Mario Niccolo de V Channels
The potential that V Channels, a company that is part of the network of YouTube channels focused on movie distribution, sees great potential in AVOD, and that it is one of the main reasons why it will launch a new platform in South America, announced Mario Niccolo, CEO of the company in the context of MIP Cancun, in addition to sharing the experience and part of the results they have achieved with the recent alliance with Spanglish Movies.
“We believe in the potential of AVOD in Latin America and therefore, throughout all these months we dubbed 100 titles in Latino Spanish. There are many contents in the world that have not had the possibility of being watched in this region and our determination in the exhibition of these contents is strong, and although we are just starting in the US, we think that the next five years will be those of the burst of the AVOD market in the region, so we will produce titles with young South American talents, which will be distributed on our YouTube platform and other AVODs, which will also be dubbed in English. The future is here” he said.
The executive commented that the platform has no name yet; however, for its launch, they will have a vast campaign and it will be in the third week of January when the name will be officially announced, and the platform will be available at the end of March: “The platform aims to show free advertising-supported content to the entire population of Latin America”.
He expressed that the main interest is distribution, but in the future, they will consider having a first window on their platform, “but we do not believe in a limitation, as others do with Netflix, of having the originals in a single platform. It is not good for young talents nor for the audience, because people now watch content in multiple windows”.
With over 200 million visualizations per month on YouTube and 250 million films watched in six different languages, V Channels seeks to back film production, which is why Niccolo added that “the Latin American market, on one hand, is a young market that has options, but there is space for new platforms; Meanwhile, distributors are very open to all the possibilities of other options, so YouTube will be our marketing platform to engage the one we are about to launch”.
Regarding the key elements of this new platform, he assured that they are talking to a young audience that wants thriller and action content, “it is not the classic Latin American content, we are not going to have telenovelas or series, but movies that tell stories in a fast-paced, talkative and free way.”.
ALLIANCES IN FAVOR OF LATIN AMERICAN CONTENT
As for their alliance with Spanglish Movies, Gustavo Aparicio, CEO of the company, shared that the joint work consists in “bringing the huge catalog they have on YouTube, generating channels with the content and the thousands of hours of Spanglish together with Niccolo, and at the same time, bringing their content to the different OTTs, mainly in the US and Latin America. It is a great partner because no one has more experience in results than they do on YouTube channels and we want to take it to the next level, we are even seeing how some of the genre films are being brought for release in movie theaters, and the concept of bringing young talent to make movies and monetize them”.
Finally, Niccolo highlighted that, from the beginning of this relationship, at the start of the year, millions of visualizations have been seen on YouTube, “proving that there are also people of older ages that want that content from the region and in a diverse way. The market still hasn’t understood the evolution of the world of entertainment, because it is talking about platforms. We have achieved 3 million visualizations in the world with Spanglish in three months. The future of entertainment is no longer in a physical location, but based on language”.
