Warner Bros. Discovery CFO Sees Big Ad Upside From HBO Content On New Max, Says “So Far So Good” On Launch
deadline.comWBD CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels sees advertising on HBO content as a major untapped revenue stream as the compay relaunched its HBO Max streaming service yesterday as Max. “HBO is such an amazing and such a powerful brand and has never been exposed to advertising… The view of the market is coming around and I think advertising is accepted today as … a form of monetization for very, very premium content,” he told a JP Morgan media conference. “We have only just started,” he said, noting Mercedes’ sponsorship deal with Succession. “We started opening up some pre-rolls, but there are a lot more opportunities.
It’s nothing we push right now, because of where the market is. But we are in the very early innings when it comes to advertising.” He said the launch of the new Max streaming service combining HBO Max and Discovery+ content “went very well” and he was “actually very surprised by the large number of subscribers that already started watching on the new product.” WBD is pleased with the takeup for the new premium tier, introduced yesterday, he said, but didn’t provide any numbers.
There were plenty of users on social media yesterday reporting technical glitches trying to get the new app up and running. But Wiedenfels said, “The technical session metrics are already better on day one better than the prior product.
And no accidents which is the most important point for an endeavor like that. So it’s day one. So far, so good. We’re very pleased with how that’s gone.” “I have lot more confidence in our ability to profitably grow subscribers and drive down churn than I had 12 months ago,” hs said, noting that Discovery+ — still available as a standalone service — “has always had industry-leading churn rates out of the gate.”
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