A scripted drama buyer and a formats buyer are not making the same decision at the same speed, and a follow-up cadence built for one will land wrong on the other.
Most sales playbooks treat follow-up as a fixed rhythm: reach out after a set number of days, follow up again a week later, regardless of what's actually on the page the buyer is looking at. That rhythm assumes every title gets evaluated the same way.
The data says otherwise. Buyer evaluation behaviour differs systematically by genre, and the differences are consistent enough to predict the shape of the deal.
Content that requires a more complex commissioning decision generates more thorough pre-screening evaluation, and content that doesn't gets assessed faster because the question is answerable from the premise alone. Across three major distributor environments, that difference shows up clearly in the numbers.
Scripted drama. Around 60 seconds of dwell before a decision, and among buyers who press play, a wide 48–79% eventually convert, with 43–46% watching to 75% depth or beyond. That range is itself informative: how the evaluation unfolds matters almost as much as whether it happens.
Documentary and factual. Dwell nearly identical to drama, 58 to 60 seconds, but conversion is narrower and more reliable, at 51–58%.
Formats and gameshows. Roughly half the dwell time of drama, around 30 seconds, and the lowest deep-watch rate of any genre, at 31–33%. Conversion still holds at a flat 60%, the highest and most consistent figure in the data. The decision here doesn't need depth. It needs speed.
Reality and entertainment. Sits between the two extremes on dwell, around 40 seconds, but shows the widest conversion swing of any genre, 38–71%, which suggests fit matters here more than time spent.
Scripted drama buyers are the slowest to commit and the deepest when they do. Formats buyers can be assessed, and can decide, in a fraction of that time.
A single follow-up rhythm applied across a slate treats a drama buyer and a formats buyer as if they're doing the same job. They aren't. A drama buyer who's still mid-evaluation three days after a screener isn't being slow, they're doing the work the genre actually requires. A formats buyer who hasn't converted in that same window has likely already made the call, one way or the other, and a patient wait-and-see approach just delays finding out which.
Most sales playbooks don't distinguish between the two. They're written for a generic buyer journey that doesn't hold up once genre is in the picture.
A few adjustments worth testing against a slate's actual genre mix, treated as starting points rather than fixed rules.
Scripted drama: give the evaluation room, then follow up on specifics. A quick check-in a day or two after a screener risks landing before the buyer has finished the work. A follow-up that arrives once deep engagement shows up, on rights, companion titles, or format details, tends to land better than one on a fixed timer.
Formats and gameshows: follow up fast, or accept the answer. If the decision is genuinely assessable from the premise, a buyer who hasn't converted within a short window has likely moved on. Cadence here should be tight at the start and short overall, not stretched out to match a slower genre.
Documentary and factual: a mid-length cadence, but ready to move once depth appears. Dwell resembles drama, but the narrower conversion band suggests these decisions resolve faster once a buyer commits to watching. Treat sustained engagement as the trigger to follow up, not the calendar.
Reality and entertainment: cadence tuned to fit, not to time spent. With the widest conversion swing of any genre, dwell alone tells you less here than what a buyer actually engages with. A generic reminder is less useful than a follow-up built around the specific title or strand they returned to.
None of this is a fixed rule for every buyer or every title. The pattern held consistently across the environments measured, not as a universal law for every catalogue, but as a strong enough signal to be worth building a cadence around rather than ignoring.
The genre signatures here come from three major distributor environments, and your own slate's mix of drama, factual, formats, and entertainment will produce its own version of this pattern. Knowing the shape in general is a starting point. Knowing it for your own titles is what actually changes how a sales team follows up.
That's the layer ONE is built to surface. Instead of applying one cadence across the board, ONE tracks dwell, depth, and conversion by title and genre so your sales team can see which evaluation signature they're actually dealing with before deciding when, and how, to follow up.
Book a discovery call to see how it works with your catalogue.