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November 3, 2009

Most Brutal Sponsorship Ever

Though they're more prone to drinking beer and Jagermeister, a sneak preview of the return of the members of the world's most brutal metal band, Dethklok, has been brought to us by Coke Zero.

In fact, in addition to "Metalocalypse," which features the animated exploits of Dethklok, the non-caloric soda brand is sponsoring a host of previews of upcoming shows on Cartoon Network's adult-aimed programming block Adult Swim. The main goal appears to be promoting the "Facial Profiler," an application available at CocaColaZero.com that purports to match photos of people with similar facial features.

At this stage, Coke is in the building stage, looking for people to submit their photos to the database by connecting to the app through Facebook.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 5:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 7, 2009

Will Users Really Watch Last.fm's New Ad-supported Visual Radio?

Last.fm has re-launched its streaming music player to incorporate rich media content alongside its existing online radio offering. Users will now be provided with a stream of artist images, music videos, and other visual content as they stream audio from the site, and Last.fm will unearth a range of new ad inventory as a result.

The firm says the new player will provide "unique visual branding opportunities," and will create a more immersive experience than the audio ad spots currently being used by rival streaming services such as Spotify and We7. U.K. mobile network operator Vodafone is already making use of the new offering, running 15 second video ads in the player before some tracks.

In a release, Martin Stiksel, Last.fm co-founder, said, "Passionate music fans come to Last.fm for more than just the songs, and Visual Radio provides them with the enriching, full-featured music experience they demand. And the bold new music player allows brands and sponsors the opportunity to directly reach these users in a visually exciting way."

I disagree. I would have thought the majority of users visit Last.fm for just the songs, rather than a slideshow and some branding. What's more, many users run streaming music services in the background of other applications, rather than granting them their undivided attention. Ultimately, therefore, I'm dubious as to quite how "engaged" the consumer is likely to be with the new player.

Posted by Jack Marshall at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 6, 2009

VideoEgg Event: Streaming Live, Sort Of

The audience for ad network VideoEgg's live streaming event this afternoon was unforgiving after the program started late and then encountered intermittent blackouts during the first 40 or so minutes.

The event, "Seven Minutes to Reinvent the Internet for Advertising," was hosted on uStream, included a Twitter feed, and featured high-profile panelists such as Denuo CEO Rishad Tobaccowala and GroupM Interaction Worldwide CEO Rob Norman.

"I scream. You scream. We all scream at UStream," complained @gregstielstra on Twitter, using the event's hash tag, #7minutes. "This stream is a prime example of why interactive advertising is bleak," @rabbityz tweeted 30 minutes into the event.

@videoegg attributed the technical difficulties to the number of online participants, which totaled about 600 people at one point. "hey folks! we're working out the kinks of the live stream as the online audience number increases, thanks for hanging with us," @videoegg tweeted.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 2:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 22, 2009

Morning Reads: MySpace CEO Ousted, PBS Video Player, Google Profiles

MySpace's CEO and other execs may soon get their walking papers. According to TechCrunch, CEO Chris DeWolfe will be fired as will other members of the "core" MySpace executive team. The sudden changes come courtesy of recently appointed News Corp. digital honcho Jonathan Miller.

Still think we're living in an era of video platform consolidation? More evidence to the contrary: PBS is the latest, after CBS's TV.com in January, to roll out an elegant new experience for long-form video content. Full-length shows include The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, Nova, Frontline, American Masters and American Experience. According to PBS, the PBS Kids Go video player it launched last year is streaming more than a million clips a week. (release)

In the Google age your identity boils down to what people can glean from a name query search. With the launch of new public profiles, Google is offering individuals a little more control over the outcome of those queries. Some are calling it a run at social platforms. While that may be a stretch, it is an important moment in the evolution of digital identity management.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 20, 2009

Vivaki/Starcom: Tests Underway for New Digital Video Ad Format

What digital video ad format will best the 30-second pre-roll?

Two executives from Vivaki and Starcom, speaking at the Interactive Advertising Bureau's Digital Video conference today, outlined the timetable for testing alternative online video ad formats to determine which one will resonate the most with consumers.

The presentation by Curt Hecht, president of Vivaki Nerve Center, and Tracey Scheppach, video innovation director at Starcom USA, was noteworthy for another reason. It shows that that Hecht and Scheppach, both associated with Publicis Groupe businesses, are working with the IAB, which sets standards for digital ad formats, and not against the industry group.

The initiative, dubbed "The Pool," started with seven participants including Yahoo and Microsoft plus six advertisers including Capital One, Purina, Applebee's, and Allstate. Executives from these companies kicked around ad format ideas, coming up with an initial list of 30, according to Scheppach. After presentations and a series of votes, five formats were selected for qualitative testing. After testing and more votes, two formats were selected for quantitative testing -- a phase now winding down.

Scheppach and Hecht both declined to reveal any details out the final formats, but emphasized that The Pool's testing is designed to identify what works for consumers -- and not just advertisers and publishers.

Next up, one idea will selected for a five-month field trial and will be tested against the 30-second pre-roll. The group is aiming to have its final meeting about the online video ad format in November and roll out its findings by early 2010.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 4:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 19, 2009

Bud.TV Postmortem: Here Ends the Dream of the Branded Video Site

When it launched in February 2007, the day after the Super Bowl, Bud.TV had already come to symbolize the new age of brand-as-programmer. BMWFilms was still semi-fresh in the ad industry's collective memory, and the entry of Anheuser-Busch's destination site seemed destined to carry the torch.

Two years later Bud.TV is gone, and with it the idea that major content destinations -- especially video centric ones -- can become preferred entertainment.

There are many reasons for this. One is the necessity for syndication. It was evident almost as soon as Bud.TV launched that the primary model for online video would be anytime/anywhere consumption, and that exclusivity would fall by the wayside. (A slow-learned lesson, as evidenced by this week's Hulu and Boxee decoupling at the insistence of video content owners.)

Another reason is the dominance of YouTube, where any self-respecting video programmer -- branded or not -- must have a channel. Indeed, Bud.TV still has a YouTube channel, which is where its one breakaway hit -- "Swear Jar" -- garnered most of its traffic.

Another, of course, is resources: production expertise, focus, and simple talent. "If the networks can't continuously produce that [volume of content], how can a beer company?" A-B VP of Marketing Keith Levy told AdAge.

(Image credit: schizoform. Licensed through creative commons.)

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

February 5, 2009

IAB Pushes for Common Language Between Video Ads and Players

The responsibility for creating standards in video advertising is fragmenting. Last week I touched on the dual roles now occupied by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which is trying to increase efficiency for video ad buying, and "The Pool," a project from Starcom MediaVest Group and Vivaki to establish creative standards for video ads.

As an example of where the IAB has now positioned itself in the standards creation process, the association today issued a set of proposed definitions (called VPAID, for Video Player-Ad Interface Definitions) that spell out how video players and ads should communicate. Without such commonality, agency-created ads won't work with all video players..

According to the IAB, the new definitions will do the following:

-Define a standard method for video ads to talk to video players.
-Provide specs that can be used by any type of video player.
-Cut production costs and improve ROI for advertisers while enabling a less intrusive experience for video content viewers.

Dry stuff, but somebody's gotta do it.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 3:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 30, 2009

Hulu's Secret, and Super Bowl Ad Gallery

Hulu is staging its own Super Bowl coverage as a companion to broadcast partner NBC. It plans to post each commercial just moments after it airs on Sunday during the Super Bowl XLIII game, the same as last year. What's new is the ad gallery, and the ability for users to vote on their picks for the best ads during and after the game. Hulu also created a widget, found here, with ads from last year. As the game airs and ads are shown, the new ads will populate the widget as it's posted on users' blogs and Web sites.

That's just the teaser. Hulu says during the Super Bowl it will "reveal the secret behind our service," but there's been no advance look at what that secret may be. We'll find out with you what Hulu will look like on Monday.

Posted by Enid Burns at 5:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 8, 2008

Adidas Adicolor Campaign

The friend who forwarded this final entry into Adidas' Adicolor viral campaign on YouTube wrote, "viral advertising that I can relate to in a way that doesn't make me want to buy "product" at all."

Yep. That about sums it up. Even if it is compelling enough to make you spend tons of time with the brand, you don't feel as if you're really spending any time at all with the brand. That doesn't mean the films aren't terribly compelling. But are they terribly compelling advertising, or is viral getting too soft?

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 4, 2008

Jokes.com Relaunch, McDonald's Sponsorship

I'm not sure how many hours of my adolescent and teenage life I spent watching standup comedy on TV (it seemed like every channel had a standup show). But I don't think it was a waste of time, and expect to spend more hours browsing through the newly launched Jokes.com site.

Comedy Central has revamped the site in a big way. It's not just a facelift. They literally had multiple editorial people plowing through standup video from their archives going back about 10 years, attributing metadata to countless clips, and slicing and dicing shows into individual jokes, or thematic riffs.

Watch Bill Hicks mocking creationism on the "A-List." Or check out Bob Odenkirk in his early (awkward?) standup days. You might have to sit through an in-stream ad first. (Sadly, they don't have that old Brian Regan bit about little league.)

Of course, there are lots of younger (and living) comedians, too. And one of 'em, Christian Finnegan, was at the launch lunch at Comedy Central HQ yesterday (pictured here in his cool 'Mats shirt).

Sure, all that editing and metadata-ing work facilitates SEO. But there's another interesting and potentially revenue-generating outcome. The site's content -- which also includes text jokes and text versions of the video bits (yes, more SEO) -- can be readily organized according to theme. The Comedy Central folks created hundreds of tags for Jokes.com content (George W. Bush, Gross-Out, Marriage).

That means they can easily generate a page dedicated to a certain theme or themes for a sponsor. Take McDonald's, which will sponsor a football-themed video section in conjunction with the Superbowl.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 1:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

October 28, 2008

How to Succeed in Advertising

Recession got you down? Been laid off or downsized?

One man, Joel Moss Levinson, has earned over $200,000 in cash and prizes, becoming the king of CGM in the process. Today's NY Times profile describes, and links to, campaigns Levinson has created videos for brands as diverse as Best Western, Klondike, Little Penguin wine, Delta, and the American National CattleWomen, to name just a few.

His contest-winning is due in no small part to a social media marketing strategy, asking his Facebook and Twitter friends and followers to vote for his entries.

Hey, we all know CGM's big. But who knew it can be a living? Maybe you don't need that new agency gig after all.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 9:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

AOL Dumps Its Online Video Player

AOL's online video player heads to the digital junkyard, sharing the same fate as the vinyl record player.

AOL, a unit of Time Warner, will instead use Brightcove's technology, for online video, according to published reports. It will also integrate its online video ad technology into Brightcove's, according to a WSJ.com report. Typically companies that use Brightcove's video player also use its ad technology.

Fred McIntyre, senior vice president at AOL, told Multichannel News, that the change will allow AOL to deliver content more efficiently than it could using its internally developed tools.

He said it will also enable AOL to devote more resources to its video search technology, Truveo. AOL acquired the video search company more than two years ago.

In the latest development, Truveo last month launched a trial of Truveo Mobile Video Search, which is intended to make it easier for mobile phone users to find video from the Web on mobile phones.

AOL had put resources into media player technology ever since it acquired Nullsoft, the developer of Winamp, back in 1999. AOL took a minority stake in Brightcove of Cambridge, MA, in 2006.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 8:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 26, 2008

Most Highly-Targeted Message of the Entire Presidential Campaign?

The Great Schlep has launched with this genuinely funny -- and impactful -- video featuring Sarah Silverman exhorting her viewers to get their butts down to Florida to convince their Jewish grandparents to vote for Obama.

Sponsored by JewsVote.org, the microsite offers all the ammunition anyone would ever need to convince Zadie and Nana to vote Obama, down to a talking points PDF download addressing topics such as "He’s Black! Let’s talk about it!"

The viral traction seems to have already kicked in - the video's featured on Time magazine's Web site and is making the forward-to-a-friend rounds.

Sarah Silverman, meanwhile, has got my vote as the next Obama Girl.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 3:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

September 22, 2008

What's eBay Filming in NYC?

So all of a sudden, my West 55th Street block in NYC is lined with those dreaded "no parking due to film shoot" signs attached to every available lamppost.

Project name: eBay.

A quick check with the mayor's office of film & tv would doubtless shed some light, but perhaps you readers can, too. Wassup? A feature film? TV show like maybe the show eBay announced six years ago? Commercial?

Share any info in the comments section, please.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 3:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

September 18, 2008

iTV Elite Meet

Mitch Oscar, who knows more about iTV than practically anyone else, recently moved from Carat to MPG. He took his Collaborative Alliance with him.

Once a conference-room size event, today's powwow of media executives, analysts and technology providers from both sides of the analog/digital divide spilled into the street outside NYC's Helen Mills Threatre. They gathered to share learnings, research and hands-on experience in interactive television advertising (and a bit of Web video, to boot). Speakers included eMarketer's Geoff Ramsey, MediaBank's Brad Keywell, Sequent Partner's Jim Spaeth, OTX's Bruce Friend, TelevisionWeek's Daisy Whitney and a host of others including, of course, Mitch himself.

Anyone interested in getting in on the ground floor of the next big digital advertising channel owes it to themself to try to get on Mitch's list for this quarterly gathering of the who's who from both sides of the media fence.

Need to make connections within the industry? He's the man with the iTV Rolodex to end all Rolodexes.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 8:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hulu's Hurrah

Since launching six months ago, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar said the online video site has picked up 90 advertisers.

The site, a joint venture between NBC Universal and Fox Corp., has also partnered with 90 content providers.

"Content partners are seeing a dramatic lift to overall online business. Fox has seen overall online business more than triple since March 12," Kilar said while speaking at the OMMA conference today in New York City.

Other success metrics he shared with the audience: Hulu has eight million monthly users and 119 monthly video streams since its launch. Hulu videos have been embedded 500,000 times on over 27 sites, he said.

What's contributing to Hulu's success? Kilar attributes it to an obsession for quality.

