About a year after sunsetting its own apps in favor of distribution via YouTube and virtual MVPD\u2019s, Vevo expects to sell out \u201ca nine-figure body\u201d of music video advertising inventory in the UpFront. It\u2019s part of Vevo\u2019s plan for \u201creturning music television to the living room,\u201d says Kevin McGurn, President of Sales & Distribution.<\/p>\n

In this interview with Beet.TV, McGurn explains the company\u2019s new relationships with distributors and why the upcoming Cannes Lions<\/a> event is \u201calways a dealmaker\u2019s paradise\u201d for Vevo, which is owned by Universal Music and Sony Music and has global music video licensing rights with hundreds of other labels as well.<\/p>\n

About this time last year, Vevo decided to phase out<\/a> elements of its owned and operated platforms. With its business centered on YouTube<\/a> distribution, it wasn\u2019t cost effective to continue funding video distribution on its own.<\/p>\n

The subsequent strategy was \u201cfinding endpoints of distribution in neighborhoods that users frequent where they might enjoy music videos again on television,\u201d says McGurn. Vevo is about to divulge \u201ca number of partnerships\u201d and is offering \u201cinventory anchored in connected television in the YouTube application on the TV\u2019s and in living rooms to market in the UpFront.\u201d McGurn quantifies the inventory at \u201cabout a nine-figure body.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vevo has typical inventory sharing relationships with MVPD\u2019s in the 10% to 15% range \u201cand they sell it on an audience basis, nothing specific to music or videos.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company handles sales for the rest of its inventory, including the use of various programmatic channels and working with SpotX. \u201cWe have the mass majority of inventory that\u2019s there and we are a centralized point of buying for music television on all these distributors,\u201d says McGurn.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe demand is there. We have a larger supply than most people would even know about. The reaction so far from those buyers has been very positive and we think we\u2019ll be able to sell it out in the UpFront.\u201d<\/p>\n

McGurn says Vevo\u2019s \u201ctechnology stack in the living room starts with FreeWheel. That\u2019s our dynamic ad insertion vehicle.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vevo is counting on search, discovery and recommendation to ramp up ad sales, along with its understanding of the viewing behavior associated with music television that \u201cfar exceeds short-form behavior. We can see all the way up to sixty-five minutes of viewing behavior in a lean-back experience on TV\u2019s if that search and discovery and recommendation is hit right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking ahead to next month in France, McGurn says, \u201cCannes for us is always a dealmaker\u2019s paradise\u201d as the company seeks domestic and global deals based on its extensive video licensing rights. “Audiences are aging in the living room and we represent a great counterbalance, to reaching almost twenty-five percent of every country\u2019s population that we operate in.\u201d<\/p>\n

This video is part of the Beet.TV preview series titled \u201cThe Road to Cannes.\u201d The series is sponsored by 4INFO<\/a>. Please visit this page<\/a> for additional segments.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

About a year after sunsetting its own apps in favor of distribution via YouTube and virtual MVPD\u2019s, Vevo expects to sell out \u201ca nine-figure body\u201d of music video advertising inventory in the UpFront. It\u2019s part of Vevo\u2019s plan for \u201creturning music television to the living room,\u201d says Kevin McGurn, President of Sales & Distribution. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":60655,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[]},"categories":[7977],"tags":[5294,5280,5267,5211,5384,7993,7994,7995],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60653"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}