Vevo has been talking about the growth in its advertising business, with the music-videos service having taken in $500m in 2016.
Chief sales officer Kevin McGurn told Business Insider that Vevo is expecting 30% growth in 2017, including nearly $200m in year-long ad commitments spawned by its shift towards ‘upfront’ sales of advertising, matching the structure of TV.
“We wanted to talk to TV buyers and sell ourselves like TV. We put our media inventory in the lead of our sales,” said McGurn, with the article noting that Vevo currently attracts around 25 million US visitors a day. “Our scale has always been there, but it wasn’t put in context.”
Vevo has been banging the drum for this scale for a long time, though. The company has been considering its future on two fronts: first, developing some kind of premium subscription tier, although chatter on that front has gone a bit quiet in 2017.
But second: attracting more of the advertising dollars that are moving from TV into digital channels, with Vevo presenting itself as a ‘safe’ environment from brands (with an implicit comparison to the wilder content corners of YouTube).
In November 2016, there was also speculation about Vevo’s plans once its distribution deal with YouTube – thought to end towards the end of 2017 – was up for renewal.
With Facebook in the news today for a projected $1bn spend on original-video shows, while Apple Music and Spotify continue to evolve their video strategies, Vevo may have options – while also continuing to develop its own site and apps as destination platforms.
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