"We obsess over every pixel in this service," he said. For instance, the Hulu team had a healthy debate over the size of the site's logo because no one wanted it to detract, for instance, from the logo for Battlestar Galactica, a television program available on the site.

Kilar said his obsession for quality grew from a love of the Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL, where he visited as a child. "I've had a lifelong fascination with what made this guy [Walt Disney] tick," he confessed. And after a college, he landed a job at Disney where he learned that street sweepers held an exalted position at the theme park.

"If Hulu can create and foster a culture that’s as obsessive as Disney was with its theme park in 60s, that’s what we would be thrilled to do," Kilar said.

Sounds like Kilar could be cast as Bert, the chimney sweep.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 1:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

September 11, 2008

Mashup: 200 PR Execs, One Blender

How do you engage a group of more than 200 public relations professionals?

Bring in George Wright, marketing manager of Blendtec, a company known for viral videos on its site, WillItBlend.com.

Wright did not disappoint. With a garden rake and Blendtec blender as his props, Wright spoke at the Public Relations Society of America's T3 PR in NYC, a conference for PR professionals representing tech companies.

Wright has been on the speaking circuit, promoting the story of how he got Blendtec CEO Tom Dickson, pictured above, to don a white lab coat and agree to have his testing work be featured in a video shown online. A $50 investment resulted in a 700 percent increase in blender sales, according to Wright. (He didn't disclose the actual dollar change.)

And, the blender chewed up the wooden handle of the yard rake, no problem.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 8:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 10, 2008

Brightcove to Drive German Video Network

Video technology platform Brightcove has partnered with OMS, a German online sales and marketing network for regional newspapers, to create an ad-supported online video network for its member publishers.

The network will feature content licensed by OMS from third parties, alongside video published by the regional newspapers themselves. Ad sales will be handled by OMS.

Speaking with ClickZ News, OMS Media Consultant Kim Kriegers said, "The German online video market is still very fragmented in terms of reach, content quality and technical standardization. With this deal, OMS is trying to address these problems to make the market more attractive and efficient for advertisers."

After the video platform has been rolled out across the network's 60 sites, Kriegers expects it to serve in excess of 10 million streams a month, attracting existing OMS advertisers, as well as traditional TV advertisers looking to cut back on ad spend. Together, the network sites reach around 9 million unique visitors each month.

Targeting possibilities for the platform will be limited to content categories, or channels, such as national news, sports, and entertainment.

Posted by Jack Marshall at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 5, 2008

McCain’s Celeb Obama Bash Tops Viral Chart

According to Viralvideochart.com, (which, funnily enough, compiles viral video charts), recent political ads from U.S. Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama have been amongst the most talked about videos across the net over the last week.

Viralvideochart.com scans "several million blogs a day," according to the site, and compiles its charts according to the number of times each video is linked to, and embedded from, YouTube, Google Video, and MySpace.

On Friday, McCain's ad branding Obama "the biggest celebrity in the world" topped the chart, racking up 168 new posts in 24 hours. In the same period, Obama's "Low Road" T.V. ad clocked up 42 new posts, managing only eighth place.

The only other actual ad in the site's top 20 today is Snickers' speedwalker ad, at thirteenth place.

Posted by Jack Marshall at 6:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 23, 2008

Online Video Ads: Tools and Trends to Watch

At ClickZ's Online Video Ad Forum yesterday, a fantastic line up of two dozen speakers offered up examples of their latest creative work and some shared info on tips and tools they think are worth watching.

During the day-long program at the Millennium Broadway Hotel, participants picked up intelligence on these things:

*Deep Focus' Ian Schafer credited a subtle change in an ad-serving format with improving results for one video ad campaign he worked on. Historically when video ads ran on a site, a loader screen would appear and then the ad would start. A change in DoubleClick's technology, he said, enables the video ad to launch immediately -- without the loader screen. That change, he said, resulted in a 30 percent increase in the interaction rate for a video ad promoting "Recount," an HBO film.

* In looking to the potential for a richer future for online video ads, Dorian Sweet, a digital strategist, pointed to a cool tool called PicLens. Using this tool, a Web site visitor can view photos or videos from a site such as YouTube on a "3D wall."

* Vibrant Media, which has technology called IntelliTXT that enables advertisers to "buy" keywords in content and then serve up text ads, has extended that feature so video ads can be viewed when someone mouses over a keyword in a blog or other online content, according to one speaker.

* Making online video content optimized for search engine remains a daunting task. Even though there have been some recent technology advances, the culprit are objects in Adobe Flash multimedia technology that cannot be read by search engine bots, another speaker said.

For more in-depth coverage of online video ad campaigns and other trends, check out my column here on Friday.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 10:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

July 15, 2008

Win a Free Ticket to ClickZ's Online Video Ad Event

Give us three good reasons why you'd like to attend ClickZ's Online Video Forum, which takes place next Tuesday, July 22 in Manhattan, and we'll let you in for free.

This show is a must-attend. Our speaker line-up is a who's who of the nation's leading interactive video experts -- representing Carat, Starcom USA, Enlighten, Ogilvy, MediaVest/Publicis Media Groupe, Denuo, Saatchi & Saatchi New York, Campfire, EVB San Francisco, IQ Interactive and more. You'll also get to hear from YouTube's Brian Cusack and Hulu's Kevin McGurn. Visit the conference Web site for more information.

What are you waiting for? Send your ideas to Anna Maria Virzi, ClickZ's executive editor, by 11 PM ET Thursday. We'll let you know by 2 PM Friday whether you'll get a free pass to this one-day event.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 4:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Viacom-YouTube Reach Privacy Deal over User Info

Google's YouTube won't be required, after all, to hand over user IDs to Viacom.

The measure is part of an agreement reached yesterday in U.S. District Court in New York City in connection with a Viacom copyright infringement lawsuit against YouTube. In that lawsuit, Viacom claims Google failed to stop the distribution of Viacom content on YouTube.

Earlier this month, a federal judge ordered Google to hand over to Viacom the following information: YouTube user IDs, visitor IDs, and the IP address, which is used to connect computers over the Internet. Under the new agreement, Google will be able to substitute the IDs and IP addresses for "unique values." As a result, the privacy of users should be better protected, while Viacom should still be able to establish what videos were watched.

"We are pleased to report that Viacom, MTV and other litigants have backed off their original demand for all users' viewing histories," the "YouTube Team" wrote on YouTube's blog.

Most visitors posting entries on the YouTube blog applauded the development. "thanks, Youtube. It's good to know that at least one organization is committed to our privacy," wrote arcadianraider.

Others asked when Google would reduce the amount of information it obtains from users. "Great! So when are you going to let us OPT OUT of information collection?" asked thestranger.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

July 2, 2008

Hulu and YouTube, Together at ClickZ’s Video Ad Forum

Can't decide whether to advertise on Google's YouTube or NBC and Fox's Hulu? Edgy vs. mainstream? Eminem's "Sing For The Moment," or "Nutty Professor II: The Klumps?"

Want to learn about the latest innovations in online and interactive video creative for advertising and marketing?

Probe these questions and more with the nation's leading interactive video experts at the ClickZ Online Video Advertising Forum on July 22 in New York City.

Come to see:

*YouTube's Brian Cusack, Hulu's Kevin McGurn, and others debate best practices for targeting and buying online video media.

*Creative leaders from Deep Focus, Digitas, and Organic review video ad formats.

*What's new in video ad creative from the likes of AKQA, Campfire, EVB San Francisco, and IQ Interactive.

And there's more. Hear from online video ad experts at Carat, Geary Interactive, Starcom USA, Enlighten, Ogilvy, MediaVest/Publicis Media Groupe, Denuo, idfive, Saatchi & Saatchi New York, and others.

Register here.

On the fence? Check out the full agenda here.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 3:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 1, 2008

Google and Seth MacFarlane: YouTube-Plus, Banner Ad Band-Aid or What?

Google's deal to distribute a new series from "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane on its AdSense network is nothing new. The company has pushed YouTube videos with text and overlay ads to AdSense publisher partners since at least last October, and as far back as a year ago had a specific deal with MTV networks to distribute MTVN video clips and in-stream video ads to some sites.

The MacFarlane link-up is the same. The videos live on a YouTube brand channel, not inside the ad units. But it's still noteworthy for three specific reasons.

First is the big name talent involved. Seth MacFarlane is super bankable and his “Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy" is a good get for YouTube.

Second, the sponsorships Google and its partner Media Rights Council are trying to sell alongside the clips will be a cut above what it's tried before. Whereas last Fall Google was focused on text, pre-roll and display units, it's now moving into closer pairings of advertiser and content. Google has stated very clearly that it plans to treat advertising in "Cavalcade" as branded entertainment. (Those are Google's own words, though I would argue they shouldn't apply in situations where advertiser content is hitched up to pure unbranded content. When the two are connected, that's traditional advertising, even if the ads happen to be really good. Branded entertainment is standalone.)

Lastly, Google may be trying -- in its oblique way -- to apply a salve to the world's chronic and worsening case of banner blindness. Industry-reported click-through rates, brand impact research from Dynamic Logic, and eye tracking studies from Pew and others have all found the effectiveness of display advertising is in decline. Some are speculating that by moving to distribute quality video content in ad space, Google could help re-sensitize Internet users to banner ads.

I agree with that up to a point. Yet there's only so much Google can do given its low ranking on the display ad totem pole. While ComScore pinpoints it as the third largest ad network in terms of reach, behind Yahoo and Platform A, the vast majority of Google's inventory is text ads. Even so, it's nice to see an ad network operator do something -- anything! -- to aid the humble banner, which continues to be favored by marginal advertisers and neglected by blue chips.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 1:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 26, 2008

NBC to Offer Show-Specific Data on Streamed Content

NBC Digital Entertainment will begin offering demographic data on individual shows streamed on its site. NBC.com's show-specific will be provided courtesy of Nielsen Online's VideoCensus beginning in July.

Digital Media Sales SVP Peter Naylor said advertisers have been requesting the show-level data. NBCU claims it's the network to carry Nielsen's tags on its streaming video content. How long before CBS, ABC, Fox and Hulu begin offering similar granular visibility into their online video audiences?

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 1:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 17, 2008

Brightcove Promises More Video Inventory Through New Platform

Brightcove has launched the latest version of its video player, which could result in more ad inventory for publishers using it. Essentially, by better optimizing video content for search engines, and enabling better distribution of video clips throughout publisher sites, the company expects more users to flock to that video. More usage = more ad inventory.

The new platform presents each video on its own Web page, giving it a dedicated URL. Brightcove founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire believes this will create "more real estate for advertising," since the entire page can be utilized as opposed to ads displaying only within the video player. Also, unlike players that are typically invisible to search engines, the Web page-based platform can be crawled by search engines and surfaced more readily within a publisher site.

"You'll be able to introduce video into far more places in your Web site…which increases available video inventory," explained Allaire.

The platform has also been altered to enable higher quality, long-form video. Allaire thinks as more longer-form video is viewed, takeover ads and overlay ads will become more popular with advertisers.

At this point, though, the new platform's impact on advertisers is more about inventory potential than anything else. Still, Allaire hinted the firm will launch the platform on a broader commercial basis in the autumn, at which time other ad-related news may be announced.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 1:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 13, 2008

ClickZ Welcomes Denuo's Todd Krieger

Denuo SVP Todd Krieger today joins ClickZ's roster of Experts, providing insights into the evolution of video content creation, distribution, and monetization.

Look for Todd to examine a wide range of topics, everything from watershed moments and cultural shifts in audience consumption to CPMs. You'll find his first column here.

Before joining Denuo, Todd was executive producer at Yahoo Media Group and senior manager of business development at Microsoft TV.

Welcome, Todd!

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 9:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 10, 2008

Hulu Adds Comedy Royalty to Catalog

Hulu already has deals with 70 media partners that provide upwards of 700 TV and film titles. So what's it stand to gain by adding a couple new shows to its media menu? Quite a bit actually, if those shows happen to be The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report. The premium video portal has begun posting entire episodes of both programs, with archives going back about a month.

Here's a screen grab of how yesterday's episode of The Daily Show looks on Hulu, sponsored by DirectTV.

And here's how it looks on The Daily Show's own Web site, sponsored by Master Card:

In addition to the Comedy Central relationship, Hulu will begin offering PBS programs NOVA, Carrier, Scientific American Frontiers, and Wired Science.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

June 5, 2008

Ford and Microsoft Sync Up for Viral Roadtripping

Microsoft has teamed with Ford for a highly experiential, super soft-sell microsite around Microsoft SYNC.

SYNC is a voice-actived gizmo for your car that's kind of like an iPod crossed with a Blackberry: it does music, text, and telephone. Cool, but it's a sell with a high educational curve.

Sync My Music, which lives on MSN, features a game, tons of content and a number of video webisodes about Kim and Seana, two music-obsessed girls, who road-trip across America in a SYNC equipped Ford in their respective quests to become a singer/songwriter (Kim DiVine is the real thing, actually), or to hook up with hot male indie band members.

The game unlocks additional content such as wallpaper and MP3s; the Explore section of the site is a region-by-region guide to the myriad cities the girls visit in their travels. It contains info on local clubs and bands and planning your own road trip. Which may prove difficult, as most of the links are crosswired. Select NYC's hippest bands, for example, and you land on Atlanta's arenas, clubs and cafes.

Oh, well. Given current gas prices, you probably weren't really going to do the roadtrip thing this summer, anyway.

Microsoft wants users to digg, blog and forward the site to a friend. Given the chicks meet popular local indie bands from time to time, the viral has got some real potential. Not just from the fans, but from the bands, who are promoting the heck out of the site on MySpace already.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 2:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

May 30, 2008

The Heat is on 50 Cent

Online video is a knife that cuts both ways for rapper 50 Cent.

While ClickZ today examined how 50 Cent uses online video to build brand loyalty, a video on celebrity gossip site TMZ is bringing attention to problems in his personal life.

A multi-million dollar home -- and the center of dispute between 50 Cent and an ex-girlfriend --- was destroyed in a suspicious fire. Six people, including 50 Cent's 10-year-old son, went sent to the hospital for smoke inhalation and were released, according to the Associated Press.

