That transactional aspect makes for some interesting challenges. One of which is - from what I understand - basically every library has slightly different rules for their patrons on how many titles they can take out. And I know in the past it's led to some challenges because, for instance, I think my local library has a limit of five titles a month. And for a long time, what ended up happening is that if I wanted to watch a season of a show, that was my entire month. That was the five discs. And I know you've recently rolled out a new binge option, which will get around some of that. But that's the kind of challenge that Netflix doesn't have.

Cat Zappa: That's true. That would be one challenge that Netflix doesn't have, but we do have far more content than Netflix is offering at present, at least. And yes, the BingePass opportunity is a whole new opportunity to access more content with a single borrow. 

Seven-day access periods when it comes to BingePass. And we are also sending our patrons over into third-party SVODs in some cases, like Hallmark Plus, CuriosityStream, where all of a sudden, you can get access for a whole week to all their content as though you were a subscriber. However, after that week ends, you would have to use another borrow again to get access, thereby the enumeration is also happening back to that vendor partner, the content provider, if you will, at the end of the day. 

That way, continued enumeration or revenue stream is still coming in, even if somebody were to re-borrow again, which is great. But it's all about getting access to more and more content at the end of the day that seems to be a good fit, right? So when it comes to those binge pass partnerships that we mentioned, we are always looking at those partners to see, "Are you the right fit for Hoopla?" 

Are we going to be bringing in content that a library patron ultimately would want to engage with and is excited about engaging with? For those potential content providers that don't happen to have their own SVOD, we do have alternatives in the BingePass space, too, where we can host that content, almost creating a channel for them. That's another great opportunity for access to a large library of content at the end of the day. 

From that perspective, we tend to go in a little bit more with a brand push. One example of that is Pokemon. Pokemon doesn't have its own brand channel or SVOD, but we're able to create and host a channel on the platform that's Pokemon.

There are hundreds and hundreds of episodes available in that BingePass. We've also got the SeasonPass, which is a brand new opportunity we rolled out. That's where the entire first season of content might be bundled into a single borrow offering.

So there are lots of different opportunities to get engaged with content that we host on our platform and beyond our platform.

I want to make sure I talked about the non-video part of the business, because a lot of people are familiar with Hoopla, but maybe aren't familiar with the non-video material you have or the wide range of things that you have. Can you talk a little bit about that? And are the demographics of the people reading things different than the demographics of people watching video, and does it really matter?

Cat Zappa: Hoopla is really unique in that it's a one-stop shop for content in general, covering eBooks, audiobooks, comics, music albums, the video component with movie and television, and then our BingePass offering. The audiences are slightly different, but it's exciting. 

From that perspective, our marketing team is honed in, and we've got segments of our marketing team that are focused solely on video, solely on audio books, solely on eBooks, so we know that we've got that messaging really down, so that way we can reach out to those patrons and speak to them about what they're interested in. 

At the same time, those same teams will end up doing a lot of cross-collaboration, and this is where I think the fandom or community starts to come in. Where we're able to create things and cross-promote different opportunities. For instance, when Wicked was in the theater, we didn't have Wicked on the platform, of course, but we had a great documentary around Wicked. 

We had a lot of related books, lots of audiobooks. We also had the soundtrack, and so we were able to create collections that a patron could click into, and from there, determine exactly what they want to borrow. And in some cases, they're like, "Oh my goodness, I love this movie so much. I definitely want to listen to the album, and I didn't realize all the various books that are out there around Wicked and Oz.

So they can delve into a whole other additional universe or expansion of their current universe of certain things like that. That's one of the things that makes Hoopla really, really special, we're able to pull in those fans and get them excited from a multiple format perspective about opportunities for content.

One of the interesting things about your business model is that, at the end of the day, you're dependent to a great extent on the libraries. I suspect some libraries are better than others at pushing out to patrons what's available; this is why you should use Hoopla. How do you navigate that challenge? You're almost a third party in the transaction.

Cat Zappa: To some degree, we are, but we've also integrated ourselves very closely with those libraries we have service agreements with and that we're trying to get service agreements with in such a way that we do have an entire team that is speaking solely with our libraries. They then turn and speak with the other areas of the business. We've got a lot of collaboration that goes on internally, so there's a constant movement of messaging and conversations about what's happening with these individual libraries at the end of the day back to the company. 

We've got an expansive sales team that's responsible for having a lot of those conversations, along with support teams internally that continue to have those conversations. We're able to go in and support where we're hearing libraries need the most support. But at the end of the day, when it comes to content, whether it's search and discovery or other things that may be happening in the space at any given point in time, there's a lot going on in the space constantly. Not every library is the same. 

They're all very, very different from each other. They're each their own businesses, right? So, we work with about 3,800 different library systems throughout the four territories where we're active. 

Those are each different businesses that we're working really closely with to make sure that we're meeting their needs on a daily basis.

Overall, what's the biggest challenge for you? Is it content? Is it marketing? What's the biggest day-to-day problem you face?

Cat Zappa: I think at the end of the day, the biggest issue we're always trying to overcome is to get the Hoopla name and brand out there in general because we aren't necessarily a household name. We're definitely a library name, but we're even trying to push more into library patrons recognizing us and understanding who we are at the end of the day.

Along with our content providers understanding and recognizing us too, and what a big market share we have there, as we are the primary driver in the United States for public libraries when it comes to content.

Let me wrap it up with this. You were at the StreamTV conference, and I'm curious, what kind of conversations were you having with other people in the industry? How was that event for you, and what did you learn?

Cat Zappa: I like to look at us as one of the better-kept secrets that we're trying to let loose. A lot of folks have heard of us, but they don't understand us exactly. So much like our conversation today, we were trying to have a lot of educational conversations on what we do and how we can help to get their content out there to those library patrons who are engaging with us. For me, Stream TV, first of all, I was very impressed by the growth. 

Unbelievable, the amount of growth that the event had between last year and this year. Also, pretty impressed with how the international community showed up. I was excited to see the number of companies coming in from overseas that were excited to engage and see what everybody was talking about here in North America. 

I was able to take a lot of great meetings there. I think that it's going to lend to us being able to bring in a lot of additional content from the international perspective that, again, really hits the needs of our communities. So that was exciting. 

Also, I was really excited about the engagement with the CTV (connected TV) area of business there. Hoopla is now available on LG, Samsung, Roku, Apple, and we're continuing to expand all the time. That is a really important opportunity for us because we want to be available anywhere that a patron happens to want to view. 

Very frequently, it's through their CTV opportunities. So, to be able to see and hear the conversations happening in that space was really advantageous for us in helping to get our name out there to those who are part of that CTV community.

Also, I think the thing to probably keep your eyes out for will be all the upcoming binge passes that we have coming out, since that is really the most amazing opportunity to expand the content opportunity for the patrons and for the libraries at the end of the day. 

Between now and the end of the year, you're going to be hearing about dozens of new opportunities in that space that we're going to be launching.