After a limited trial in New York City, Verizon (NYSE: VZ) has expanded an aggressive triple-play promotion that offers new FiOS voice, data and TV subscribers a $150 Visa gift card and a free year of Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX).
DSL Reports confirmed with Verizon that the promotion will be available nationally until Jan. 17.
As media analyst Richard Greenfield noted in October, Verizon's New York advertisement of the promo was notable for how Netflix programming was being pushed over FiOS' native pay-TV networks.
A TV ad for the promotion, for example, features a couple settling in to watch the Netflix original series Orange is the New Black. In fact, Netflix is mentioned five times during the commercial.
"It has become quite clear that every content creator/programmer is now willing to sell their best product to Netflix (whether it be new or syndicated series)," Greenfield wrote. "Content owners are trying to offset or at least mitigate the impact from what appears to be a fundamental change in how consumers watch television (meaning not live), a softening in the TV advertising market as TV ads are no longer 'special,' and the slow subscriber decline/shrinking bundles of multichannel television. Now we are seeing distributors increasingly focused on marketing Netflix."
For more:
- read this DSL Reports story
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