Ad-supported streaming platform Tubi said its viewership is way up, and it’s making plans for expansion.
The San Francisco-based startup said it will spend “over nine figures on content in 2019,” as it looks to bolster a library that now includes around 12,000 movie and TV show titles from more than 200 suppliers.
Tubi doesn’t release specific base metrics, but it said viewership was up by a factor of 4.3X in 2018, while its advertising revenue increased 180%. Tubi, which was founded in 2010 and has raised $26 million to date, also said it was profitable in the fourth quarter “marking a major milestone.”
To fund it’s expansion, Tubi has closed a $25 million loan with Silicon Valley Bank.
“In 2018 we at Tubi saw tremendous growth as consumers, fatigued by SVOD subscriptions and services, sought alternative entertainment choices,” said Farhad Massoudi, CEO and co-founder of Tubi, in a statement. “We will continue to use profits to make bigger bets on content, enhance viewing experience, and continue to press ahead into new grounds in what is our core advantage: technology and data.”
Tubi is a free-to-consumer streaming platform that’s playable on most popular OTT, gaming and mobile devices. Notably, the service is natively embedded into Comcast’s X1 video platform.
With media companies interested in ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) amid a competitive subscription streaming market, Tubi recently talked to Viacom about possible acquisition. Viacom ended up paying $340 million for another AVOD start-up, Pluto TV.
For his part, Massoudi told MCN last week that the company is prepared to soldier on as an independent.
