As a leading European group in the cultural industries, Media-Participations brings together numerous subsidiaries in publishing (Dupuis, Kana, Dargaud, Le Seuil, Points, La Martinière…), audiovisual (Ellipsanime), and even video games (Microïds). In 2023, the group launched ONO, a webtoon (digital comics) reading platform, powered by the teams at Izneo, Europe’s leader in digital comics.

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At the head of ONO’s digital marketing, Pierrick Crosnier oversees activity integrated at every level: acquisition, conversion, retention, and engagement. At the group level, he also plays a cross-functional role within the digital marketing department, supporting all subsidiaries in their digital transformation.

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In this interview, he shares the challenges of marketing caught between data, performance, content, and capturing readers’ attention.

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What are your main challenges today ?

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Pierrick Crosnier: The first is clearly data. ONO is a 100% digital platform, so in theory, we have all the tools and metrics available. But in practice, GDPR, the end of third-party cookies, and increasingly complex user journeys make data interpretation much more difficult.

Today, in a young company with a team still being built, having a dedicated data profile would be a real advantage to secure data reliability, structure analyses, and draw robust insights. In a freemium universe where usage patterns are very dynamic, data is the lifeblood of the battle. You need to understand precisely when and why a reader drops off, in order to react quickly and effectively.

The second challenge is the competition for attention. Even though our direct competitors are other webtoon platforms, in reality, we’re competing with every app that captures screen time. That means we need to stand out with very high-quality visual creations, especially on social media.

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How do you structure your teams ?

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P.C.: At ONO, we’re around twenty people, with a marketing team of five. Three and a half are dedicated to ONO, one and a half to Izneo. The profiles are rather young (average age 26), so I rely heavily on two pillars: curiosity and rigor. You can always train in tools or specific jobs, but mindset and attitude are essential.

I also make sure there’s a good balance between technical skills (CRM, Ads, automation, reporting) and product knowledge. Passion for webtoons makes a clear difference: to understand why a series works or not, you need to master its codes.

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On the partners’ side, I want to be challenged, like with Spaag, for instance, on producing high-performing creatives! We work hand in hand on creatives or CRM audits, sometimes bringing in external profiles. I don’t expect a provider to just execute; I want them to help us grow, step back, identify blind spots, and push us further.

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What role does AI play in your daily work ?

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P.C.: For now, it’s mostly at a personal level: saving time, exploring ideas, or testing if a concept holds up. But at ONO, use is still limited. We distribute licensed content, so we have very little leeway with asset manipulation or generation. Generative AI doesn’t yet apply to our environment.

Where I do see real progress ahead is in data. In five years, I’d like to have a dedicated data team integrated into marketing, able to support real-time decisions, refine tests, and deeply interpret user behavior.

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How do you balance performance, brand, and profitability ?

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P.C.: ONO is still in a growth phase. For a year and a half, we targeted volume. But for the past few months, we’ve been working on making acquisition campaigns profitable, with an LTV/CAC approach (lifetime value vs. acquisition cost). That’s our major project this year.

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For branding, we made a deliberate choice: to showcase our series rather than the ONO brand. They’re what bring value to our platform and drive engagement. That said, the market is consolidating (from 10 platforms to 4 in two years), so we’re now considering strengthening the brand image. But for now, content remains the priority.

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What is your vision of the CMO’s role in a model like yours ?

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P.C.: What’s specific in my case is that ONO is entirely digital, with no sales team. Marketing is therefore at the very heart of the platform, from A to Z. We handle awareness, acquisition, conversion, retention, customer journeys, app and site features, all the way to monetization. This provides visibility across all challenges, but also a lot of pressure.

It’s a highly central position, at the crossroads of all teams. Marketing talks as much with product and developers as with content teams, which provides a fine-grained view of what’s happening in the company at all levels.

Ultimately, that’s what makes the role so interesting today: being at the heart of an entirely digital model, in a still young and shifting market, where every action can have a direct and visible impact. The challenge is to stay the course, make the right trade-offs, and bring clarity to a constantly evolving environment.

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