Despite the imminent departure of media executive Marni Walden, Verizon said it’s staying the course with struggling video service Go90 and beginning to send Go90 out to some of its other digital platforms.
“There has been no change in our overall content strategy or in Go90,” said a Verizon spokesperson. “In fact, we're beginning to distribute Go90 content across some of our Oath brands."
To date, about 15% of Go90's content (mostly originals) has been distributed to AOL Video. Verizon said it plans to expand this effort to Yahoo's brands before the end of the year.
Oath, the name given to the merged AOL and Yahoo businesses, counts among its brands Yahoo News, HuffPost, Engadget, TechCrunch, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, and Tumblr.
For the ad-supported Go90, recent content acquisitions include a multiyear deal to stream National Women’s Soccer League games, a series from Vox Media’s SB Nation, and a deal earlier this year with Warner Bros. for series including “Veronica Mars” and “Fringe.”
RELATED: Warner Bros. sends 'Veronica Mars,' 'Fringe' to Go90 in streaming deal with Verizon
Go90’s primary content strategy now is cornering the market on what it calls “premium midform content,” or video content that slots between the less-than-10-minute clips that dominate social media and the more-than-30-minute shows and films popular on SVODs like Amazon, Hulu and Netflix.
The continued push forward with Go90 comes in spite of Verizon losing Walden, its executive vice president of media, who is leaving in 2018 after heading up the Verizon video team which encompasses Fios, Hearst joint venture Complex, Hearst and Comcast joint venture AwesomenessTV, and the recently acquired Vessel.
After Verizon laid off 155 employees at Go90 earlier this year and lost General Manager Chip Canter, Vessel co-founder and CTO Richard Tom took over Canter’s role at Go90.
Shortly after, former CBS alternative programming chief Chris Castallo was brought on board at Go90 to work under Chief Content Officer Ivana Kirkbride.
Steve Woolf, formerly head of networks at AwesomenessTV, came on as head of programming for Go90, and Ryan Blood was hired as director of content strategy and acquisition for Verizon Media. Brian Angiolet, Verizon’s senior VP and global chief media and content officer, runs the platform.
This article was updated with additional comment from Verizon.