VEVO kept its Digital Content Newfronts presentation short and sweet, touting the broad appeal and shareable nature of music. The multi-channel network hyped its current original programs (without announcing any new ones) and brought in some big name musicians, including Carly Rae Jepsen and Kendrick Lamar, to help turn the event into a spectacle.
The first person to take the stage was spoken word artist Sekou Andrews, who delivered a free verse poem about the spirit of music. Andrews’ introduction set the tone, as much of the event was very philosophical, with execs opining about the omnipresence, importance, and communal spirit of music. VEVO wanted its potential advertising partners to understand how music is part of the fabric of human existence, and in turn explained how no one in the online video space has a bigger library of music videos.
Beside all the philsophical musing, VEVO presented some nice statistics. In 2012, 232 million unique viewers watched 2.4 billion hours of VEVO. Since its launch, the network has now received more than 100 billion total views. Recently, some of the viewership has also delved beyond music videos, with 41% of VEVO users watching interviews. In addition, the network’s original content is now over 500 million views.
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It is these originals that VEVO discussed the most at its Newfronts presentation. VP of Programming Scott Reich discussed the millions of views generated by recent debuts like The Comment Show and Lyric Lines. Reich also made sure to note that Lamar, when he was still a rising star, appeared on one of the network’s most popular original series, VEVO LIFT.
Whether music is truly an indispensable part of the human spirit is debatable, but what isn’t debatable is VEVO’s tremendous scale. Those 232 million uniques give advertisers a big reason to call them (maybe).
