Blog: Verizon

Verizon Media announced a series of new Media Platform improvements in a press release today (16th September), intended to ‘evolve the live streaming experience’. These features are all aimed at increasing fan engagement following COVID-19’s detrimental impact on the overall viewing spectacle of live sports.

Last week Verizon, the US’s second largest telco provider with 116 million wireless subscribers, announced the closure of its pioneering mobile-first video streaming service which launched in 2015. Go90 was launched on the back of a $200 million purchase of Intel’s unreleased streaming service, OnCue, with a mission to create mobile-centric content for digital natives (or millennials as middle-aged C-suite executives still seem intent on labelling what are, in reality, disparate demographics who collectively all grew up in the digital era).

Unless you have been hiding under a rock this last couple of weeks you’ll have heard at least something about the build up to the decision over turning net neutrality in the US, a decision that was confirmed yesterday.

Last Friday, media stocks in the US rose on the back of news that 21st Century Fox had been approached by Comcast, Walt Disney Co, Sony and Verizon over the possible sale of its film and international TV assets.

Despite the hype and the overall direction of travel, creating a premium video offering for mobile audiences remains a huge challenge. Last week Awesomeness TV and Verizon (who bought a 24.5% stake in Awesomeness TV for $159 million) decided to halt the development of their premium mobile content service .

18 months is a long time in the digital world. In that time, Facebook’s Messenger and Whatsapp both passed the billion monthly active users milestone and Snapchat has more than trebled its video engagement to account for 32% of all short form video views.

So two weeks into the 2017 and it's another year and yet another twist in the ongoing saga that is Yahoo. On Monday, Yahoo Inc disclosed in a regulatory filing that it was splitting the company into two.

Verizon’s free, ad-supported mobile video streaming service Go90 launches this week. The service will be available to all users, regardless of being a Verizon customer. The product is aimed at 18-34 year olds, the key mobile data consumption segment of now but the appeal will be far wider than that.