Is a trailer an ad or is it content? Trailers have been used for over 100 years to drive movie goers into theatres. But with Marvel Studio's latest release for Avengers: Endgame, the case could be made that trailer releases have become highly anticipated events. As reported in Variety on December 8th, the first look trailer for Avengers: Endgame racked in over 289 million views in 24 hours, making it the most viewed trailer in history.

The anticipation for this trailer has been building for over seven months since the release of Avengers: Infinity War. Fans spent these last seven months speculating on how the next movie would be played out and now any tidbit of information is being sought and discussed in minutia. However, as demonstrated, the trailer drop is the event that triggers fans to get engaged in this historic franchise again and they will watch the trailer on any service that provides them easy access to it.

MVPD's can leverage that anticipation on their own platform. Fabric Origin can help jump start this initiative with minimum work required. Fabric is the largest B2B aggregator of movie, TV and game promotional videos in the world. Fabric Origin provides a specific package of theatrical trailers that meet Cable Labs Video-On-Demand Content Metadata specifications to MVPDs now with timely updates that is easily ingested into any VOD platform. The package includes not only trailers, but clips and featurettes as well, for any movie coming to theatres or in theatres, as well as packages for international clients who need territory/language specific versions.

How can MVPD's use this content? Here are some suggestions:

• Use email notifications to your subscribers about new theatrical trailer content to drive more traffic to your VOD platform.
• Offer VOD titles that are related to the theatrical trailers to increase purchase intent.
• Get subscribers to pre-order titles on your VOD when they are still in theatrical runs.
• Provide richer search results with trailers, data and posters for titles that are top trending search terms (including on your voice search).
• Collect new data points about theatrical trailer views to assist in personalizing your recommendation algorithm.
• Use as posts in social media to market your service and attract new subscribers.

All of these use cases will grow your ARPU and drive more subscribers into your VOD platform.