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At Vevo’s NewFront presentation on Thursday, the company offered new bells and whistles without deviating far from the pitch it’s been making to advertisers for several years now: Vevo is a high-reach, brand-safe source of connected TV inventory.
The event, held at Sony Hall in New York, featured Latin music artist J Balvin as the headliner. Balvin performed an as-yet-unreleased song in addition to several hits.
Vevo touted itself as the largest FAST (free, ad-supported) network in the U.S. and sought to differentiate itself from other CTV offerings, noting that it is not constrained by subscription demands. For example, the company highlighted that two of Taylor Swift’s music videos, which live on the platform, received more views than many TV staples such as Bachelor in Paradise.
“Music videos were made for the television screen and deserve that pedestal,” said Rob Christensen, svp of U.S. sales and global distribution. He added that Vevo has a library of more than 800,000 music videos and premieres more than 15 music videos per week.
Vevo also utilized the presentation to unveil new distribution channels, programming lineups and data offerings that complement existing features.
The music video streaming platform, owned by Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment, will now be distributed via Philo, rounding out its number of distribution partners to over 30.
Vevo is expanding its roster of programmed FAST channels, adding Vevo Alt & Indie, Vevo Dance & Electronic and Vevo 2010s. In addition, the streamer is debuting Vevo Features, a thematic channel that rotates between cultural channels and holidays, such as Black History Month, Women’s History Month, July 4th and Halloween.
The company reported that FAST channels increased its audience by 25% last year.
In addition, Vevo is augmenting its data offerings. Vevo Intelligence previously drew from song and lyric data to pair an ad with the most relevant music video but now is using proprietary visual data, past campaigns and industrywide benchmarks to further increase relevance.
Finally, in the only new product launch of the event, Vevo introduced a branded content studio called On Set, which is currently in development.
Vevo was founded in 2009 and was originally associated with YouTube. Since then, it has evolved its focus to CTV: 50% of Vevo’s revenue came from CTV in 2022, compared to just 4% in 2020.
