Vudu, Walmart’s digital movie service, has a new boss: Jeremy Verba is now the unit’s general manager and VP, reporting to Walmart eCommerce boss Gibu Thomas.
Verba has a wide-ranging digital resume, with stops including AOL, CNET and E! Online. His most recent posting was a one-year stint running dating site eHarmony; prior to that he had been GM at Zynga.
Vudu is Walmart’s answer to iTunes, offering movie sales and rentals on an a la carte basis, as opposed to Netflix’s subscription model. At the beginning of 2013, research service NPD said Vudu had 15 percent of the digital “sell-through” market, trailing Amazon’s 18 percent and Apple’s 45 percent.
Since then, however, pay-TV providers, led by Comcast, have moved aggressively into the market, offering discounted movie titles and promoting them heavily. Comcast owns NBCUniversal, which is a minority investor in Revere Digital, Re/code’s parent company.
