V I D E O A G E December 2022 16 Insight Into Parrot Analytics my seat up for a person with those credentials.” And indeed, seven executives sit on the current board, includingDavidBishop (formerly of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment andMGM Home Entertainment), Bruce Tuchman (former president of AMCGlobal), and Adriana Cisneros, CEO of Grupo Cisneros, who sent a note to VideoAge, stating: “I’m on the [Parrot] board and excited about the impact we’re having on the entertainment industry globally.” Now, it is known that Seger completed a Bachelor of Biomedical Science in neurobiology in 2009 at The University of Auckland, followed two years later by a Master of Bioscience Enterprise from the same institution. While at the university, he raised more than NZ$8 million (U.S.$4.8 million) in capital funding to develop a range of analytics products, including Demand Expressions, a data tool that allows acquisition, production, and marketing executives to gauge market interest in specific TV programs and genres in real time across all platforms. Demand had the backing from, among others, K1W1, owned by New Zealand investor Sir Stephen Tindall. These were aspects of The University of Auckland entrepreneurship ecosystem, which ultimately allowed Seger to launch Parrot Analytics, now a company with U.S.$18.5 million annual revenues and employing 66 people (source: Datanyze). However, via e-mail, Seger stated that he wasn’t born in New Zealand (the University of Auckland did, however, report that he grew up in West Auckland), that he’s not 36 years old (as many assumed after learning that he graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in 2009), and that the information about Gourdie and Sir Stephen was inaccurate… but failed to provide the correct details. As for whether he ever moved to the U.S., he said: “We have offices in Los Angeles and New York, and I’m there often.” (Other offices are in Auckland, London, and São Paulo, while its headquarters is officially in West Hollywood, California.) Similarly, Samuel Stadler, Parrot’s VP of Marketing, declined to divulge Seger’s age, birthplace, and the origins of the name Parrot, stating that “it’s not all that interesting.” (A 2020 article in The New York Times about Parrot Analytics indicated that Seger’s age was, at that time, 32). In addition, there is very little non-promotional content about the company online, and Wikitia (a sort of Wikipedia) provides a lot of data, but not any insight into the company, which is ironic since during one of Seger’s many public appearances (in print, on YouTube, and as a guest on a variety of podcasts), he explained that “it’s not a question of having more data. There’s more data, but less insights, because big data and insights are not synonymous. You can have a lot of data, but very little insights.” And in the case of Parrot, even the insight about the origin of its name is not entirely clear-cut. Omar Méndez, VideoAge’s LatAm contributor and editor of the Spanish-language The Daily Television, closely follows Parrot’s cascade of press releases. He assumes that “the name of the company corresponds to what it is. They record and process everything they hear and the surrounding noises, as do the birds that bear their name”, he said. (Continued from Cover) streaming and peer-to-peer protocols, photo sharing, blogging, and research platforms. That description is easy to understand. But descriptions of the company from its own website revert to Parrot-speak. For example, a report that explained how Parrot monetizes all the data that it collects, said: “Our data accelerates content sales and distribution, informs better acquisitions and programming decisions, facilitates cost-effective marketing, de-risks production, helps content strategy and recommendations, informs better merchandising deals, and more.” There’s been a recent surge in analytics companies pitching their audience insights and content intelligence services, so much so that the sector is quickly getting saturated. Among themostwell-knownnames is Tubular, a subscription-based service that provides social video measurements and counts among its clients A+E Networks and PBS. VideoAge, which at MIPCOM had its stand just around the corner from Parrot, was curious to find out what Garaude meant by “more”, and we asked her to answer a few questions via e-mail from her Paris office. “I did my research before joining the company, and I can assure you it is much more than you expect”, she said. She ultimately redirected any and all questions to Parrot’s PR department. In anticipation of the official answers, and using VideoAge’s own data-mining resources, we learned that Parrot Analytics was cofounded in 2011 in New Zealand by Wared Seger, the company’s current CEO (pictured on the front cover). However, finding out who the other co-founder(s) were, as well as other information about the company proved to be a challenge. Various online accounts list one Adel Shahin and Australian futurist Chris Riddell as co-founders. But these names have not been officially confirmed by anyone at the company. New Zealand entrepreneur Alan Gourdie is also listed as having been Parrot’s chairman from 2013 to 2017, as well as one of its lead investors. Explained Gourdie from Auckland, New Zealand: “I was chairman for the first three years. Inits first coupleof years from2011, Parrot started looking at using its data sources for use in the music industry before Wared pivoted the company to focus on TV/film.” In a subsequent e-mail, Gourdie stated that “I invested in the first two seed rounds Parrot launched, [but] due to its early success the company and the board needed more U.S. media industry expertise than I could provide and I was happy to open Parrot Analytics captures a spectrum of actual audience behavior, including video streaming consumption, social media, blogging platforms, filesharing and peer-to-peer consumption. The Parrot Analytics Board of Directors (Continued on Page 18)
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