MEGOGO Valeriia Tolochyna: Not Everything Can Be Measured Using Big Data

Once, the Ukrainian content market was a sea ruled by “pirates.” Low video quality, questionable translations, and intellectual property rights violations were all considered the norm.

But there were companies working to change the culture of content consumption in Ukraine and reduce piracy. Among them was the media service MEGOGO, which went beyond simple copyright awareness raising by combining product solutions with social projects.

During crises such as the pandemic and full-scale invasion, MEGOGO remained close to its users, which helped strengthen trust and social capital. Subsequently, this resource was used to bring about positive changes in the industry. For example, the company promoted sports streaming with alternative commentary to collect donations, awards the best podcasters, and supports young musicians.

We talked to Valeriia Tolochyna, Global Chief Marketing Officer at MEGOGO, about the value of products, development of the content consumption market, CSR, and social projects’ impact that big data can’t measure.

Valuable Product First, Social Initiatives Next

Today, our catalog includes television, sports broadcasts, movies, TV series, audiobooks, podcasts, games, as well as educational and children’s content. I believe it is strategically correct for a business to first create a strong product and only then think about social initiatives. Such projects should relate to the main product, enrich it, and correspond to the brand’s values.

For example, we digitized the school curriculum for Ukrainian literature and involved celebrities to narrate over 250 works. Thanks to this project, which is available for free worldwide, we have managed to draw attention to Ukrainian culture and education. People talk about it, use it, and sincerely recommend it. In my opinion, this creates a foundation of trust in the brand.

Our team actively promotes Ukrainian-language content, the MEGOGO VOICE studio works on Ukrainian-language voiceovers, and within the social initiative “See How Audible It Is,” we create sign language translations and audio descriptions for popular films, TV series, and sporting events.

Another example is the first official license for the Ukrainian-language audiobook version of Dune. After almost a year of negotiations, we signed a direct five-year contract with legal successors of author Frank Herbert. International rights holders are often cautious about the Ukrainian market due to widespread piracy, but this project has proven successful. The book is selling well — we set a symbolic price to develop a culture of paying for content.

Developing Consumption Culture and Content Accessibility

We are gradually forming a culture of legal content consumption. A few years ago, downloading movies or books for free was considered the norm, but now many Ukrainians realize that this is disrespectful to their creators. In addition to ethical aspects, there is also a growing understanding of the legal consequences of copyright infringement.

The MEGOGO team is fighting piracy. In 2024, 527,000 pages of pirate sites were removed from Google search results, as well as over 140,000 pirated copies of content. We have provided rights holders with over 195,000 links to block pirate resources. We have also removed 14 apps from marketplaces, closed 75 groups and channels in messengers, and 303 communities on social networks.

Making content accessible to everyone is an important part of our strategy. Within the “See How Audible It Is” social initiative, which has been running for over 10 years, we provide access to content for people with hearing and visual impairments. Although we can’t translate the entire catalog into sign language, we try to do so for the most popular films, TV series, and major sporting events.

In 2024, we achieved results that the whole team is proud of. We interpreted 63 sports broadcasts into sign language and offered over 52,000 minutes of content with audio description and over 58,000 minutes with sign language translation. MEGOGO also signed a declaration of cooperation with the NGO “Business Without Barriers” within the initiative by Ukraine’s First Lady Olena Zelenska.

Football matches of Ukraine’s national team with sign language interpretation already attract tens of thousands of fans with hearing impairments. This shows that such initiatives are in demand. Even when the audience is small, as was the case with the MEGOGO MUSIC AWARDS, we still provide sign language translation so that fans of contemporary Ukrainian music can join the event. This initiative attracted a lot of interest among journalists and guests of the award, many of whom learned about the possibility of sign language interpretation of songs for the first time.

