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Reed MIDEM announces the theme for its MIPCOM 2019 conference is “THE STREAMING OFFENSIVE” and confirms the first keynote speakers as James Farrell, Head of International Originals for Amazon Studios; Farhad Massoudi, CEO/Founder and Adam Lewinson, Chief Content Officer of TUBI; and Twitter’s Kay M. Madati, Global VP and Head of Content Partnership.

MIPCOM , the world’s entertainment market, takes place in Cannes, France from 14 to 17 October 2019. This year’s big theme, “THE STREAMING OFFENSIVE” reflects the seismic changes in global distribution models, their impact on content production and licensing, and the global response to the direct-to-consumer challenge.

As Head of International Originals, James Farrell oversees the development and production of all original series and features under the Amazon Studios banner outside the United States. He will be joined in his keynote on Monday 14 October by other international programming and development executives from Amazon Studios to discuss the company’s ambitious global vision, with a special focus on Europe and Amazon Studios’ growing slate of local originals in the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and its increased local production around the world.
Founded in 2014, Tubi is the world’s largest ad-supported video on demand service with over 15,000 movies and television shows from over 200 content partners and over 20 million monthly active users. Founder and CEO Farhad Massoudi and Chief Content Officer Adam Lewinson will put the spotlight on the rapid growth of ad-supported video on demand in their keynote “AVOD: THE RISE OF FREE” on Monday 14 October. In an era where linear viewership is in secular decline and video on demand (VOD) is growing, ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) is rapidly expanding and provides consumers free streaming options to SVOD services. The large numbers of SVOD services currently available with more to come in the future are leading to consumer “subscription fatigue”. AVOD has become an important new source of revenue for content owners, led by US-based Tubi. Massoudi and Lewinson will be joined by a panel of special guests to discover AVOD’s impact on the global content marketplace and what lies ahead in the future.

In his role as Global Vice President and Head of Content Partnerships at Twitter, Kay Madati is responsible for driving partnerships with media and content publishers across all categories and delivering strategies that extend, scale, market, and monetize their content and programming initiatives across Twitter.

This year he returns to the conference stage on Tuesday 15 October, with a keynote titled "THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE OF TWITTER'S CONTENT PARTNERSHIPS". Kay Madati will be joined by top media executives and talent to discuss some of Twitter’s most successful partnerships to date. Hear how Twitter hopes future partners will work to build out multi-platform content programming, as well as exciting examples of what’s next.

This year’s conference theme “THE STREAMING OFFENSIVE” resonates across the entire industry. The long awaited strike back has arrived. Media giants, now bigger than ever, are organized and ready to unleash their direct-to-consumer offensive. The highly anticipated new SVOD and AVOD streaming platforms are about to shake-up the global distribution model once again. A fundamental transformation of the content production and licensing ecosystem translating into major streamlining of organizations and business models; new opportunities for technology partners to respond to the insatiable demand for faster content delivery, and richer sound and video experiences; and the never-ending quest for signature programming, top talent and premium IP.