In a video interview on TMZ.com, 50 Cent's former girlfriend Shaniqua Tompkins said she and 50 Cent were fighting over the house. She also complained that 50 Cent "made no contact to see how his son is doing" after the fire.

Newsday.com reported that 50 Cent was in Louisiana at the time of the fire. According to reports, his spokesman said any suggestion that the rapper was involved in the incident is "outrageous."

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 9:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

May 23, 2008

Brightcove Launches Japanese Operation

Online video platform Brightcove has launched a majority-owned Japanese subsidiary, branded Brightcove KK, to grant it instant access to the Japanese market.

Headquartered in Tokyo, the Asian offshoot will operate a localized version of Brightcove's on-demand video platform, offering video distribution and advertising services.

The operation is backed by a $4.9 million investment from four leading Japanese digital media players, including ad network and technology company Cyber Communications Inc. (CCI), content delivery network J-Stream, prominent Japanese agency Dentsu, and information outsourcing company transcosomos.

Publicis also announced this week that it too was branching out further into the Asian market, acquiring Chinese digital agency EmporioAsia, to add to the Yong Yang marketing firm it snapped up last year.

Following its purchase of Digitas in 2006, Publicis also acquired Chinese independent interactive marketing network Communication Central Group (CCG) last year, which it re-branded Digitas Greater China.

Posted by Jack Marshall at 11:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 22, 2008

Publishers Want More Video Ad Creative from Agencies

Tired of seeing the same in-stream video ads over and over? The people selling them are getting sick of it, too. According to ad execs speaking at yesterday's Streaming Media East conference in New York, one reason for the lack of variety is a lack of creative.

"We don't get multiple creatives," said SVP Digital Sales at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Christine Cook, alluding to the time the same pre-roll ad for a particular advertiser kept popping up before video clips of Martha demonstrating recipes for pasta or brownies.

Cook (what a great name for a Martha Stewart ad seller!) had the crowd audience cracking up. As it turned out, the ads were for a laxative brand.

Noting the promise of hyper online ad targeting, Cook said she would like to see agencies develop more creative elements to enable customized variation of Web video ads. "We're not getting as much creative…so you lose that opportunity of having that one-to-one [targeting]," she said.

Not only are advertisers and agencies overwhelmed by the options, they might not have the ability or budgets to produce a lot of varying creative or Web video elements, said Peter Naylor, SVP Digital Media Sales at NBC Universal. "They're as resource constrained as anybody."

From Cook's experience Web video advertisers are also are reluctant to provide shorter spots. Part of the problem is a lack of standards, she believes. Different publishers ask for different ad lengths, or offer different video formats, for example.

Speaking of ad burnout, Cook said Martha Stewart even tried reducing ad rates for 5-10 second spots to spur use of shorter ad slots. Referring to longer spots, she said, "We knew it was burnout for the consumer."

Posted by Kate Kaye at 5:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

May 20, 2008

Need to Roll Your Own Content? Digitas Brings the Zig Zag Papers

When you think about it, isn't the phrase "branded content" longer than it needs to be? What's the suffix "-ed" contribute, really? And "video," while pleasingly brief, doesn't really cover animation, does it?

The folks at Digitas have solved both linguistic failings with the launch of The Third Act, a new agency described as a "brand content platform" geared toward helping clients produce "motion media" content.

Whatever the verbiage used to describe it, the strategy behind this latest move from Digitas is clear. As clients are compelled to produce ever more original content, especially video content, it behooves the larger agency networks to mobilize their creative resources to serve that purpose.

To that end, The Third Act aims to offer a soup to nuts video services menu, beginning with idea development and extending to production and distribution on various platforms. The Third Act will tap talent from the agency's Boston and Chicago offices, as well as global production resources.

Based in New York, the entity will be helmed by SVP and MD Stephanie Sarofian and report up to global chief creative officer Marc Beeching. Digitas plans to showcase its new baby at a June 5 event in New York called Digital Content NewFront.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 7:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 19, 2008

Scripps Interactive Prez: "Customers Are On YouTube" (Quote of the Day)

“We want to be where the customers are, and they are on YouTube. More specifically, it’s a way for customers to snack on your brand in between full episodes... We will use that ability to snack as a brand builder and marketing play for our linear and nonlinear products.”

-Deanna Brown, president of the interactive group at Scripps Networks, commenting on the company's new distribution deal with YouTube. Bush’s Baked Beans is the current advertiser on 200 videos from Scripps’ HGTV, Food Network, DIY Network and Fine Living networks that are running on YouTube.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 8, 2008

IAB: When Is Rich Media Really Rich?

The Interactive Advertising Bureau today released guidelines that would update the definition of rich media as well as revise guidelines for other ad formats. The IAB has asked for comment within the next 30 days before locking down them down.

When asked about the highlights, Marla Nitke, IAB spokeswoman, pointed to the three bullet points in the IAB news release. The highlights are:

*Redefine rich media. It would refer to "advertisements with which users can interact (as opposed to solely animation and excluding click-through functionality) in a web page format," the proposed change reads. Rich media, under the proposal, also includes in-page and in-text digital video ads where the associated content isn't streaming in a player.

*Offer guidance on file weights and animation lengths for both rich and non-rich media online ads.

*Address ad formats such as banners and buttons as well as transitional and various over-the-page units such as floating ads, page take-overs and tear-backs. New units would include a 720x300 pop-under and a 300x100 or 3:1 rectangle.

"These standards aren't bad for creatives. They seem to be an efficiency
for media traffickers. A "one size fits all" standard is great but we
could loose the dynamism that online adverting used to enjoy," Dorian Sweet, creative director/digital strategist, wrote to ClickZ, when asked for his thoughts on the proposed standards.

And this from Deep Focus CEO Ian Schafer: "The only thing that jumps out at me as significant is this: 'Redefine rich media so that ads must be interactive aside from the
ability to click-through in order to be categorized as rich media.'

"I like that. Another reason to talk about ‘engagement’ and its relative metrics, and another reason for all ads to be rich media."

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 4:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Enliven to Merge with Offline Ad Management Player

One of the more storied vendors in the digital marketing arena, Enliven, has agreed to merge with DG FastChannel, an ad production and creative asset management firm. The combined entity hopes to offer advertisers a single place to create and manage ad assets, especially video.

Enliven offers rich media, mobile and in-game ad products and services. It was originally acquired by Unicast in 2002 and then absorbed into Viewpoint (known for its 3D and hologram digital imaging technology) two years after that. Some time later Viewpoint was rebranded Enliven, after which it promptly dropped out of sight. Or at least out of ClickZ's sight. For the past few years the company has either failed to return our calls or declined to speak with us about its operations.

In any case, Eniliven's capabilities will be added to DG FastChannel's traditional media management suite, which supports national and local broadcast and cable TV, radio, and print. The combined entity will also offer post-production services, a searchable database of TV ads, and Web site development, courtesy of the SpringBox agency brand. Not sure how much "agency" there is behind that "brand," but there you go.

The all-stock transaction values Enliven at approximately $98 million. DG FastChannel previously owned 12 percent of the company.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 2:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 5, 2008

Online Video Ads: High Price, High Value?

How long will online video ads, on a CPM basis, cost more than television ads?
"It's driven by a dearth of quality produced video online," said Nick Johnson, NBC's VP, national sales, Internet and broadband.

"It's a marketplace supply and demand story," said Johnson, speaking at the IAB's Digital Video conference today in NYC. He said the costs will likely remain higher, for now, as long as consumers respond better to online video ads than television ads. "There's a lot of opportunities to be interactive, to be a very immersive experience," he said.

From Endemol USA, the producers of reality television series such as "Big Brother," look for brand-sponsored content online, said Jon Vlassopulos, SVP, digital media and branded entertainment. (Last month, NBC Universal said it is working with Omnicom Media Group Digital to pair brands with content.)

Two years ago, Endemol Mobile created an interactive mobile video for Nokia, called "Get Close To…Sugababes." It featured clips of the pop group. And the video was shot on -- you guessed it -- Nokia phones.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 3:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

IAB Launches Video Ad Compliance Seal

In conjunction with finalizing its Digital Video In-Stream Ad Format Guidelines, the Interactive Advertising Bureau has unveiled a compliance program à la TRUSTe. The new guidelines were proposed a month ago, and nothing in those original guidelines has changed following a comment period.

According to the IAB press release, "The IAB suggests that compliant member sites post the compliance seal in their online media kit as well as in their print versions. Media buyers will be educated about the benefits of Digital Video Ad Format Guidelines and be encouraged to look for the seal."

Posted by Kate Kaye at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 1, 2008

Google Flips Switch on TV Ads, Spot Runner Gets Granular

As expected, Google has begun offering TV ad production and placement services to all AdWords advertisers. The public launch indicates the company has partially resolved the inventory problems that plagued the program in its early months, though it's still only pushing ads to customers of its DISH and Astound cable partners. Google's demo, viewable here, shows how advertisers can choose programs and networks, fix day parts, secure production services, and schedule campaigns.

With the launch, advertisers will be in a better position to analyze and compare the relative merits of Google's system with competing offerings, most notably Spot Runner. Spot Runner, which hired Joanne Bradford and Marc Rosenthal in recent months, is going after national advertisers whose budgets were too small for TV in the broadcast boom years. A client example the company shared last month is that of a purveyor of home power generators. "When we see a storm rolling in, we turn on their campaigns," CEO Nick Grouf said.

While Google is giving marketers the option of uploading spots or contracting jobs, Spot Runner has taken the tack of proactively packaging video ads for specific business types. You can see its library here, including an interesting set of political advertising templates I hadn't noticed before visiting today.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 4:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

April 29, 2008

STD's: No Laughing Matter

Except when they are. Planned Parenthood nails the sex ed instructor shtick with a new video site at TakeCareDownThere.org. It's funny and filthy stuff, just the way teenagers like it. Bonus points for use of "blow-jays."

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 5:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 28, 2008

The WB Will Not Be Televised

"The next great network will not be televised."

With this, and other grandiose pronouncements, Warner Bros. Television Group unveiled two major new broadband sites, a couple of virtual worlds, and named some of the advertisers that will support the launch.

The WB.com, which comes out of beta in August, will be an online video-on-demand network featuring both library content and original Web productions. "We're in the digital storytelling business," noted Warner Bros. TV Group President Bruce Rosenblum, "and making a significant investment in our digital initiatives."

The company was more tight-lipped about advertising opportunities, but did reveal initial sponsors include Mattell, McDonald's and Johnson & Johnson.

In addition to distrubution partners including Comcast, AOL, Fancast.com, and some mobile carriers, WB created an application on Facebook. All content on the WB site will be available for viewing from within Facebook, and vice-versa: users can peruse Facebook from inside The WB.com.

KidsWB.com is the juvenile version of WB content on the Web. Integrated within the platform are two virtual worlds: Warner Zone, featuring characters from WBs extensive cartoon library, and DC Hero Zone, where Batman and his ilk can be encountered. It goes live sometime next month.

It's interesting to note that "mix, mash, share" is a motto. Give Tweetybird a mohawk, turn the Tasmanian Devil into a tutu-wearing avatar - WB doesn't care. That's massive, considering the proprietary attitude entertainment conglomerates have traditionally taken toward the sanctity of their characters. On the adult site, users will be encourage to re-mix episodes of, say, "Friends," and share them with their own friends.

Are you listening, Mouse?

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 5:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 22, 2008

"We" Campaign Gets a Little Boost from an Ad Vendor

It's odd to see a major ad campaign, even a cause-based one, pay its way with donations. But that's exactly how the "We" ad campaign, courtesy of the Alliance for Climate Protection, is going about it. (Check out ClickZ's coverage of the digital side.) Al Gore has pledged his Nobel Peace Prize winnings to the group, which he chairs, along with his earnings from hit documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." Meanwhile the film's distributor has promised to kick in 5 percent of profits, according to the Washington Post.

Even online ad firms are pitching in. EyeWonder, which is supporting the "We" campaign's rich media ads, yesterday said it would donate a portion of it’s streaming ad services.

The main theme of the ad blitz is that climate change is an issue everyone can agree on (ads show the likes of Pat Robertson and Al Sharpton sitting on a sofa together). It would seem that also applies to corporate givers, including interactive ad firms.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 15, 2008

Google TV Ads: General Release Confirmed for Next Few Weeks

Don't look now Ma, but your favorite soap's about to run its first ad for DogShoes.com.

Google has confirmed it will soon offer its TV Ads program, in trial mode since it launched a year ago, to all U.S. advertisers. In the next few weeks, AdWords customers large and small will be offered a shot at the broadcast glitz, complete with production referrals for those lacking TV-ready video assets.

The move indicates the company has resolved the volume issues that hobbled the program during its first months. As of late August 2007, just 50 clients had tested the system and the minimum spend was a modest (for TV) $10,000 a month, according to a source.

"Over the past months, our partnerships with DISH network and Astound Cable have scaled and we are pleased to expand our Google TV Ads program to more U.S. advertisers," the company said in a statement.

A story yesterday in Multichannel News had some additional details sourced to Keval Desai, Google product lead for the TV initiative. Desai told the pub advertisers including Lenovo and Priceline.com had placed ads through the system. “We serve millions of impressions daily," he reportedly added.

Desai was unavailable to comment today. Google would only add that it believes the wider advertiser launch "will ultimately lead to better, more relevant ads on television."

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 4:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 14, 2008

Sony U.K. Froths Up Another Viral

The ad team for the Sony Bravia team in the U.K. has released a series of viral videos on the Web: First there was "Balls," then "Paint," and Bunnies followed. A new series of videos, Sony Foam City, made its way on YouTube, and a supporting microsite for Sony's new line of digital cameras an camcorders.

The video is a similar piece where a neighborhood of an urban area is taken over by, in this case foam, and it's affect on the area residents. Many are armed with Sony cameras to capture the event.

Posted by Enid Burns at 5:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Take That, Victoria's Secret!

While downmarket Victoria's Secret fusses its advertising might be "too sexy," the much tonier lingerie purveyor Agent Provocateur "wears its carnal appeal like a badge of honor."

