Section 1: IP, Content, and Finding Audiences in the Global Ecosystem

Maximizing the potential of Canadian-owned content in the global market is no easy task. Worldwide AV content production is at an all-time high, ¹ and the video game industry continues to produce at an high rate.² To put that production volume into perspective, the world’s largest streaming platforms released a combined 1,752 titles and 4,878 hours of first-run original content in 2022,³ and 15,422 games were released on Steam in 2024.⁴ In an increasingly saturated market, understanding how Canadian content creators can influence content discoverability is critical to improving their business opportunities. The solution is not to create more content, but to create the right content—content with a built-in audience.

Rethinking discoverability (as an outcome)

Discussions about discoverability are often centered around content visibility and accessibility on digital platforms—essentially focusing on the “prominence” of the content and the role of the platform. Content prominence is determined by complicated algorithmic systems controlled by the distribution platform itself to advance its business model. Essentially focusing on discoverability as a function of platform prominence as illustrated in the figure below.

While prominence and placement can be helpful, discoverability of content is an output of effective, respectful, and authentic audience development; and content creators can strategically develop IP through approaches that facilitate and invite audience engagement. Ultimately, what platform algorithms deem to be of interest to audiences, is informed by how audiences engage with content (searches, liking similar content, sharing content with others, etc.). Audience interest drives content prominence on platforms as shown in the figure below.

The content made prominent with algorithms is used to attract and retain audience to sell subscriptions, ads, or products, which generate revenue for the platform. Audience interaction with the algorithm results in content becoming prominent, supporting the “discovery” of other content. Platforms also invest in marketing campaigns across various traditional and social media to promote content and to engage with audiences around that content. Rethinking discoverability and broadening the concept of IP means creators take an active role in finding and engaging audiences, rather than counting on the platform to promote the content once it is completed.

If discoverability is a result of audience engagement; and audiences engage with IP through specific content experiences, does prominence help? Sure, once the audience is on the platform, easy access to the content is helpful; but—critical to the success of Canadian content—it is audience interest that drives content prominence.  When creators play an active role in finding, and cultivating audiences, the focus shifts to determining who is interested in this story, character, or world, and how to engage them over the long term. Deciding what tags and backlinks to use to maximize discoverability becomes a tool for leveraging engagement rather than an end in and of itself.

Platforms control the algorithms that drive prominence and so play a role in promoting audience engagement. If content is less prominent, audiences risk being distracted by other activities and/or content. Content prominence also plays a role in leading audiences to content within broad centres of interest. When content is prominent within broader categories such as “new,” “children’s,” “comedy,” or by director, country, or original language, audiences with corresponding interests may find content that leads them to seek additional opportunities to engage with the underlying IP. The audience experience on the platform is important and is largely outside of creators’ direct control. However, it is also important to recognize that content prominence is a result of successful audience engagement. In short, content with a larger audience gets more prominence. As such, content’s position on a platform is enhanced when creators’ strategy includes both content and audience development.

Of course, there are barriers in place that can limit the ability of creators to understand and/or leverage their content’s performance. For commercial reasons, platforms are generally reluctant to provide information on their algorithms and audience. Meanwhile this information is critical for creators to continue to develop audience and IP. Government regulators and agencies could, for example, play an essential role in pressing for transparency around how algorithms work, and in requiring platforms to share valuable audience data. At the same time, creators often lack the financial or human resources needed to develop the data-informed audience development strategies that would help to improve the prominence of their content. Nonetheless, leaning into audience engagement (via strong IP) remains the best means for creators to make their content prominent—and thus discoverable.

Audience engagement with IP via specific content has a long history of fan-based communities, whether collecting film and/or star memorabilia, eagerly awaiting the arrival of the next magazine issue of Nintendo Power or rushing to the cinema to see the adaptation of a beloved novel. In today’s digital environment, fan bases have more opportunities to engage with other fans and potentially creators. Audiences consume stories across multiple devices and platforms built to facilitate engagement. This virtual, often borderless, space enables audiences to connect with others to exchange about the IP and/or about the content and enhances the likelihood that audience interest can be monetized. Multiple levels of audience engagement coexist in the digital space, ranging from Trekkie-style superfans to more casual online exchanges with friends and family about a character or storyline. Regardless of intensity, these groups form a community of shared interest. That community may result from experiencing the content, but ultimately, it is anchored in the IP itself.

