• by Shankar Gupta , April 10, 2006

Verizon Wireless has tapped Web publisher Heavy.com to provide several comedy shorts aimed at males 18 to 34 to Verizon's V Cast, a subscription mobile video offering. The deal marks the first time Heavy.com is distributing content through mobile carriers.

Heavy.com will be running a channel on V Cast that will feature nine sub-channels, including "Hip to Hop," "Dudes and Duds of Rock," "More Cowbell," "Motocross Your Heart and Hope Not to Die," and "Sk8ter H8ter."

For now, the service will be available on a subscription-based, on-demand plan, but the feature might in the future be monetized with ads, said Alex Green, Heavy.com's general manager for mobile. "Right now, there isn't going to be advertising included, but that's something that we're talking to Verizon about as we speak," he said late last week.

Green said Heavy.com's advertisers were interested in going mobile as well. "What I'm hearing from the ad sales team is that a lot of our advertisers want to reach end users through mobile devices, because it's extremely personal," he said. "You don't have the same challenges associated with regular Web sites about standing out."

The shorts, currently in testing, will go live on V Cast in the second quarter of this year, Green said. Heavy.com will also be announcing more carrier deals in the near future, he said.