In tandem with Story Worldwide, the brand just added an "online party" to its Web site that will be updated as different stages of the 2008 collection are rolled out.

In addition to more or less of safe-for-work videos (depends on where you work, I suppose), visitors can drag garments that catch their eye off the models and into an individual cloakroom (read: shopping list). Some visitors will doubtless be disappointed that this action does not, in fact, actually remove the garments from the models. They remain fully lingerie'd.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 11:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 8, 2008

Scripps Shoots for "Total Category Dominance"

Dropped in on the Scripps Networks upfront this morning. Deanna Brown, who's been president of its Interactive Group for the past year, has set the rather ambitious goal of "total category dominance" for the group's five cable properties: HGTV, Food Network, DIY, Fine Living, and GAC.

To achieve that goal, Brown is focusing on what she told advertisers is "new" new media, i.e. mobile and social channels. Given the predominance of contests, shopping lists and other participatory programming on the stations, Scripps is particularly well postioned to leverage social media and has already done so with successful initiatives such as Blog Cabin.

Chatting afterwards, Brown told me that what she's really concentrating on over the next few months is an extensive rebuild of Scripps' backend, particularly the CMS, to bring more Web 2.0 functionality to the networks' numerous sites. "After eight years of the same CMS, it's time for a change," she said.

Users won't see a difference, but will be able to use the sites differently and in deeper, more engaging ways. Methinks this is an issue many media companies are going to have to address -- and invest in -- to remain competitive, retain audience and attract advertisers.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 10, 2008

Cable Operators Up a Creek

Executives from Comcast, Time Warner, Cablevision, Cox, Charter Communications, and Bright House Networks have banded together in what the New York Times has reported is a codenamed Project Canoe. The collective are working together to come up with a targeted advertising initiative. Thing is, the networks themselves, and cable companies like Comcast have somewhat beaten Project Canoe to the punch with the content and advertising on the Web.

Posted by Enid Burns at 5:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 4, 2008

VideoEgg: To Host, or Not to Host?

Last week, we broke the news that VideoEgg was emphasizing its ad network and advertising technologies over its video hosting and platform business.

Today, some online publications are reporting that VideoEgg has informed customers it's shutting down its VideoEgg and Player service May 31.

After reading those reports, I dropped VideoEgg CMO Troy Young a note to see what's up since we last talked.

"Nothing's changed," he wrote in an e-mail reply to my query. "We are focused on building the ad network. We are maintaining large, profitable hosting relationships for the time being," he wrote.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 3:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 27, 2008

Long Live the Pre-Roll (for Now)

Hate pre-roll video ads?

Don't count on them going away anytime soon.

Heavy Media's John Lumpkin and Voxant CEO Marcien Jenckes both made that assessment today at an iBreakfast program, "Web Video, Where's the Money?"

"The bulk of the [Web video ad] dollars is in pre-roll. It scales. It's easy for advertisers to create and deploy. It will take awhile for the market to evolve," said Jenckes, formerly AOL's vice president of messaging, community, and voice.

Lumpkin concurred, suggesting that advertisers stick to :15 spots and avoid longer ones.

"Pre-rolls will never go away. If you've spent a lot time on TV [ads], and if you're not doing the Internet, then you haven't done your job," said Lumpkin, Heavy's SVP of sales strategy and partnerships.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 4:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 20, 2008

NBC Breaks Out the Classic Shows for Online Viewing

NBC Digital Entertainment and NBC Universal Cable Entertainment are breaking into their vaults and pulling out some of their classic television shows to see new life as streaming videos online. Shows like "A-Team," the 1978 version "Battlestar Galatica," "Miami Vice," and "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour" are now being shown at NBC.com. NBC genre sites like SCIFI.com, ChillerTV.com and SleuthChannel.com also get special programming like "Buck Rogers" and "Kojak."

The Peacock network won't be offering any special online video advertising deals as part of the return of the shows, but it is doing so to increase its overall video inventory to place ads against, according to the company. I'm not certain that shows like "Tek War" have gotten any better over time, but there's still something appealing about watching old "Simon & Simon" episodes for nostalgia's sake.

Posted by MatthewNelson at 9:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 15, 2008

Video Ads on Google Results Pages: How and Why

Beginning next week, Google plans to test video insertions on its famously QWERTY search results pages. The invite-only experiment will place small "plus sign" icons next to regular text ads, of the sort you sometimes see on Google Maps. When clicked, the symbols will expand to reveal a video ad that can be played manually by the searcher.

I spoke this afternoon with Google spokesperson Brandon McCormick, who said advertisers will pay by the click, whether that click starts the video or takes the viewer to a landing page. Bidding on keywords will take place through the AdWords interface, and video advertisers will compete with text links for placement. "The ad with the video would still have to be the best ad to appear" according to Google's quality scoring algorithms, he said.

He said Google was motivated to add richer ads to its SERPs because people are now used to seeing video and even expect it.

"As video gets more and more common on the Web, people are used to experiencing that level of engagement," he said. "We think, using the plus box video ad, we can maintain a positive user experience on Google.com and [provide a] richer experience."

I should be able to update this post with a screen grab by early next week, since McCormick said Google is eager to show these are non-intrusive placements.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 7:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 11, 2008

Redken's Shade-y Integrated Campaign

Redken just launched a large scale integrated campaign for its Shades EQ hair color line, featuring stylists, colorists, and eventually, consumers in the print and online components.

A centerpiece is the video rich DoYouShadesEQ.com microsite, featuring hair color tips and tricks from experts. Hair colorists are invited to submit videos of themselves talking about the product -- a winning entry scores a trip to New York and a role in a future video spot and a photo shoot for the print campaign.

Offline, the campaign includes a 24-page supplement in industry trade "American Salon." In addition, the print component will highlight a colorists each month in that publication for the remainder of the year. Consumer print ads are also promised by the company.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 2:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Chitika Injects Video, Social to Ads

Chitika’s progression from its mini-mall and Facebook API ad unit concepts to the next level with a user-initiated video ad unit that has tabs for users to scroll through social features such as leaving comments, ratings, and sending the ad to a friend. It helps that the example is cute USB flash drives by mimoco. The ones that look like kubrick block-style figures. The product is attractive, the video well produced, but will advertisers buy the unit?

Posted by Enid Burns at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

February 8, 2008

Mazda Creates YouTube-Inspired Interactive Video

Mazda's just posted new interactive video on its site promoting two of its sportier vehicles, the RX-8 and the MX-5 Miata. The Drive allows users to chose a vehicle, a strip of road, music, and camera angle to virtually test-drive the car in an "immersive online drive experience."

Created by interactive shop Sarkissian Mason, the company says the campaign was inspired by YouTubers who were posting video of their own Mazda driving experiences online. Sport car fans shot footage obtained by strapping cameras on the sides of their cars to emphasize features such as gear-shifting and brake functionality. The Drive is intended to target this type of consumer - presumably, the ones who don't already own Mazdas.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 7, 2008

CBSSports.com Goes Social with Facebook for March Madness

College basketball is ramping up for next month's NCAA March Madness tournament, and CBSSports.com is getting ready for the action too with a deal with social networking site Facebook.

CBS Sports and its CBSSports.com Web site hasn't been shy about experimenting with online and interactive components when it comes to promoting sports events like the March Madness tournaments. Next month it will run much of its coverage online for the sixth year in a row, but this year it will also host an NCAA March Madness Brackets application on Facebook. The application will allow Facebook members to make predictions on winners for each round and share them with friends, and will also link to tournament coverage from CBS Sports, CSTV, CBSSports.com and NCAA.com, according to the company. CBS will also offer a mobile component that will include a "Smack Talk Wall" and team rankings.

Considering how rabid some fans can be about March Madness, I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of Facebook friends linking to this new application and then being brought over to CBSSports.com's coverage for some additional online advertising page views.

Posted by MatthewNelson at 5:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 30, 2008

The Measure of Online Video, Ads

The second day of AlwaysOn OnMedia in New York started with a panel about monetizing Internet video technology. CEOs and senior level executives from Move Networks, Brightcove, and ImageSpan talked about the role of video, geotargeting, and targeting to certain demographics. Though they touched on metrics, they didn't talk about the finite measurement of consumer behavior while watching video.

Meanwhile, at DEMO this week Visible Measures left stealth mode with VisibleSuite. A measurement product that looks at the interaction a user has with video. VideoSuite measures in-stream viewing behavior such as when a user abandons the stream as the first ad plays or rewinds to view a particular frame in the video.

Visible Measures founder and CEO Brian Shin's goal is to promote growth of video with better metrics. "Internet video is important, we all love it, we went to make it more monetizable, more effective for the advertiser and publisher, without hindering the user experience."

Publishers can use the data to find out what's effective in video and what segments make interesting clips from longer videos based on what parts are being rewatched. Advertisers can gain similar data by determining how much time was spent engaging with the brand, and tweaking creative.

Posted by Enid Burns at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 22, 2008

Knowing Better Than Butter

Unilever brand I Can't Believe It's Not Butter! has launched a trivia game show entitled Now You Know Better $1,000,000 Game Show to promote the benefits of fake butter. The "show," developed in partnership with MSN and featured in the portal's game section, is hosted by "celebrity" John O'Hurley.

Sign into the site as a contestant and you can answer trivia questions about topics such as board games and movies stars, and compete for actual prizes. A "lobby chat" window features a not-very-convincing discussion about the merits of real butter vs. ICBINB. The Web site is one aspect of the Now You Know Better campaign, which kicked off with :30 TV spots on January 14th.

Unilever will continue the interactive portion of the promotion with celebrities including Gary Coleman, Jose Canseco, and Dustin Diamond appearing in spots highlighting moments in their careers they should have known better about (e.g. taking steroids). In mid-February, consumers will be able to play the online trivia game and chat live with these wised-up celebs.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 17, 2008

Video Ads, and How One Nearly Killed my Computer

It wasn't a virus from an infected ad or stress from rich media demands of streaming video, but a common commercial diversion that nearly did in my Alienware. My husband called not long before I left work yesterday to prepare me for the worst: My computer may be dead from a freak accident.

He was watching a show on a network-supported steaming site when the stream went to commercial break. He reached for his PDA to play a quick game for the :30 duration of the ad and knocked something off his desk, which landed squarely on the off switch to my computer's power supply. Attempts to power everything back up were greeted with an "Error Loading Operating System" message. We thought we'd crossed over into the territory of reformatting or worse, hand over your credit card for a new computer. This morning he poked around the BIOS and restored my operating system.

While the Wall Street Journal reports AccuStreamiMedia research finding ad revenues from streaming video and audio reached $1.37 billion, a 38 percent increase over 2006, are Web watchers paying any more attention than TV watchers when the sponsor takes over the screen? Just because the computer is a lean forward medium, and the user is likely sitting closer to the screen doesn't mean there's any more likelihood they'll offer their undivided attention.

Posted by Enid Burns at 5:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Time Warner Cable to Kill Video Advertising?

This can't portend well for video advertising, or for sites and portals that sell video ads (are you listening, AOL?).

Time Warner Cable just announced they'll be rolling out a sort of pay-as-you-go plan for broadband subscribers. Rather than the usual all-you-can-eat monthly package, they're going to experiment with "tiered levels of service based on how much data [consumers] download per month, rather than the usual fixed-price packages with unlimited downloads."

Pricing information is as yet unavailable, but aside from the fact TWC is obviously targeting users of P2P file sharing services, they're also going after users who download (or stream?) large amounts of video.

Well, that's just ducky for online video advertisers and the publishers, sites and portals who sell video inventory. Time Warner-owned AOL certainly comes to mind. Train consumers to equate online video usage to going on a meter -- rather like making long-distance landline calls or filling up at the gas pump -- and they're likely to think twice before hitting that play button, no?

Initially the trial will only affect new TWC subscribers in Beaumont, Texas. A quick search indicates the populace there -- thankfully -- has other ISP options.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 1:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

January 3, 2008

Late Night Talk, and JibJab Stabs at '07

Late night talk shows came back from hiatus despite the writers' strike, and while I don't often watch, I caught the intros for "The Tonight Show" and "Late Night." Jay Leno's monologue was punchy; David Letterman's was not so much. Letterman's writers may have negotiated special terms in order to come back to work, but their hearts are still on strike, trust me. The other thing going for the Tonight Show, it debuted JibJab's roast "In 2007."

Posted by Enid Burns at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 20, 2007

Changes Abound at Roo

Lots of executive changes at online video network Roo. The company announced today that KIT Capital and Roo have signed an Executive Management Agreement and JumpTV president and chief operating officer Kaleil Isaza Tuzman will take over as chairman and chief executive officer. Roo founder Robert Petty will keep his vice-chairman post on the company's board of directors.

Roo's board of directors also had some significant changes, as Simon Bax, Stephen Palley, Scott Ackerman and Doug Chertok have all resigned. Tuzman will have the option of naming four new members at a later date and subject to shareholder approval. Finally, ROO also announced it had let go of 21 percent of staff to be more "efficient."

Posted by MatthewNelson at 1:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 10, 2007

Stumbling Upon Gaptidings in Action

Last week walking around Soho during lunch someone on a street corner asked, "Do you want to send a video holiday greeting?" I had a loose agenda of holiday shopping, so my immediate reaction: "No." But then I turned around to see a truck skinned in the Gap's "crazy stripe" pattern and realized it was a Gap promotion with work from yahoo for the Gaptidings campaign we published today.

Click the present to see my greeting to ClickZ readers. Of course the truck's generator competed with me and won, I think.

Posted by Enid Burns at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 29, 2007

EyeWonder Offers Ad Widgets. Are Your Ads Worth Sharing?

Here's one for all you marketers with widgets to promote. EyeWonder
has begun offering multi-function, sharable (a.k.a. "widget") ads within display units through a partnership with Gigya.

Gigya does not create the widgets. Rather it has the technical chops to guarantee existing widgets can be syndicated to numerous blogging platforms and social networking sites. It offers reporting as well.