Engagement as a tool for exploring IP and developing content

Orphan Black, first broadcast in 2013, found international success as it cultivated loyal audiences across online spaces, spearheaded by the #CloneClub tag. Ongoing audience engagement was leveraged, resulting in a limited series of comic books in 2015, an audio series in 2019, and a new television series, Orphan Black: Echoes, in 2024—all set in the universe of the initial series.⁵ The longevity of the Orphan Black IP, spanning more than 10 years and several mediums, demonstrates the force of audience engagement and the capacity of Canadian-owned and -made content to thrive internationally. It also shows that in cultivating audiences around IP, creators can retain and monetize audience interest across a range of content experiences.

For video game developers, community validation and direct engagement with would-be players is built into the earliest stages of prototyping. This validation can be achieved by engaging with individuals and communities via social media (X and Discord, specifically), development logs, newsletters, alpha/beta releases, and/or other community-based activities. For the AV sector, using digital channels to validate story or IP resonance is less often used, but is nonetheless possible and important. The responsibility of attracting and retaining audience has largely been left to the distributor (platform, broadcaster, film distributor, programmer). While that responsibility has enabled creators to focus their efforts on content creation, it has limited their ability to understand how audiences interact with that content.

When thinking about IP as something larger than the content itself, creators can explore new and emerging approaches to content development. Such approaches include early audience engagement by sharing core IP on Discord, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and the like. For both the AV and the video game sector, developing content while engaging with a community of interest builds audience from the outset and supports strategic content production and distribution decisions.

K-content and other models for audience development

The recent international success of South Korean media exports demonstrates how rich and authentic IP can transcend domestic borders to connect with a specific community of interest or affinity group. Some examples of successful Korean IP also demonstrate a development model that disrupts the traditional top-down production approach, where major development studios, production companies, distributors, or publishers greenlight content.

Webtoons are a form of digital comics that are typically episodic and designed to be read vertically by scrolling down through illustrations, essentially aligned with how we use our smartphones. Available through different online platforms or uploaded directly by the creator, webtoons enable independent creators to create, share, and monetize their work internationally. They also represent a lower risk way for Korean creators to engage with audiences. While many fail to garner the audience needed for revenue generation or a content development deal, webtoons have been the starting point for some of the country’s most popular IP.⁶

Tower of God is a webtoon-based action/fantasy comic authored by S.I.U. that began serialization on the Korean platform Naver Webtoon in 2010. The story centres on a boy named Bam as he navigates a mysterious structure called “the tower,” adapting to its politics and learning its magic shinsu system. Readers experience the tower’s large cast of characters and vivid settings through brightly illustrated panels published in weekly installations. The official English translation of the series began in 2014, as it gained popularity with audiences outside of South Korea. The original webtoon series is still serialized today, but the IP has developed across an anime television series co-produced and licensed by American anime streaming service Crunchyroll and several mobile video games developed by South Korean game company Netmarble. What we learn from this example is that a single-creator title, serialized on a free content platform, could generate audience interest across international borders, which was leveraged to finance IP development across multiple types of content and platforms for over a decade. The series cumulates 1.2 billion views, four million subscribers, and 30 different fan-made language translations across 638 chapters.⁷

Another webtoon success story is All of Us are Dead, a coming-of-age zombie survivor comic written and illustrated by Joo Dong-guen. The series was published between May 2009 and November 2011. While it didn’t find the same level of international popularity during its initial webtoon run as Tower of God, ten years after its conclusion, Netflix invested in a live-action adaptation. At the time of its release in 2022, the show became the platform’s fifth most popular non-English series debut behind Squid Game, another Korean hit, and parts 3, 4, and 5 of Money Heist.⁸ Proof of concept, audience interest, and timing all play a part in this success story, leveraging audience familiarity with K-drama, the appeal of zombie survival stories, and heavy investment in new content as streaming platforms battled for audience attention and subscribers.⁹

The success of both Tower of God and All of Us are Dead as single-creator auteur webtoon serializations demonstrates how creator engagement with audience can span geography, language, and cultural communities, leading to content rooted in the specificity of place and universal themes. The success of content rooted in a specific, identifiable place with a story based on universal themes is not new to Canadian creators, nor is the leveraging of audience attached to a specific content form.

