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September 15, 2008

September 15, 2008

Best Buy Nabs Napster, Will Market Devices to Downloaders

Best Buy has agreed to buy Napster, partly for the chance to sell tech products to its user base.

The music retailer plans to cross-sell devices and other products to Napster's 700,000 subscribers. By doing so it expects to "capture recurring revenue by offering ongoing value over a mobile digital platform," it said in a statement.

Interesting notion, but is it logical? From a marketing standpoint, what can Best Buy achieve owning Napster that it couldn't by simply partnering with it? $121 million is an awful lot to spend on an ad deal, after all.

And from a business standpoint? I'm no music industry analyst, but considering Napster lost $16.5 million last year and faces accelerated innovation from behemoth competitors (See MySpace Music's news this morning), it's definitely a gamble.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

WSJ.com Redesign Triples Article Ad Inventory

At Ogilvy's powwow for their IBM clients today, WSJ.com General Manager Daniel Bernard stopped by to show off a sneak peak at the eagerly-anticipated site redesign, slated to launch tomorrow.

It's loaded with new features, including community functionalities that require users to log-in with their real names to network or comment on content. But what's most impressive is how WSJ.com has combined usability and interface with monetization.

Beginning tomorrow, each article page will contain two additional tabs, one for video and one for user comments. This not only enables readers to find and participate in additional content faster with no need to navigate off the page, but benefits the publication as well. Because two tabs on each article page means effectively three time the ad inventory, right?

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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