In other words, if you already have a widget or want to let EyeWonder create a multi-paned video widget for you, you can stick it in a rich media ad and rest easy in the knowledge that it will be able to talk to Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, WordPress and other platforms.

Here's a sample:

Pretty nifty. Yet the ads aren't quite slick enough. The syndication features in particular ask a tad too much of the user. For instance, the "quick post" function for Facebook requests that I add a widget called "My Stuff" from Gigya. Come again? I thought I was installing an EyeWonder widget.

Anyway, the first client to use the product is Samsung's Juke phone, courtesy of ad agency Cheil USA.

It bears repeating that while widgets are certainly a notable trend this year, and it makes sense to retrofit your cooler ads with this kind of functionality, bloggers and social networking users deploy this stuff for very different reasons. Therefore it may be a mistake to lump them together in a single "widget ad buy."

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 12:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 28, 2007

Major U.K. Broadcasters Team up for Landmark Partnership

Three of the U.K.'s largest broadcasters are to join forces in launching an On-Demand entertainment service, potentially presenting marketers with new online advertising opportunities.

Subject to approval from their respective board members, BBC Worldwide, ITV and Channel 4 will launch a three-way on-demand TV content service in 2008.

The project, temporarily titled "Kangaroo," will initially be launched as an online-only service, before rolling out to other platforms. An official name and brand for the service will be unveiled at a later date.

The joint venture will be equally owned by all three broadcasters, with each taking a share of revenue.

Although specific details of the revenue model are not detailed in the press release, it states that viewers will have access to free content, as well as having the option to rent or buy.

Presumably, therefore, the free content will be supported by advertising.

Quoted in the press release, Andy Duncan, Channel 4 chief executive described the deal as "good news" for advertisers and viewers alike.

Lesley MacKenzie, previously director of Channels and Operations at BSkyB, has been appointed as launch CEO.

Posted by Jack Marshall at 12:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 19, 2007

Google Video Units Hit the U.K.

Google has today announced the availability of its AdSense Video Units in the U.K. and Ireland, following the U.S. launch in October.

As reported by ClickZ News last month, the units allow publishers to display YouTube content within an embedded player on their site. Content-relevant text overlay ads are then displayed within the lower portion of the unit, with ads rotated every 20 seconds. Ads are sold on a CPM or cost-per-click basis.

Publishers can choose categories of video to target their site, specify individual YouTube partners, or have video units automatically target their site with relevant video. In theory this will allow U.K. sites to display U.K.-only content if required or desired. Other than that, the units themselves are identical to their U.S. equivalents. In a press release, David Thacker, group product manager for Google stated the program will "create a new revenue opportunity for publishers and content owners, and help advertisers reach their target audiences in new and innovative ways."

Posted by Jack Marshall at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 14, 2007

eBaum's World, Gorilla Nation to Offer Video Overlays

Alliances to support in-video advertising, and especially video overlays, are coming fast and furious. This week we learn that eBaum's World, the flagship site for ZVUE Corporation, will work with ScanScout to identify brand-safe video inventory and deliver contextual overlays to it. And ad rep firm Gorilla Nation has partnered with video ad delivery specialist Panache to offer its publishers the ability to run numerous formats, including overlays. Truly no one can claim rights to the overlay format any longer, if they ever could. VideoEgg has claimed to be the first, and if they're right hen good on 'em, though I suspect the cable nets might have something to say about that.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 7, 2007

Interview: Denuo's Tim Hanlon on dynamic ads in time-shifted TV content

While researching a feature on advertising in time-shifted television content, published on ClickZ today, I spoke with Tim Hanlon, EVP of Ventures at Publicis-owned strategic consultancy Denuo. Hanlon had a lot to say about various impedances to advanced targeting and optimization of campaigns for VOD content. A few of his comments below:

On the lack of dynamic ad insertion in on-demand TV content:

In VOD environments, I’m incredulous that the cable community still operates in a ridiculous fashion, with two and three month lead times to insert an ad into the stream. The ability to measure it on the back end is months after the fact.

It's less an issue of the advertiser and the programmer. It's almost squarely the fault of the intransigence and slowness of the cable operator, for whatever reason.

On the inevitability of dynamic ad placements in VOD:

The ability to do more real time ad insertion in non-linear video environments including those of television is an absolute inevitability. The advertisers have gotten very comfortable with that process online. The ability to real time insert, real time optimize... we're starting to see the beginnings of that in online video as well. But again, that bigger nut, what if we could do that in classic television environments -- not only in linear, tune in now, but also non-linear viewing.

As Nielsen has shown, people watch television on their own time frames. It stands to reason that dynamic ad insertion in non-linear video environments is absolutely crucial for the financial underpinnings of the television business. Television advertising cannot be just a linear event; it also needs to be a non-linear event.

On who owns the client dollars:

Broadband video has been an interesting jump ball in the agency world in the last few years, particularly television groups that want to own video across multiple touch points.

How VOD comes into play is similarly challenged. You're going to see interactive people and classic television people grapple for the stewardship of that behavior. It's both. It's not like buying CPMs in the TV environment. A lot of the data are a little more optimizeable and adjustable.

It's going to be an interesting battle, and maybe an ugly one, because of these ridiculous little silos that exist in the agency world. Perhaps among other things it finally forces the melding of that which is digital and that which is classic media once and for all.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 3:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 31, 2007

Truveo Brings Video Search Around the World

AOL's video search engine Truveo gets a reported 40 million users per month, according to comScore data. AOL says a large percentage of its traffic comes from outside the U.S. and is launching localized sites in key markets including France, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Spain, Taiwan, and the U.K.. AOL has plans to continue an international roll-out with video search portals Australia, Brazil, Italy, Mexico, The Netherlands, Russia, and Turkey. The plans to reach other countries with video content in their local languages and matching regional interests comes just days after Google and YouTube launched Chinese language sites in Taiwan and Hong Kong. The pair had recently set up targeted versions of sites in Brazil, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and The U.K., according to Search Engine Journal.

With the Truvio announcement, AOL also said it launched in India with content available in Hindi and Tamil languages. "India is a very important market for AOL, and these announcements show our commitment to serving online consumers here with a robust portal and industry-leading video search tools," said Ron Grant, president and COO of AOL, in a corporate statement. "These are important steps in our ongoing efforts to make AOL a truly global company."

The number of Internet users in urban India has grown by 28 percent in the past year, and 60 percent of the country's Internet population of 30 million prefer to read in local Indian languages, according to the Internet and Mobile Association of India.

Posted by Enid Burns at 4:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 16, 2007

Al Gore's TV Network Plays up the Internet

Current TV, a television network that sets out to encourage "citizen journalism," has overhauled its Web site to encourage more audience collaboration.

The television network, co-founded in 2005 by Al Gore and Joel Hyatt, is supported by advertising, including viewer created ads.

Current.com will likely follow a similar model that includes sponsorships, said Joshua Katz, president, marketing at Current. However, he emphasized that the business model will evolve, based on audience feedback.

Katz, in an interview Monday, characterized the television network's initial Web site, current.tv, as serving the producer community. There, participants could submit pods, or short-form video, and vote on the videos they wanted to see televised.

The updated Web site, he said, is designed as a social news network. There, participants can take assignments to produce video as well as add links and comments to other content, among other activities online. "What makes this different [from other television networks] is that there's real collaboration between us and our audience," Katz said.

"This is intended to be a two-way conversation -- interactive TV influencing the Web, with the Web influencing TV. The cycle continues between the two, creating a new form of citizen journalism."

In September 2006, Current struck a partnership with Yahoo to launch several ad-supported video channels on Yahoo Video. When asked about that partnership, Katz said it no longer exists. "It wasn't a partnership we found beneficial," he said. Current continues to work with Google, which provides reports on the top clicked news headlines.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 9:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 5, 2007

The Color of Bunny

The best film series franchises may actually be advertisements. The Sony Bravia team in Europe continues to create incredibly sequenced commercials, which get picked up virally on the Web. "Play-Doh" follows "Paint" and "Balls" in the series where the creative really shows the color HDTV is capable of displaying.

A Sony Bravia Europe site has additional interactive elements including a "Colourwall" that shows the 16.7 million colors available on the Bravia HD sets. If you upload a picture, you can claim a pixel of color as your own hue.

Posted by Enid Burns at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 2, 2007

Panache Offers Buffet Approach to In-Video Formats

Video ad vendors have tended to specialize. The first wave of in-page video ads was supported by the likes of EyeWonder, PointRoll and DART Motif. As video consumption took off, LightningCast and others pioneered pre- and mid-roll ad insertion. Today of course the big money's on alternative in-video placements, mainly bugs and other overlays, courtesy of publishers and ad networks like VideoEgg, Joost, YouTube and ScanScout and their specialized (and sometimes patented) ad units.

A few firms are trying to offer numerous in-video placements on the same menu. YuMe networks comes to mind. Another, new to the scene, is Panache. Unlike YuMe, Panache will not attempt to sell ads, but rather to supply the technology framework for publishers to broker their own inventory in whatever formats they choose. In that respect it resembles the rich media ad vendors of old (the ones mentioned in the second sentence of this post) more than the new breed of hybrid tech firms/ad networks like VideoEgg that specialize in one or two units.

Panache's first publisher relationship is with Break.com, a user-generated and short-form video site for young guys. Naturally most brand advertisers won't go within a mile of it.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 2:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 26, 2007

Next Dove Viral to Bow Oct. 1

Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty has met with blockbuster success. By now, it seems, everyone on the Web has seen (and re-seen) the spot that surely qualifies as the campaign of the year, Evolution.

Next Monday, the latest video in the series bows -- we just got a sneak peek. Unilever's longtime agency Ogilvy created the spot in which a sweet 7 year-old girl in bombarded, in about :60, with all the body image related advertising she'll see in a year. Tagline: Talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does."

The spot is engaging, highly impactful, and will doubtless spawn even more consumer dialogue about women and girls' self esteem images. This is great advertising and great irony. What's in the crosshairs of the campaign after all is nothing less than....advertising.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 25, 2007

EyeWonder Grabs Cologne-Based Vendi

Video and rich media ad vendor EyeWonder has acquired a Germany-based firm with a similar suite of services, and has expanded its presence in the U.K. and Ireland. Under the deal, vendi interactive will change its name to EyeWonder and serve as a jumping off point for further European expansion, EyeWonder said. Co-founder Ken Gitzen stays on as MD of EyeWonder in Germany.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 4:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 20, 2007

Broadband Video Roundup: AOL, NBC, Beet.TV, ScanScout

Investors may still hate the company, but AOL is steadily becoming Web's top source of many things near and dear to advertisers' hearts -- search not included. Three days after forming its monster Platform A ad network unit, the company has signed a deal to carry ABC television content. Considering that AOL is a founding network partner to NBCU/News Corp's Hulu online video network, the news means AOL will in short order have among the largest collections of premier video on the Web. Of course, syndication rights are cheaper by the minute. Audience is what counts.

NBC meanwhile will let consumers download its prime time and late night shows for a week after their initial broadcast. Included programs include "Heroes," "The Office," "Bionic Woman," and "30 Rock," as well as Conan's and Leno's late night shows. The company pointedly said its downloadable player will contain filtering technology capable of blocking copyrighted material, a jab at YouTube, which has struggled to produce such technology at the request of networks and music labels. And the news comes shortly after the company nixed its relationship with iTunes, so the announcement is chock full of swipes at NBC's Internet frienemies.

In video overlay news, B2B video blog Beet.TV secured a sponsorship with VeriSign, which will bring overlay ads to the show, and will also begin carrying such ads on its YouTube channel. Additionally, contextual video targeting firm Scanscout went public with its first notable publisher relationship, with Handheld Entertainment. The deal potentially involves a lot of inventory, as Handheld expects to close its recently announced acquisition of eBaum's World next month.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 4:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 17, 2007

Rovion Puts NBC's Chuck Avatar on Sites…Whoops.

I admit it. Sometimes I can't resist messing with some of the folks that call me up to see if I'd like to hear more about their latest news announcement. Case in point, I got a call today from Rovion about NBC using its technology to promote the series premiere of “Chuck,” a show about a computer geek mistaken for a spy.

Using Rovion’s InPerson platform, the actor playing Chuck will be walking across Web sites like Entertainment Weekly, National Lampoon, UGO, eBaum’s World and others, talking to viewers to about the show. It's essentially a moving video banner ad that can travel across the screen and even provide a level of interaction. But from having written about Rovion and guys in gorilla suits and dancing zits in the past, I couldn't resist poking a corporate hot button.

"Oh yeah, Rovion," I said. "You're the guys that do the video avatars online!"

There was the briefest of silences on the line, as if the poor guy was saying to himself "oh, here we go again," and then he took a deep breath.

"Actually no, they're not really avatars," he said slowly. "We prefer to call them Video Spokespeople."

Don't worry Rovion. I apologized for my teasing and promised not to call Chuck an avatar. He is clearly a video spokesperson, as seen to the left.

Posted by MatthewNelson at 8:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 7, 2007

Monetize Video Content on Mobile

Transpera is a mobile technology company close to launching with a white label video product. The business model is to partner with content companies, particularly video content, and bring the media to mobile while stitching in ads seamlessly. The targeted ad unit is similar in execution to one offered by Ad Infuse on ZooVision content. Execution has to be seamless as mobile users won't have patience to wait for load time, buffering, and an ad. The ad units, typically under :10, stream right into the entertainment.

Discovery primarily happens on the Web, site visitors can send a video clip to their mobile phone. The sticky application then encourages users to download an app to aggregate more video and share with friends, who will also sign up. Company founder and CEO said Transpera builds discovery tools on the Web, but once users get the video, they'll naturally visit the site via mobile for more content.

Ads, sold either by the content company or Transpera, can by dynamically targeted based on an aggregate of user behavior across the network. Site registration data can also be applied to targeting. Location-based targeting by phone number is another option for advertisers.

Posted by Enid Burns at 5:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 6, 2007

Contextual Targeting for Video: There's a New Kid in Town

Seems like the crowding field of contextual video ad vendors and networks greets a new contender about every other month. This month it's Digitalsmiths, which has come out with a content matching product called VideoSense. The company claims it targets ads based on three factors: frame-by-frame visual analysis of a clip, indexing of the clip's audio or soundtrack, and analysis of the text and meta-data around the video.

