Back in February, the MTV owner – which is itself the target of a takeover by CBS – acquired eight-year-old VidCon, which examines how a new generation of YouTube talent is coming to market.

But operating a conference sounds more like something an old-line B2B publisher would do. What does VidCon bring Viacom?

“We bring a great entrée into the world of online video, into the talent and creators and producers that are growing up in this new world of media,” says VidCon GM Jim Louderback. “We allow Viacom Digital Studio to extend itself into an experiential place as well.

“It really is part of that whole spectrum of engaging with audiences, building affinity with audiences, having the audiences love you, and doing that in lots of different places.”

In truth, whilst VidCon includes plenty of debates and discussions, it is also a showcase, where young YouTube talent can demonstrate itself to an audience of commissioners.

Louderback is the video industry veteran who once helmed Revision3, the pioneering internet video producer.

VidCon is coming up this june 20 to 23 at Anaheim, California, with three separate tracks for community, creators and industry topics. Signifying the demographic of some of the talent it is putting on stage, VidCon has even laid on services for parents and chaperones.

This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018. The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB. Please see additional videos from the series on this page.

“What we really want people to walk away with is that Viacom has amazing capabilities,” Viacom Digital Studios President Kelly Day says in this interview with Beet.TV at the Digital Content NewFronts 2018.

Viacom Digital Studios says it will deliver hundreds of hours of premium, original content with Viacom stars and digital-native talent from BET, Comedy Central, MTV and Nickelodeon across leading social and online video platforms. Viacom’s properties comprise a social footprint of more than 850 million fans, according to a release announcing Viacom Digital Studios.

“We have these really iconic brands that we’re now putting the full weight of Viacom’s resources and investing in a digital strategy that can essentially re-express these brands for a social and mobile first consumer,” Day says.

Viacom also announced that it will be producing new shows for such platforms as YouTube, Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook to be “everywhere the audience is.” Its strategy is to “craft really fantastic stories that are designed for the social- and mobile-first audience.”

Late in 2017, Viacom acquired WhoSay, a leader in influencer marketing with which Viacom had worked for two years. In February 2017, Viacom bought VidCon, the largest talent and fan event in the world, as Variety reports.

Viacom Digital Studios creates custom content as short as 30 seconds to entire series for pre-roll mid-roll video on social platforms, where it has “billions of impressions” every month, Day says.

“We’re seeing tremendous engagement from the audience across the board in these digital platforms. I think it’s really imperative that buyers be where these audiences are and where they’re spending an enormous amount of time.”

This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018. The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB. Please see additional videos from the series on this page.

Harmon explains, “we’ve been pioneering out-of-market products on YouTube for the last three years.” The company turned to online video marketing, as opposed to TV marketing, for a couple of reasons. For starters, digital cameras “allow you to create an ad for pennies on the dollar compared to what it used to cost. It used to cost around a quarter million dollars to create an ad.” Digital cameras, and even cell phones, allow creators to produce content for under $50 dollars.

Additionally, YouTube allows for incredibly affordable distribution. “It’s very inexpensive to create video for a business,” says Harmon. “To test anything on TV is like $50,000 minimum. Minimum. But you get on YouTube and you can test day-by-day, hundreds of dollars at a time and figure out if it’s working and then change your video until you get something that works. I think that’s way more effective for small business.”

John and Hank Green, the VlogBrothers, started YouTube in 2010. Four years later, Green says, “This year’s VidCon is actually bigger than all the previous VidCons combined.”

“I think it’s really important for creators to have the opportunity to interact with each other and to have real life conversations and this is one of the big opportunities for all of us to do that. There aren’t that many people who do what we do, so it’s really fun to spend a few days hanging out with the other people who are as passionate about this as I am.”

In the interview, Green also speaks about the complexity of the ad driven Internet and how it inspired Subbable, “a new voluntary subscription platform that allows people to fund the stuff that they love directly.” John and Hank Green launched Subbable last week.

Penna explains, “each MCN has kind of a different offering – some of them offer brand deals, some of them offer best practices, support, helping you grow your audience, but essentially MCNs help professionalize your content and help you monetize it at a different rate.”

Big Frame is “sort of the boutique of the space,” says Penna. “We don’t have as many content creators, we’re a little more picky about the creators we bring in.” Over the past year, Big Frame has grown from around 60 creators to over 300, thanks to the launch of four vertical brands—Wonderly, a creative DIY female space; Forefront, an urban comedy network; Outlandish, a network for the LGBT community; and Polish, a beauty, fashion and lifestyle network.