Tubi Announces Record Growth, Expansion Plans

Ad-supported video on demand service Tubi today announced record growth in 2018 and plans to expand in 2019.

Over the past year, Tubi said its customers watched 4.3 times the amount of content on the service over the previous year — and in December alone streamed nearly as much content as all of 2017.

Tubi was profitable in the fourth quarter of 2018 marking a major milestone and said it will reinvest the profits into additional content acquisitions in the coming year. This includes investing over nine figures to grow its catalog.

Finally, revenue grew over 180% in 2018 — and in the fourth quarter alone, Tubi made more revenue than all of 2017 combined.

Tubi’s library has rapidly expanded to more than 12,000 movies and television series, which it said, makes its content volume “more than double in size to Netflix” — and it has approximately 40,000 hours of content. Tubi said it consistently ranks as one of the most watched apps on the world’s largest platforms including Amazon’s Fire TV, Roku iOS and Android.

Additional highlights:

• Tubi’s overall viewership (total hours watched) grew by more than 4.3 times year over year (December to December).
• With linear TV ratings in continuing decline, advertising demand for OTT is strongest from brands replacing lost reach with their TV spend. In 2018, more than 1,000 advertisers ran campaigns on Tubi, with the majority of the top CPG and automotive advertisers reaching audiences in movies and TV shows on Tubi.
• Horizon Media, a global provider of data and marketing insights, has signed a strategic partnership with Tubi. Horizon will provide its clients with access to Tubi’s premium OTT ad inventory with preferred terms.
• Tubi has secured an agreement with Rogers Media, one of Canada’s largest media companies, to be the exclusive sales representative for Tubi’s advertising in the Canadian market.
• Late last year, Tubi became the third streaming service to be made available on Comcast’s X1 platform — behind Netflix and YouTube.

Looking ahead to 2019, Tubi also announced the following:

• Tubi will launch in additional international territories this year with the first expected to be announced in the first quarter. Currently, the service is available in the U.S. and Canada.
• Tubi closed a $25 million growth capital facility with Silicon Valley Bank. The proceeds will help fund growth across all fronts including content acquisition and marketing.

“In 2018 we at Tubi saw tremendous growth as consumers, fatigued by SVOD subscriptions and services, sought alternative entertainment choices,” said Farhad Massoudi, Tubi CEO. “We will continue to use profits to make bigger bets on content, enhance the viewing experience, and continue to press ahead into new grounds in what is our core advantage: technology and data.”