Other firms working toward the same goal include ScanScout, Blinkx and Nexidia. Most use a network model but some are licensing to publishers. The leap of faith with these very cool sounding products and ad networks lies in the image recognition technology. In the case of VideoSense, DigitalSmiths claims to combine "facial recognition, object recognition, scene classification and other contextual algorithms." However, my conversations with vendors and agency folks indicate these functions are under ripe, and most targeting comes down to audio and meta-data analysis. (release)

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 29, 2007

Rhymes with Zulu

The name of the News Corp and NBC Universal joint venture video site announced this spring has been revealed: Hulu.com. What's behind the name? Jason Kilar, Hulu's CEO said in a note on the site, "Hulu is short, easy to spell, easy to pronounce, and rhymes with itself. Subjectively, Hulu strikes us as an inherently fun name, one that captures the spirit of the service we're building."

Visit the site to sign up for a private beta set to open in October. In addition to Fox and NBC networks, distribution partner sites AOL, Comcast, MSN, MySpace, and Yahoo are expected to provide programming.

Posted by Enid Burns at 11:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 16, 2007

State of Mobile Video, and Video Advertising

Mobile video services including video mail, video calling, and video sharing services is expected to compound annual growth rate of 74 percent through 2012, according to an ABI Research report. Revenue forecast is set to grow from $1 billion this year to $17 billion by 2012.

Adoption of the mobile Web is growing, but still needs to reach higher saturation. Market inhibitors, according to the report, include income levels, messaging and video viewing alternatives, and handset capabilities.

While the installed base continues to grow, mobile tech firms are making video a feasible proposition on mobile devices, and even creating advertising opportunities around it. ClickZ reported on MyWaves, which aggregates video into channels for mobile viewing and allows users to send video to mobile phones through a widget. The company also partnered with AdMob to offer advertisers a click-to-video ad unit. Now a company called Nexage is providing similar services through its PhoneCast solution. PhoneCast allows content providers and media companies to post video on mobile sites. Though that service, Nexage created a click-to-video mobile advertising solution. Ipsch signed on to use the mobile video ad unit for its clients in the consumer products and entertainment sectors.

Posted by Enid Burns at 3:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 15, 2007

Ian Schafer Poses a Few Questions to his T-ness

Our very own Ian Schafer sat down with Mr. T recently to discuss the A Team icon's recent viral videos for Hitachi. The above image is just a screen grab; you can watch the full interview clip on Ian's blog. Good get Ian! You're just lucky he didn't throw you through the wall.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 1, 2007

CondeNet Builds Travel Video, Pre-Roll for Now

CondéNet is building out its video library, adding 57 original travel clips to its Concierge.com site. The publisher sells pre-roll and companion banners into its video, which is powered by Feedroom, according to Richard Glosser, director of new and emerging media at Condé.

The editorial vids, most to be produced by Condé, will focus on a handful of popular tourist destinations: Paris, London, Tokyo, San Francisco, New York and Miami. Travel/local video firm TurnHere is producing some in more locales outside the publisher's standard coverage areas -- Rio, Barcelona and Amalfi.

CondéNet appears to be taking a serious approach to original online video content. Glosser told ClickZ we can expect more, including more advertorial stuff, on its sites in the near future.

Traditional biz mag publisher Forbes also has focused on pushing original travel content. About a year ago it launched a high-end travel site, with plans of featuring video content.

Another aside: while Conde is pushing video, traditional magazine publisher Hachette Filipachi seems to be tacking a different tack through utilitarian search functions on its recently-launched home décor site and mobile in the auto arena.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 25, 2007

Heavy.com's CGM Promo (Somebody's Going to Get Hurt)

Laddie site Heavy.com has just put out a call for users to submit videos of pranks pulled on friends.

It's all part on an ongoing promotion for Sum 41. The band is shooting Webisodes exclusive to Heavy.com in a series called "Road to Ruin." The winning submission will earn its creator a role in one of the Webisodes as the band's roadie for a day in Las Vegas.

“We think this a perfect opportunity to get fans involved in Heavy’s unique brand of engagement, and really spotlights the advantage for Sum 41 of partnering with Heavy, a site with original programming and a strong editorial voice—as opposed to just throwing their videos into a vast pool of undifferentiated content,” said Heavy's VP Programming Jason Marks in a statement.

Not a bad promo, but when America's Funniest Home Videos collides with the Jackass demo, you've got to wince. No doubt Heavy has the liability issue sorted out.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 16, 2007

Sony's Grouper Revamped, Renamed

Web-only video is seriously going pro -- that is, if the past several days are any indication. Consider: UTA and SpotRunner are funding new Web video incubator 60Frames, Ogilvy Chief Digital Officer Dan Goodman has jumped ship to join a similar operation, and now, Sony-owned video site Grouper has restyled itself as a discovery and promotion engine for high quality video.

Dubbed Crackle, the site has lots of content partners, including fantastic comedy series Mr. Diety, which you can read about in the release. And the advertising strategy seems well thought-out: branded skins for sponsored sections, plus creative ideas like a Sony Electronics sponsorship of all high def viewing on Crackle.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 3:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 13, 2007

ClickZ Online Video Conference Next Week

Nice that our ClickZ Specifics: Online Video Advertising conference in New York next Thursday, July 19 is very close to sold out. But some tickets are still available.

When we introduced this event last year, it exceeded all our expectations. It was the first conference dedicated to online video advertising and marketing. This year we have a stellar lineup of speakers from companies such as (in no particular order): OMD Digital, Ogilvy, Yahoo, Microsoft, Digitas, Organic, Tribal DDB, AKQA, R/GA, VideoEgg, Nielsen/NetRatings, Tremor Media, EyeWonder, Special Ops Media, Advertising.com, Deep Focus and 24/7 Real Media.

If you manage to attend, please say hi - hope to see you there next Thursday!

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

July 5, 2007

NBBC Still Has Ad Runs to Complete

NBC announced earlier this week it would fold its NBBC broadband venture into its more far-reaching Web video distribution partnership with News Corp. (the one commonly referred to as "NewCo"). NBBC launched last September.

"It will take us a little while to go through the legal work," NBC Universal Chief Digital Officer George Kliavkoff told me. "As soon as that's done, we will be reaching out to all the content partners to join the new site," he added. NBBC partners have included Access Hollywood, About.com, A&E, CNET and Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive.

"We're in the process of finishing out all the campaigns running on NBBC," Kliavkoff continued. He said the company has been selling ads into NBBC as part of the public beta. The NBBC ad runs should finalize in the next 30 days, he said Monday.

As for NBBC staffers, Kliavkoff said some will go onto other roles at NBC, but added, "We anticipate that most of them will be joining us at 'new site.' "

Posted by Kate Kaye at 3:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 28, 2007

TribalFusion to Build Out In-Stream Contextual Video Network

ROO and TribalFusion are planning to work together to improve how video offers are targeted against text-based content online.

The companies' joint announcement today is light on details and heavy on bombast (the deal "will forever alter how consumers view pre-roll advertising," and will make "clicking through to a video link a far more compelling proposition than ever before," etc.) but the gist of it is that sites in the Tribal Fusion network will be able to offer video content and ads relevant to the Web page a person is on.

The example given is that of a person reading a newspaper site article about indie bands, who is then offered videos about the music discussed on the page they're reading. People who watch the video will then be able to purchase that music if they want it.

Part of what's interesting here is that Tribal Fusion appears to be growing its pre-roll ad inventory by partnering with a video content aggregator (ROO) and serving video content into display ad space. I can't be sure how the final iteration of the agreement will work out, but by using inventory on its partner sites to invite Web users to click content related to a page they're on, the company increases the amnount of high value in-stream inventory it can sell. As a bonus, Tribal Fusion can contextually target those pre-roll and in-stream ads, since it will be able to infer the topic of the video.

Who knows if any of this will actually happen, but the potential is there.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 1:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tremor Adds ClipSyndicate to Video Ad Network

In what's basically a mini-version of the deal it made with BrightCove earlier this spring, Tremor Networks added video content and syndication firm ClipSyndicate to its video ad network. ClipSyndicate offers a bevy of video content that's heavy on news, sports and current events from a variety of professional and semi-professional sources. Its syndication network consists of "thousands" of small to mid-sized site owners, including bloggers.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 27, 2007

Heavy on the Hellmann's, Skimpy on the Video Production

Dig potato salad? Well, Yahoo Food has a tantalizing recipe in video form including tarragon, dill, lemon juice…and…raw potatoes. I swear! Evidently whoever edited down the film shot for a series of Yahoo Food videos sponsored by Hellmann's mayonnaise cut out the bit about boiling the taters!

Is this truly the best Hellmann's can…er…bring out?

Well, thankfully, they were sure to leave the close-ups of the mayo jar in place. "The start of my potato salad sauce is Hellmann's mayonnaise, the best mayonnaise out there," proclaims host Dave Lieberman (yeah, that guy from the Food Network).

According to a Wall Street Journal story about the 12-week "In Search of Real Food" Web series, "The show is part of a multimillion-dollar advertising and marketing effort the company kicked off in April promoting the freshness of ingredients in Hellmann's."

Lieberman "will travel the country seeking out interesting recipes, and once each episode he will cook up a recipe -- which in some cases will call for Hellmann's." Well, so far there are four clips up, and they're all shot in Brooklyn and Manhattan -- which, coincidentally, is where the Food Network studios are.

The story goes on to note the mayo maker Unilever has agreed to spend between $1 million and $2 million in ads on Yahoo to promote the show, and will be pushing it on jar caps 'n' such. Hmmm…might wanna make sure the show is of as high quality as the mayo, eh?

Well, even if Hellmann's improves the quality of its Yahoo clips, they could never touch the mini-films produced for Vaunnies Mustardayonnaise, Stensons Mayostard, or Mundees Mustmayostarayonnaise.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 4:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 19, 2007

Web TV's New Format: Bite-Size

Sony Pictures Television is airing paired-down versions of its classic shows on MySpace. The channel is being called the Minisode Network. The name reflects the three- to five-minute length of each Web episode, which is edited down from half-hour and one-hour shows. Honda signed on as the exclusive launch sponsor with "mini spots" for the new Fit car. The mini spot includes a :03 billboard and :05 mini-mercial that runs at the top of each episode.

At launch, the Minisode Network has three episodes each from 15 of the Sony library. Shows include "Partridge Family," "Starsky & Hutch," “TJ Hooker,” “Charlie’s Angels,” “Diff’rent Strokes,” “Facts of Life,” “Silver Spoons,” “Who’s the Boss?,” “What’s Happening!!,” “Dilbert,” “Sheena,” “Fantasy Island,” “Police Woman,” “VIP” and “Ricki Lake.” Sony expects to exceed 500 episodes by the end of the year.

Posted by Enid Burns at 4:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 14, 2007

TurnHere Launches Site with Simon & Schuster

TurnHere's branching out beyond local, beyond travel, beyond real estate with the launch of BookVideos.tv, a collaboration between the video marketing firm and book publisher Simon & Schuster. The site acts as a hub for short clips featuring authors and promotions of the company's titles.

You can check out a video promoting a new book/movie title, "Casanegra," by Steven Barnes and Tananarive Due. The companion flick stars Blair Underwood, who speaks with the authors about the origins of the book, focusing quite a bit on the star's decision to buy the rights to it and produce a film in conjunction with the book. (Did I mention Underwood stars in the movie?)

Another mini-film features James W. Loewe, author of a book I recall reading years ago, "Lies My Teacher Told Me." His new one is "Lies My Country Told Me," and in the short film he tells the story of one James Jackson, a Virginian with a questionable confederate past.

Videos are categorized under headings including cooking, children's, erotica, history, literary fiction, mystery and others. Site visitors can add comments, email or embed the video on another site, or -- duh -- click to buy the book. The site also allows people to create their own blogs centered around books, segments or authors they dig. TurnHere also distributes the videos through various channels.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 3:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 11, 2007

Visible World to Partner with SpotXchange

Local video ad platform company Visible World is signing deals left and right. The firm, which allows advertisers to create and run ads targeted to niche demographics and geographical locations, will work with SpotXchange to customize Web video ads for specific markets, according to SpotXchange.

For instance, said SpotXchange CEO Mike Shehan, if there's a call for a video ad from a more rural region of the Northwest, the Visible World system might target a spot for a Toyota SUV, whereas if the call comes from a city in the Southeast, it may serve an ad for a sedan.

SpotXchange provides a marketplace for advertisers and agencies to upload video and banner ads and target geographically, demographically, and contextually to video content.

As covered in ClickZ News today, Visible World just announced a partnership with ImageSpan, enabling advertisers to integrate ImageSpan's automated content and copyright management and licensing platform with Visible World's platform.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 1:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 6, 2007

R/GA (Finally) Opens Its Digital Production Studio

R/GA has opened the in-house digital production studio it promised a year ago when it expanded into new facilities in New York. The first-of-its-kind complex has been in full operation for about a month now. Occupying 3,200 square feet are a stage, editing suites, and an audio suite, plus client and production team work areas. It offers full pre-production, production, and post-production capabilities. Digital studio producers will now all work together in one space, whereas before they were dispersed throughout the agency.

It makes sense that R/GA should be the first digital agency to execute this move, having gotten its start in 1977 as a production company for TV commercials and feature films.

The digital studio is led by head of production Steven Ford.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 6:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 25, 2007

Lucasfilms Embraces Star Wars Mash-ups

Star Wars video mash-ups were probably the first video mash-ups – especially if you count the hundreds of clips with light sabers edited into regular videos featuring spastic adolescents, dogs and well, other spastic adolescents. But we've also been blessed with bonafide mash-ups like Jedi Dogs, Goodjedis and a pretty hilarious Monty Python short.

