Verizon is focused on appealing to millennials. “We’d like to do better” and that means a shift in how the company thinks about content. Three to five years ago, Verizon’s relationship with content providers was linear.
Now, company execs speak with content providers about “addressing multiple audiences on multiple platforms,” says Marni Walden, EVP & President of Product Innovation and New Businesses. In Verizon’s world, that translates to mobile devices, the desktop platform and in-car telematics.
The National Basketball Association gets it, she told the Citi 2017 Internet, Media & Telecommunications Conference. “If you limit your content to the TV screen in the family room, there will be audiences you don’t get.”
“When you talk to someone younger than 25 they don’t say my favorite show is on CBS. They say my favorite show is ‘x.’ If a 14-year-old girl doesn’t think of the brand on the TV screen, then the brand has to reach her somewhere else,” said Walden. “We can hit different audiences” and ways to monetize all of those products and platforms, she said.
Verizon recently acquired Fleetmatics and Telogis and is now integrating its software with IP from both telematics companies. Verizon aims to take a portion of the potential $400B marketing opportunity.
Speaking of its announcement with Qualcomm yesterday, Verizon should have close to 16 deployments of ThingSpace for Smart Cities in 2017 with a mix of cities and venues like NFL stadiums.
Similarly, Verizon will be in 10 cities this year doing commercial trials of 5G, looking at performance and costs, among other things. While she termed 3G and 4G a “handset game,” 5G “is really about opening up new markets. We suspect it will be more cost-efficient to deploy a fixed wireless 5G product,” she said, though much depends on how the trials play out.
Asked whether the Yahoo deal will go through, and when the carrier needs to make a decision about potentially pulling out, Walden said: “We don’t know. We don’t have a desire to have it drag on forever, but we have to be responsible.” The company needs to have “certain facts to be able to make a decision,” she said, adding that a probe into the two data breaches continues.
January 6, 2017
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