Long-standing international Canadian content successes

Canadian creators have used the success of one form of content to secure financing for another, resulting in high audience engagement in domestic and international markets. Examples in the AV sector of long-running international successes include Murdoch Mysteries (attracted over 800,000 viewers per episode in Canada in 2023)¹⁰ and Heartland (has averaged a million viewers per episode in Canada)¹¹. Both released their eighteenth season in 2024, are available around the world on multiple platforms, and are based on serial novels—Murdoch Mysteries, on a series of detective novels by British-Canadian writer Maureen Jennings, and Heartland, on a book series by Lauren Brooke (a pen name for U.K. writers Linda Chapman and Beth Chambers). In each case the TV series is unapologetically set in Canada and explores universal themes. Why are these examples, both developed nearly two decades ago, still important and pertinent today?

The “finding + engaging audiences = discoverability” equation can inform our understanding of their enduring success. In each case, the writers are immersed in a strong community of interest around a broad IP. Jennings, with her focus on historical crime novels, based her William Murdoch character on a real detective and wove in her interest in Victorian Toronto.¹² Linda Chapman and Beth Chambers are prolific writers of children and young adult novels, often with horse-related themes. In both instances, the novels offered a proof of concept with confirmed audiences attached to specific content within communities of interest. The confirmed audience interest represented a reduced the risk for platform investment in content production. And each author’s authentic connection to their respective communities of interest contribute to ongoing audience attraction and engagement. Both series engage with their international audience through websites, social media, merchandising, behind-the-scenes tours, podcasts, etc. Because of the long-standing, demonstrated, audience interest and potential for monetization, CBC has launched dedicated free ad-supported television (FAST) channels to offer “non-stop streaming” of the two lauded shows.¹³

For Canadian creators, export market opportunities also lie in past IP with proven audience interest. For example, Quebec-based Sabotage Studio followed up the success of their first major game release, The Messenger, with Sea of Stars, a role-playing game (RPG) set in the same world (i.e., drawing on the same core IP). Sabotage Studio tapped into existing communities of interest around Japanese game design and 90’s era video games; while Sea of Stars is an original and modern game, it was also developed as a “love letter” to classic Japanese RPGs like Square Enix’s Chrono Trigger. The studio leveraged their existing player base following The Messenger and cultivated further audience interest—and funding—via a Kickstarter campaign for Sea of Stars. Upon release, the game was praised for its modernization of Japanese RPG mechanics, as well as its inspired worldbuilding, and went on to surpass four million players only six months after launch.¹⁴ Beyond its slate of industry accolades, Sea of Stars has had a marked impact in the international game industry, prompting Sabotage Studio to release the game’s soundtrack on audio streaming platforms, publish an art book, and develop additional downloadable content that extends the game’s story and brings new features (including Quebecois French language localization). The success of Sea of Stars the game, and the subsequent content iterations as music, book, and additional content and features is anchored in the world originally depicted in The Messenger, an IP that has engaged global audiences across content types, geography, and time.

Developing IP, developing audiences

Reframing IP as broader than specific content transforms the production value chain, connecting audiences and creators within a community of interest. Audiences engage with IP through content experiences, and that engagement with the content is used by algorithms to generate prominence. The opportunity for creators—as evidenced by international and at-home examples—is to purposefully, and intentionally, develop IP and audience simultaneously to ensure long-lasting engagement that can translate into content across platforms and over time. While not a magic bullet for the challenges in today’s crowded marketplace, understanding content as an expression of IP and acting on the potential of audience engagement offers a fresh approach. It also enables Canadian creators to more persuasively argue for algorithm adjustments to facilitate prominence on the global platforms that dominate—and will continue to dominate—global content distribution.