Now, as the franchise celebrates its 30th anniversary, Lucasfilms is officially embracing the phenomenon, enabling video mashups on StarWars.com. The capability comes courtesy of Eyespot and will let people add their own video to any of 250-plus scenes and music clips taken from all six films. It will appear today as part of a general site redesign that will also bring in some Web-famous fan videos like Chad Vader.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 22, 2007

Unicast Trots Out New Video Ad Formats: Video Showcase Ads and Small Overlays

Unicast is sharing details of two video ad formats it's developed for use on NBC Universal properties. NBCU first discussed the relationship earlier this month when it announced it would stop accepting :30 spots for short form online content.

An InteractiveX, or Interactive Experience, product lets marketers showcase multiple videos and lets users choose which ones they want to watch. The original program pauses while the sponsored clip plays and resumes when it ends.

The other format is a small transparent overlay, of the sort pioneered by VideoEgg, that shows up at the bottom of the player. Called a Teaser, it delivers branding and marketing messaging while the viewer watches the clip. Simultaneously, the ad appears as wallpaper across the browser.

Both ad units have data capture and forward to a friend capabilities.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 17, 2007

Aspiring Action Heroes Wanted

Every so often Verizon creates a campaign to push its broadband initiative. The latest is Verizon's Action Hero site created by R/GA. The site allows visitors to create and even star in their own techno thriller.

Site visitors choose a villain, cast a hero from a catalog of digital faces or upload a personal photo to get dual directing and staring credits. Users then choose the intro sequence, chase scene, and blow-up ending to the film. Verizon says it will send the edited video within 24 hours, but I got a link to my feature film within the hour. Users can share the video with friends, or post it to the Verizon Action Hero site for all to see and appreciate what broadband can do.

Posted by Enid Burns at 4:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Microsoft's Second Second Life Presence

Millions of Us, a virtual worlds/social media agency, recently launched Microsoft Virtual Studio in Second Life. They're also touting the success of the adjacent Microsoft property Coders' Cove island.

The community-building effort challenged coders to find hidden "eggs" and solve puzzles in order to win access to a mysterious blimp hovering above the area. Winners were accorded 900 square meters of virtual land (their lease is up in November, though).

Which reminds me -- this coming Monday, May 21, ClickZ is sponsoring the first-ever conference wholly devoted to Advertising in Social Media. We're going to be discussing projects in Second Life, social networks, syndication, and much, much more.

Check out the agenda, and if you're in New York, please make every effort to join us. We have an amazing line-up of speakers and one very cool, topical topic.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 3:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 14, 2007

CBS Plots New Online Strategy

Conceding the obvious, CBS says efforts to get viewers to come to its Web site to view video have been a failure. The new strategy at Black Rock is to syndicate CBS video content to the greatest possible extent, network execs told the Wall Street Journal.

Not coincidentally, CBS's expanded content to sites from AOL to Joost, debuts this week when the networks are looking to unload as much ad inventory as possible during the kickoff of the upfront season. CBS hasn't gained much traction online compared with the other networks, in no small part due to its older audience, which doesn't inhabit the Internet as much as the younger set.

Who sells the ads -- and keeps the biggest slice of that revenue -- is very much at stake. The Yahoos of the world would like nothing more than to sell the ads against the content of CBS and the other networks. TV is happy to send over the programs, but wants almost all of the ad sales in return.

CBS will let advertisers tweak their ads to fit the 10 or so different sites in the CBS Interactive Audience Network, according to the Journal story. The internal code name for CBS's new strategy: "Rolling Thunder."

An also-ran in the ratings race for key demographics that advertisers will pay up for, CBS is betting the storm clouds will clear enough to bring more (and younger) viewers online, and to its broadcast shows.

The network doesn’t have a lot of other choices to monetize its content online. A Forrester report just out notes that the paid video content market is a dead end and ad-supported models will continue to gain.

Posted by Bill McGuire at 4:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 10, 2007

Is There an In-Stream Inventory Scarcity?

There's a dearth of in-stream video inventory.
There's a dearth of in-stream video inventory.
There's a dearth of in-stream video inventory.

If you repeat it often enough, does it become true? The fact is there's plenty of premium and semi-premium video ad inventory out there, but as I discovered and reported in a feature ClickZ published yesterday, brands aint buying. There are several reasons for this. The small club of mostly TV media buyers shopping for this inventory is turning its collective nose up at anything that's not indisputably top-tier. Direct marketers still haven't jumped in. A lack of standards is getting in the way, big time. And talent rights roadblocks are still keeping a lot of TV campaigns off the Web.

The end result is plenty of great media is being left on the table.

Check out the feature to get the whole story.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 4:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Joost Secures $45 Million, CBS and Viacom Take Stakes

Five firms have joined a huge $45 million funding round for Web video platform Joost, which has experienced some hiccups during its first days of unlimited beta release.

Two of the investors, CBS and Viacom, are also Joost content partners. Their involvement may generate some alarm at NBC Universal and News Corp.'s still nameless premium video joint venture, whose hopes rest in the entertainment business uniting to present a unified front against YouTube.

The other three investors are Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Li Ka Shing Foundation. The money will be used for product development, global expansion and service offerings, including localization.

Meanwhile, video platform Roo also completed a financing round. The company will spend $25 million proceeds from the sale of common stock to expand its sales and marketing efforts, fund operations, and pursue already announced acquisitions.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 7, 2007

YouTube Details Plan to Share Ad Revenue with Content Creators

YouTube has shared some details of its plan, floated last month, to share ad revenues with content creators. The program will help YouTube increase the amount of "safe" inventory it can offer advertisers and will be limited to the "most popular and prolific" video bloggers and other content creators on the site, including Lonelygirl15, LisaNova, renetto, HappySlip, smosh, and valsartdiary.

These individuals will benefit from the same revenue sharing and promotional opportunities already available to the site's professional content partners, which consist of big media companies, video game companies, universities and production studios. They were chosen because they've built and sustained large audiences, YouTube said, and proven that content to be largely safe for marketers.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 1:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Vibrant Media Teams with Campbell's Soup, Mailmen & Globetrotters to Fight Hunger

Contextual video ad network Vibrant Media will deliver video ads for an online campaign launched in conjunction with the Campbell Soup to generate support for the National Association of Letter Carriers’ (NALC) Stamp Out Hunger! food drive.

The Harlem Globetrotters star in the PSAs which ask donors to leave food items in non-breakable containers by their mailboxes prior to regular mail delivery on May 12. The nation's 230,000 letter carriers will collect the donations and deliver them to food banks.

Vibrant will deliver the video ads when users mouse-over the double-underlined word "hunger" in Web content. Online spots will drive viewers to the Stamp Out Hunger! Web site.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 30, 2007

TargetSpot, a New Service for Online Radio Ad Management

CBS Radio and Oddcast, along with VC firm Union Square Partners, are funding a new streaming radio ad solution designed to support radio ad creation and delivery. Oddcast and CBS executives said the companies have jointly incubated the platform, initially conceived as a solution for CBS Radio's 100-plus stations with Web streaming, for a year. Now they're spinning it off as a standalone entity that will actively court advertisers and agencies.

Advertisers will be able to use the system to assemble spots using "an array of jingles, sound effects and visuals provided by TargetSpot." Ads can then be targeted on a number of factors, including by zip code. TargetSpot plans to offer a streaming video ad solution later this year.

TargetSpot hired Doug Perlson, the former COO at Seevast, to run the firm as CEO.

The company has a number of indirect competitors. VitalStream offers a radio ad platform focused on insertion rather than creation. Google is offering ad creation services, but for the moment only in terrestrial radio settings. The company's done so by creating an "ad creation marketplace" that offers to pair advertisers with the providers of audio production services.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 12:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 25, 2007

Justin.tv Comes to Ad:Tech

Just got a text message from one of our friends at AKQA that the agency is live on Justin.tv, so I tuned in. About all I can make out from the stream is a slice of greasy looking pizza and a bunched up napkin making occasional lunges in the direction of Justin's headcam. The soundtrack consists of a discussion about Justin.tv's audience demographics.

Also noticed Justin's itinerary for the day includes a 3pm visit to Ad:Tech. Between the agency and conference visits, looks like the site's angling for some sponsorships. ClickZ previously mentioned Justin.tv here.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 3:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 16, 2007

Gemstar Expands Listings to Online Video

The trusty TV Guide site finally woke up to the world of online video. This is something Web 2.0 site MeeVee began doing last fall. At launch, the Gemstar version of an online video guide (in beta) services network-generated content rather than CGM cataloged elsewhere on the Web. Fox's new show "Drive" seems to receive top billing throughout the category pages, it shares the same corporate parent as Gemstar. The online video guide is network agnostic and lists clips and content for all networks and cable broadcasters as well as content from movie clips. Ads are served on the site, but click through to video content takes you to the host's page.

Posted by Enid Burns at 6:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 30, 2007

Pop-under Man Takes Aim at Rich Media

Tim Vanderhook is no fan of rich media ads. Earlier this week I spoke with the CEO of Specific Media (the folks behind all those X10 Wireless pop-unders we used to see everywhere); he said he's skeptical of the value of rich media ads, and thinks they just cost too much.

"Sometimes they're more expensive than the media," he lamented. Vanderhook believes the actual cost of serving rich media is far less than the $1-5 CPMs rich media firms charge to serve them. "Fundamentally, that takes money away from the media spend."

That doesn't mean his own network doesn't offer rich media. According to the company's site, its premium ad network delivers "All standard IAB in-page display ad units with flash, rich media and pre-roll video."

Of course some advertisers do see value in rich media advertising, and are willing to spend more for it. Plus, I suspect as ad management platforms integrate rich media ad serving (like DoubleClick, for instance), we could see those costs go down.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 4:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Legal Perils of Nostalgia Marketing

The Web is perfect for nostalgia-based marketing. Interactive capabilities mean advertisers can help you relive the adventures and games of youth, and so they have done going right back to the first whack-a-mole banner ad. But replicating those bygone experiences evidently carries with it a certain risk of infringement, as DaimlerChrysler is learning with a new lawsuit filed against it by "Choose Your Own Adventure" publisher Chooseco.

Chooseco, which is reviving the book series, filed its complaint after the company's Jeep brand developed an elaborate microsite replicating its trademark format in a video setting. Called "Choose Your Adventure," the experience let visitors guide the decisions of a band of four friends on a backwoods treasure hunt starring its Patriot model. People could even generate a personal profile, complete with photo, to customize the storyline.

Now I'm trying to think back to when I read those books as a kid, but try as I might I can't recall whether any of the storylines involved a snarling corporate lawsuit. If so, maybe DaimlerChrylser could pick up a copy and see how it ends.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 1:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 26, 2007

It's Video Time

The world's biggest magazine publisher has seen the future -- and it moves.

After hundreds of employees were axed in recent months in wave after wave of layoffs, and most recently, shuttering Life Magazine today (for the third second, and presumably last, time) Time Inc. held a show-and-tell of digital properties for the media today.

The centerpiece of the strategy going forward is online properties, and central to that is video, video, and more video. "We're going to have the ability to compete with the broadcast networks for scale," said EVP John Squires. Time intends to "compete for TV ad dollars," and is throwing considerable weight behind the claim.

Last November, Paul Speaker, a former president of RKO Pictures and a seasoned independent film industry executive, was tasked with founding Time Inc. studios. He's busy constructing two sounds stages in the Time building, an equipment library for journalists, editing bays, and satellite uplinks to Birmingham, Ala. and London to "help the brands deliver on their video strategies. "More and more advertisers are requiring Time to include a video component in its proposals," Speaker said.

Another interesting development is CNNMoney's new personalized quotes homepage. It's built in AJAX and hence, eschewing pageviews. "We're killing the refresh button," said executives, who hope real-time, constantly updating quotes will help them go up against the 500 lb. gorilla in the space, Yahoo Finance. The property hopes the page will engender enough loyalty to drive traffic elsewhere on the site.

There's more to tell -- I'll look at Time Warner's strategy more deeply in my Friday column.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 6:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 20, 2007

Easy Send to Mobile Video App

The nascent mobile content space is still determining what shape to take, but many in the industry agree content can't be ported from the Web, but must be made to suite the mobile experience. But there are ways of making the Internet at large more suited for the mini screen. Video, for example, has taken off in popularity through sites like YouTube, and now networks are finding ways to monetize programming on the Web. Is video suited for mobile? "YouTube lends itself to mobile consumption," said Jeff Lanctot, SVP and global media lead for Avenue A/Razorfish, in a meeting a few weeks ago. He referred to the snippets and snacking format the short video clips provide.

Enter mywaves, a mobile application that lets users create channels using a Web interface, then pick up the feeds on their mobile phones. It's carrier agnostic, and free to users. The service has gained word-of-mouth notoriety, and today launched SND2MBL, or send-to-mobile, a Web-to-mobile video marketing offering. Content owners can embed a bit of code on their site to let users send the video on the site to their mobile phones. SND2MBL is free to content owners, if they accept advertising on the mobile feed. Currently advertising is not enabled, but is expected to be enabled shortly. You can check out SND2MBL in action at DJ Skee's site.

Mywaves is also offering an advanced, premium version in lieu of serving ads against the content. The premium version also offers comprehensive audience measurement to let marketers know who is watching, how often a video is forwarded to someone else via mobile "send-to-a-friend" and analysis on audience and reach.

Posted by Enid Burns at 1:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 19, 2007

In-Stream Ad Networks Making Some Progress; Tremor Signs Ruckus

It's hard to get a handle on the importance of video pre-roll and other in-stream advertising formats right now. Some media buying execs have said the inventory is so scarce it's hardly even on their radar, while others are still heralding (and heavily investing in) its supposed future dominance.

The latter group includes video players/ad networks like Brightcove and Tremor Networks. Tremor announced today it's been tapped by college media network Ruckus to sell in-stream video ad placements through its Ad-inStream network. I challenged the companies to show me that in-stream is living up to the hype that favored it one to two years ago (back when Advertising.com bought LightningCast) and was suitably impressed with what they told me. While the volume may be far behind what advertisers want (roughly 300 million ads served a month in Tremor's network), it's also clear the company is putting in the legwork to determine what's going to work best for the user and advertiser, not just what's going to be most "impactful."

