The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Quibi’s top advertising partners want to revise their advertising deals with the company. And while the idea of business being down due to COVID-19 is being thrown around as a reason the bulk of the problem seems to be the streaming service’s poor performance. With 1.5 active users among 4.5 apps downloaded that is a bad sign for the company.
The unhappy advertisers include PepsiCo, Walmart, Yum Brands, Anheuser Bush InBev and Taco Bell. We can be sure of one thing.
Quibi launched with such high hopes that users would flock to scripted 5 minute shows without any sense of how the market would react to them and now that they see the results its not pretty. And who know what things will look like when the 3 month free period runs out.
The shaky start to Quibi has led people to wonder if it is on its last legs in the first leg of the race. The Hollywood Reporter broke the news this week that Megan Imbres is on her way out of the company. She said in am email that now that Quibi has launched she saw it as “an opportune time of transition where I can take some time to identify my next challenge.”
Should we look at that as a coach saying he needs to spend more time with his family? She was not the first to jump ship one year in. Quibi lost its head of partnerships and advertising Tim Connolly as well as head of daily content Janice Min and head of operations Diane Nelson before the company launched.