About CSR and Partnerships at MEGOGO

When a company reaches a certain degree of development, it makes sense to separate CSR from other functions. However, if a business does not have a CSR department, this does not mean that the function is not performed. Most likely, marketing, HR, or PR are responsible for it. At MEGOGO, the social initiatives department deals with CSR. It has a separate budget within which it can implement social projects. Our colleagues plan their annual work and know when and what they will be doing. At the same time, ideas and proposals may arise in almost any department, which they then submit to the social initiatives department — these are joint efforts.

We understand that in difficult times, we need to unite and work together to solve problems that are vital to society. So, we allocate some of advertising slots we could sell to social partnerships. For example, we regularly support large fundraisers, including our strategic partner UNITED24.

In 2024, during top sports broadcasts, MEGOGO supported more than 20 charity fundraisers (UNITED24, USYK FOUNDATION, Superhumans Center, and others) by placing QR codes and calls for donations. In addition, throughout the entire fundraising period, the media service provided special advertising platforms worth over UAH 40 million.

As one famous stand-up comedian joked, if your company’s decision-making chain consists of a CEO, a marketing director, a PR director, and a few other directors, you won’t be able to do anything truly bold. But at MEGOGO, we try to respond to challenges quickly. This is also the case with social projects, for instance, when the decision to launch the NUMO (lit. let’s) online kindergarten, with the support of UNICEF and the Ministry of Education and Science, was made in a single day during the extremely difficult first weeks of the full-scale invasion.

On the one hand, these projects are indeed socially useful, while on the other, they give the team a sense of meaning and importance of their work.

An Impact that Can’t Be Measured but Can Be Felt

When we onboard people into teams in the new markets where MEGOGO is entering, we always tell them about the social initiatives that are already working in other countries. We have noticed that this inspires people and motivates them to create something important in the new market as well.

We feel the impact of social projects on business reputation, but we haven’t set ourselves the task of measuring it. At the same time, we see that people talk about this impact as the reason why they chose our company over others. For example, one candidate said that he saw the work of our translators at Kurazh Market and decided to join MEGOGO.

It is social projects that we are most often asked about at conferences, as product and service quality have already become something basic for the industry.

I have recently reread Rory Sutherland’s book Alchemy, in which he explores brand loyalty. It can’t always be explained rationally; sometimes, people love a product simply because the button is beautiful or they like a minor detail. We can see a lot thanks to the big data we collect and analyze, but love can’t be measured that way — insights are often found in small data.

For example, MEGOGO has a charitable subscription that directs funds to the Grow Up in a Family charitable foundation, which cares for families where orphans are raised by their grandparents. Over three years, UAH 4,038,885 has been raised, which is important for all the people who have signed up for this subscription.

Does our social mission foster development in other countries? Well, in Poland, we launched the translation of content into sign language, which was the Polish team’s initiative. We involve local partners in it, because sign language is different for each language.

On MEGOGO’s Cultural Projects

In addition to social initiatives, there are also cultural projects important for society. We want our people to go to concerts, watch plays and films in Ukrainian, learn about and love Ukrainian culture. In order to have more Ukrainian-language content, we continue to increase the amount of content available in Ukrainian. In 2024, we actively invested in Ukrainian-language dubbing, allocating UAH 38 million for this purpose, and so we did in 2023. At our own MEGOGO VOICE studio and in collaboration with partners, we have created 3,825 hours of Ukrainian-language dubbing for films, TV series, and children’s and other content.

Together with the team of the music channel MEGOGO LIVE, we have launched the CHUINO (wordplay; lit. listen and thoughtfully) project, which we had been dreaming of for many years — chamber acoustic concerts by Ukrainian artists. We are happy to have found partners and like-minded people to develop this direction together.

I’ve recently seen a study stating that Ukrainians listen to Ukrainian music more than foreign music. And that’s wonderful! We have a new talented and creative generation growing up, so one of MEGOGO’s tasks is to provide a platform for young artists and support them. The same goes for podcasts — we were one of the first to pay attention to this industry and created the Slushno (lit. rightly) audio award, held for the fourth time in 2024.