen Pictures) – which the company then uploaded to YouTube. Since posting the film on April 3, it has gained more than 19,000 views.

“I’m not saying that’s an incredible amount of views, but … define your level of success,” says Putzlocher. “If I had a movie that I knew 15 years later there [would be] at least 19,000 people watching it, I’d be happy.”

For Montreal’s KOTV, its digital strategy is propelled by Quebec’s star system. Mia Desroches, KOTV’s VP international sales and partnerships, says the company has never had more series in development for different digital platforms and notes a marked increase in social media strategy focus for the company. She cites Kamikazes! (pictured right), a sketch series featuring “homegrown” actors and comedians that launched last January on Télé-Québec, where each of the sketches is released individually on YouTube and TikTok.

This translated into approximately 9.6 million views for the series across Télé-Québec’s social media channels, and about 5.2 million across KOTV’s own channels.

“It’s almost creating two formats with the same content,” says Desroches. “It works really well for us. So that’s part of what [broadcasters] want to do more of.”

The company’s digital strategy also includes its digital content brand, Diffusion Alternative, and its podcast studio, OK Studio, both launched in July 2023. Since then, the brand and studio have grown to offer full production services for more than 15 podcasts in Quebec. While KOTV is still focused on traditional production, and there are no short-term plans to turn those podcasts into film or TV projects, “we have a bench that is dedicated to developing outside the box in that sense,” says Desroches.

Of course, no discussion of digital strategy for content promotion and production can exclude the biggest player in the space – YouTube – especially with its increasing impact on living room viewing, via connected TV. For Blue Ant Studios, the video behemoth has been an integral part of the equation for years.

Co-president Mark Bishop says the studio’s unscripted paranormal comedy series for CBC Gem, Ghosting with Luke Hutchie and Matthew Finlan, has earned 17 million views across YouTube, TikTok and Instagram since its premiere in January 2024. To drive viewers to both the Gem series and its assorted social outposts, the company has produced clips exclusively for social media featuring the titular stars and guests, including Frankie Grande and actors Devyn Nekoda and Kevin Alves.

The Toronto-headquartered company has also greatly expanded its suite of YouTube channels, from two in 2024 to 14 currently, with plans for “many more” by the end of the year. The portfolio includes its Love Nature channel, which has 1.3 million subscribers; HauntTV with 159,000 subscribers; and HomefulTV with 108,000, at press time.

“It’s never about cannibalizing the audience,” Bishop maintains. “It’s actually expanding it.”

This story originally appeared in Playback‘s Spring 2025 issue

Images courtesy of KOTV, Shaftesbury