- Quibi, a mobile-video service, will become the latest platform to enter the streaming wars when it launches on April 6.
- The company's execs explained how Quibi will be evaluated.
- Quibi will closely observe how people interact with the service, how many videos users watch, and the number of net subscribers paying for the service.
- Click here for more BI Prime stories.
Quibi, a mobile-video service, will officially enter the streaming wars when it launches on April 6.
The startup, which has raised $1.4 billion, offered the first glimpse at its upcoming service at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada on Wednesday.
Ahead of the event, Quibi execs told Business Insider how they would evaluate the platform in the days, weeks, and years after it rolls out.
There are three main ways that Quibi will measure the platform's success:
- Paid net subscribers will be the most important financial metric. CEO Meg Whitman declined to reveal the company's subscriber targets, saying that it's playing "the long game."
- The number of "quibis," or video installments, that users watch will be more closely observed at Quibi than the length of time that users spend watching. "For us, it's not how many hours somebody is watching, it's how many quibis they watch," Jeffrey Katzenberg, founder and chairman, said.
- Other user data will also be important, such as who is using the platform, what titles they watch, when they visit the platform, and how they use Quibi's features.
Quibi is betting on features like "turnstyle," which allows users to move between portrait and landscape orientation by rotating their phones, to differentiate its mobile-viewing experience.
The content on the platform may also take cues from other smartphone data, such as the users' location, the time of day, or the weather.
Steven Spielberg's upcoming anthology series, "After Dark," for example, will only be available on Quibi after the sunsets where the user is.
The company will watch how users react to and use those features.
"I'm talking about, in real time, the phone telling the piece of content, what time it is, what the weather is, what the lighting conditions are, and letting the piece of creative react to that in the same way the creative reacts to the rotation of the phone," Tom Conrad, Quibi's chief product officer, said.
For more on Quibi, check out these Business Insider Prime posts:
- Inside the marketing strategy for Quibi, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman's buzzy video startup that has raised $1.4 billion: Katzenberg and Whitman say Quibi will spend most of its marketing budget on digital media, to reach millennials where they're already spending time on their smartphones.
- Quibi CEO Meg Whitman breaks down the revenue model for the buzzy video startup that has raised $1.4 billion: Whitman says Quibi plans to make money through a mix of subscription and advertising revenue. The company has landed top advertisers ahead of launch with the promise of millennials, and advancing mobile entertainment.
- Big-name publishers are staffing up for Quibi shows ahead of the Jeffrey Katzenberg video-streaming service's launch: CBS News, ESPN, and The Weather Channel are hiring as they ramp up production for the Hollywood veteran Jeffrey Katzenberg's planned video-streaming service Quibi.
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