Quibi Already Taking Huge Bite of Ad Revenue

Quibi, the short-form streaming service led by former Hewlett-Packard Co. Chief Executive Meg Whitman has booked $100 million in advertising revenue months ahead of Quibi’s launch, she said in an interview, adding that amounts to two-thirds of the company’s available inventory for the first year, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Quibi—short for “quick bites”—is due to launch in the first half of next year with shows and films broken up into increments shorter than 10 minutes meant to be watched primarily on smartphones.

The company, which was founded by longtime Hollywood executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, has said its programming slate will include productions from A-list directors such as Steven Spielberg and Guillermo del Toro. Mr. Spielberg is developing a horror series for the service that users can only watch when it is dark outside, and Mr. del Toro is producing a zombie series. The full programming slate hasn’t been announced, but the service also will include daily news programming.

Ms. Whitman said the ads were bought by major advertisers including Procter & Gamble Co. , PepsiCo Inc., Anheuser-Busch InBev SA, Walmart Inc., Progressive Corp. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google. They will be the only companies in their respective sectors to run ads on Quibi during the first year.

The service still has $50 million of unsold ad inventory for its first year, Ms. Whitman said.

Quibi will launch with two pricing levels: An ad-free tier that costs $7.99 a month and a $4.99-a-month option with ads. Ms. Whitman said she thinks about 75% of Quibi’s customers will choose the option with ads, based on research into similar streaming services, giving marketers a chance to target binge watchers that are difficult to reach on services like Netflix .