There were many exciting announcements at this year's CES in Las Vegas. One of them was the announcement of a new streaming service named Quibi. With streaming services becoming more ubiquitous everyday, Quibi has a plan to differentiate itself.
The company name, Quibi, hints at the niche the platform is trying to fill: Quibi is a mashup of the phrase "quick bites". These shorter videos are meant to attract mobile users which CEO Meg Whitmman seems to see as something of an untapped market.
Whitman told conference goers that the new service will launch on April 6 with at least 175 original shows and 8,500 new short episode coming in the following 12 months. The platform will focus on videos of 10 minutes or less and will release at least 3 hours of new content everyday. Membership will cost $4.99 a month with ads and $7.99 without. The company's target audience is 25-to-35-year-olds.
"Today we are living through another revolution in entertainment, this time on our mobile phones... Innovations in mobile technology and network capability mean that we now have billions of users watching billions of hours of content every day on their mobile phones." Whitman said in a statement Wednesday. While some are skeptical that there is a market for minutes-long content which can only be watched on a phone, but advertisers seem content to make the gamble. The first-year ad space on the app sold out in October for $150 million.
"We are seeing a tremendous response from advertising partners who recognize the value of Quibi's premium, brand-safe, mobile platform that is focused on the highly coveted millennial audience," Whitman said in October.
The app has several high-profile partnerships lined up, including one with the tech giant Google
The content on the site will fall into three main categories: movies told in chapters, episodic shows, and daily essentials. Spielberg is currently planning to produce some of the serialized movies for the platform. The episodic shows will cover food, sports, documentary series, and unscripted content. Daily essentials will include short news segments of five or six minutes a piece.
The platform is the brainchild of a partnership between long-time Hollywood producer Jeffrey Katzenberg and established tech exec Meg Whitman. So far the company has raised $1.4 billion in funding and is primarily advertising on social media and via digital marketing. The intention is to focus advertising where mobile users will see it. "You fish for where the fish are... The social-media platforms today, which is where people are in fact spending a good deal of time, is where the biggest focus of our marketing will be. And that's where we'll be spending most of our money," Katzenberg told Business Insider.