"In-stream, if it's done right, is a very good format," CEO Jason Glickman said. He believes in-stream will work best as online videos get longer and longer -- for instance "if there's a 20 minute piece of content, and you see an ad at the 10 minute point and the 17 minute point."

I'm still not convinced the best ad products to accompany video content will necessarily be video, but it's heartening to know we're past the phase where :30 spots are being dropped unceremoniously into every short form bit of content in sight.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 1:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 16, 2007

No More Calls, We Have A Winner!

Congratulations to Cece from San Francisco, the lucky winner of a ticket to our ClickZ Specifics: Video Advertising conference on Monday in the City by the Bay.

Looking forward to seeing you there (plus a few hundred other agency, vendor, and media people).

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 9:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Spammers Assaulting Video Sites

You know a medium has arrived when the spammers come calling. So it is with user-submitted video portals, where spammy clips have turned up with growing frequency, WSJ has observed.

But spamming search, including video search, is a much tougher prospect than spamming individuals via direct channels. That's why the real marketing abuse on MySpace has happened via the site's messaging system (versus fake profiles) and why YouTube lovers should watch the site's community and sharing features more than the video uploads discussed in this story for signs of dangerous contamination.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 8:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 12, 2007

Blastro to Stream Video from On Demand Hip Hop Provider

Hip hop video site Blastro will now stream video from cable programmer H2O-Hip Hop OnDemand, adding 50 new videos and specials to the site monthly. Content will include interviews with artists, comedy and dance and rap contests.

According to Blastro, both firms will sell ads and split the revenue. The firms will focus on advertisers in the wireless, auto and beverage categories.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 5, 2007

ClickZ Specifics:Video Comes to San Francisco

Last summer, ClickZ ran the first conference dedicated solely to the topic of interactive video advertising. The hyper-focused, one-day event was a smash, so we're taking the show on the road.

That, plus the fact that online video becomes more topical every day.

The San Francisco conference on Tuesday, March 19, boasts an impressive lineup of speakers from companies including (in no particular order): Google, Yahoo,OgilvyInteractive, Organic, MTV Network’s, Atom Entertainment, Scripps Networks, MediaVest Worldwide, BET Interactive, Heavy, Nielsen//Netratings, comScore, Tribal DDB, and a host of others.

If you're involved in interactive advertising and weren't able to make the New York event, I really hope you can make it to our Bay Area reprise.

Take a sec to register -- and while you're there, please don't forget to introduce yourself!

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 3:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 2, 2007

The British Are Coming! To YouTube!

Man, YouTube used to be so hip and lawless. Now it's signed a deal with the BBC? I expect some new tea party vids to show up on YouTube any day now.

Well, it's an interesting agreement. Apparently, the BBC and BBC Worldwide will have branded channels on the video site in a "non-exclusive" partnership. I suppose that means the beeb can spread its video around on other sites, too, and that YouTube can create branded channels for BBC competitors.

This is part of BBC's aim to score commercial revenue, something that's been pretty controversial when it comes to its Web site. The company also wants to drive adoption of its future iPlayer service.

Two channels will feature clips from new BBC Worldwide shows and video diaries of behind-the-scenes footage. Those will feature "a limited amount of advertising," according to the press release. Another channel for non-UK viewers will feature "advertising-funded" international news clips.

I've contacted YouTube for a bit more info on the ads, but they can't grant the interview request today.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 1:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Onion to Unveil Historical Video Treasure Trove

It had to happen. The Onion News Network is coming late this month, according to a Wired report. That means original video clips produced by a new production team. And this may be the best part: programming will feature footage covering news the media outlet supposedly has covered over the past 75 years. No word yet on the ads....

I guess newspaper-phobic youth can now learn history through comedy as well as current events.

Well, I'm crossing my fingers we'll get to see some live commentary from The Jim Anchower. A girl can dream, can't she? Haha.

Speaking of news parody, I figured I'd check out what ModernHumorist and the precursor to all this stuff, National Lampoon, are up to video-wise. Well, MH is definitely lacking in the vid department. National Lampoon has a bunch of clips prominently featured on its homepage. The one I watched featuring the diapered astronaut's new Huggies commercial was pretty lame, though.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 1:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 1, 2007

DoubleClick Acquires U.K. Rich Media Firm

DoubleClick has acquired U.K.-based self-service rich media firm Tangozebra. The move continues its strategy of buying up competitors in the Euro market. Last year the firm snatched up Germany-based ad management firm Falk, which brought it clients such as Mediacom, mediaedge:cia Netherlands and ZenithOptimedia.

DoubleClick will merge Tangozebra's rich media business in Europe with its own operation there. James Booth, who co-founded Tangozebra in 1996, will head DoubleClick’s EMEA rich media business.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 2:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 27, 2007

WPNI Bows Video Channels, Will Sell Them In-House

It's a big week so far for new "video channels" from big media and entertainment firms. Directly in the wake of Google deals with Condé Nast and Dow Jones and Co., and an NBA/YouTube agreement that will also see NBA content distributed across participating AdSense sites, Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive (WPNI) has a video expansion of its own.

WPNI properties will offer daily newscasts from journalists, documentaries and international coverage. Video publishing and syndication platform Brightcove will power the content but not the ads, which will be brokered by the individual Web properties where they appaer. I have a call out to WPNI to determine whether it expects to offer any advertising at all through Brightcove's network -- even just the remant stuff. I'll update the post when they get back to me. (Update: Brightcove, at least, says they have no ad involvement at all.)

Newsweek.com and Slate have already launched channels. The new video sections come only days after WPNI formally rolled out its own blog ad network. That effort, supported by Adify, will increase the amount of inventory available to its sales teams.

WPNI later plans to solicit and distribute reader-submitted videos within its online news programming, also courtesy of the Brightcove platform.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 22, 2007

How'd You Two Meet? NYT Invites Video CGM

How did you meet your intended? Was the tape rolling when it happened?

None other than the venerable Gray Lady just announced couples who submit wedding announcements to the Weddings/Celebrations section are also invited to submit a "How We Met" homemade video. Never before has the Times asked its users for video (heck, a lot of folks out there are still reeling over the fact the Times now runs same sex partner pairings in the section).

NYT.com is asking for videos under three minutes, and they'll only select yours if they run your announcement -- a notoriously stringent process Gawker.com recently attempted to codify.

The Times unsurprisingly specified that video should be appropriate for a general audience. Considering the both subject matter and the selection process, this has to be a pretty safe way to dip a toe into CGM waters.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 7:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Could a Video Download Surge Hurt Media Cos?

A study on ad-supported and paid video downloads was released today by Adams Media Research that I think has an interesting connection to a piece I wrote the other day about software that grabs Flash streaming video.

According to the "Video on the Internet: Ad-Supported Streaming and Download-to-Own" report, advertiser spending on Internet video streams to PCs and TVs will near $1.7 billion by 2011. Far more, it predicts, will come from consumer spending on movie and TV downloads: $4.1 billion.
The firm thinks ad-supported video will dominate during an experimentation phase between now and 2009. Afterwards, spending on video downloads will ramp up, since more and more people will have Internet-enabled televisions.

Most people I spoke with about Applian's new software, which allows users to grab streaming Flash videos and archive them on their PCs, didn't see a huge threat to content producers, video distributors or advertisers. But if the number of people downloading videos is set to grow substantially, surely more people will seek out inexpensive software like this, allowing them to grab videos, and either view them on their TVs, or their PCs or mobile devices, rather than paying content owners for them. Already today, with conversion software, they can watch the streaming video files they downloaded on their phones or iPods.

Hey, who knows?

Posted by Kate Kaye at 4:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Buy This Or We'll Blow Up Your PC

To the list of menaces threatening the lowly inbox we can now apparently add exploding video offers. A new novelty application called BigString Marketer Pro lets marketers send e-mail blasts containing offers that can be programmed to self-destruct at a specified time. The tool attempts to "introduce a sense of urgency and excitement by creating time-sensitive video offers that self destruct,” according to a statement from BigString CEO and President Darin Myman.

Has anyone seen this in action? Do clouds of smoke fill your inbox, blacking out competing offers?

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 1:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 20, 2007

JetBlue CEO's Mea Culpa on YouTube

YouTube, meet crisis communicatons.

JetBlue CEO David Neeleman has an impressive apology up on YouTube. In the video, which has an impressive degree of unrehearsed, true-blue spontaneity, he assumes full responsibility for the airline's operational problems over the past week, vows to fix them, and presents a customers' bill of rights.

The stream is getting a ton of blogosphere pick up. After a long and agonizing week, JetBlue has finally gotten something right.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 14, 2007

Fabio on Loving Your PC

Best Buy has posted a video on YouTube today where Fabio teaches the electronics retailer's employees how to pick up a laptop, and we're not talking about lifting it. The best way is to suggestively use the language of C++ to attract your CPU object of desire. I guess Fabio goes hand-in-hand with Valentine's Day.

Posted by Enid Burns at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 13, 2007

Live Video in a Banner Ad

Ah, this item's making me nostalgic for the days when ClickZ covered innovative rich media formats on an almost weekly basis. DoubleClick has released a new ad unit capable of streaming live video. The Times had a nice write-up on the ad product's inaugural customer, New Line's Jim Carrey vessel "The Number 23." Production company Foglight Entertainment recorded confessions and obsessions of people attending a live event in a Washington D.C. bar, then streamed those confessions in near real-time inside the ad unit.

Nifty, though very few advertisers possess quality live video to plug into an ad. First you need an event, second you need a production crew, third you need a campaign goal. IBM had one last year when it enabled live video chats with its sales reps inside the banner. The technology's cool-factor will only take it so far.

Update: On24 just called to rightly chastise me for not mentioning its in-banner live streaming video ad product. Called Bannercast Live, it launched in November.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 5:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 6, 2007

Wal-Mart's Video Download Site: A New Level of Beta

Sheesh, Wal-Mart. We know your new video download site is in beta.

But after seeing screenshots like this:

Why does the site display in Firefox like this?

There's beta, and the there's beta. And then there's what's possibly the most broken site we've ever seen, anywhere on the Web.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Diller Does Online Video

IAC/InterActiveCorp.'s making a belated push into online video with an expansion of CollegeHumor.com to include original clips. WSJ has details, including that videos are mainly being produced on the cheap and the focus is NOT on user-created stuff. Nothing terribly exciting to see here; the big story is Diller's expertise in broadcast TV and feature films and the advantage that gives him on the Net. The guy knows content, but then so did Time Inc., and look what happened to Office Pirates. A good online video strategy won't amount to much unless it's paired with investment.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 2, 2007

Bud.tv Shows, Coming Soon to YouTube

So on Monday we'll finally have Bud.tv, a project that has already gone down as a milestone for branded entertainment. It remains to be seen whether it will mark the true return of ambitious marketer-run content channels, a la P&G's early soap operas, or the moment advertising-as-entertainment jumps the shark.

The content Anheuser-Bush has slated for the channel is alternately low- and high-brow. Short form videos will be contributed by a high-falutin' passel of Hollywood auteurs, including Kevin Spacey's production house (Trigger Street) and Damon/Affleck studio LivePlanet. The site will produce some truly interactive content, including a "Finish Our Film" contest, plus predictable slapstick clips and high-concept shows. A story in The Times Magazine has many more details in a profile of the effort, which it calls "sotto voice" marketing.

A-B, which reportedly expects to spend $30 million on Bud.TV in its first year alone, is clearly shooting for a broad spectrum of programming – much of it high-caliber. The question is, will people see it on BUD.TV or on YouTube, and does Bud even care?

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 9:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 23, 2007

Web Surfing Meets Real Surfing

Some sports events can't be tamed. The 2007 mavericks Sports Contest is one such event. The competition is set to go upon 24 hours' notice when "Mother Nature delivers contest-worthy swell" between now and March 31. This is where the Web wins out over TV. To broadcast the event, Mavericks Surf Ventures Partners teamed with CBS SportsLine.com to Webcast the competition. Viewers can watch the eight-hour live Webcast of legendary big-wave surfers at cbs.sportsline.com or maverickssurf.com. The event is made possible by a sponsorship through Ask.com. Stay tuned for some real-world surfing.

Posted by Enid Burns at 5:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Big Web Piece for Nike's Air Force 1 Anniv Bash

Nike's Air Force 1 shoe turns 25 this year, and to celebrate the moment the company has produced a statement shoe, Air Force 25, that it will promote via an extensive on-air and online campaign.

The centerpiece of the push is a hip-hop music video that debuted with MTV on-air and online, but Nike also set up a mash-up site to let users remix a new TV ad using a drag and drop online video editing tool. The approach reminds me in some ways of the widely lambasted roll-your-own :30 spot initiative Chevy set up to promote the Tahoe. Though it's unquestionably better executed than that "UGC" effort (quotes deliberate), Nike is still exerting a fairly controlling hand here.

Users who create spots can forward them on to e-mail addresses or to mobile phones. Nike's campaign also includes an MTV special about the Air Force.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 18, 2007

Brightcove Scores $60 MM Round

We don't usually cover funding, but this is a lot of money and a company we've watched closely. Brightcove has raised a fat C-series round of $59.5 million from a list of investors that includes The New York Times Company. If nothing else, it means the company just got a big extension on its start-up adolescence. It'll now have time to experiment with video formats and figure out whether it wants to be a pure syndication play, build a consumer-facing portal, or try more themed video collections of the sort it did for Sony BMG.

CEO Jeremy Allaire said the money would be used to expand internationally, build better tools and add more interactive features for consumers.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 17, 2007

Netflix Watch Now Service

Yesterday Netflix launched a new program that makes a catalog of movies and TV shows available to users for download. The details were explored by Michael Arrington on TechCrunch so I won't duplicate his efforts. While there's no advertising angle, it demonstrates the efforts a company is making to maintain and attract users to its service. If the model is adopted beyond the foreseeable future, sponsorships of certain videos or pre-roll ads might become a possibility. Netflix began advertising in June with a few banner ads.

Posted by Enid Burns at 5:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 16, 2007

Baidu Teams With EMI for Ad-Supported Streaming Tunes

Chinese search giant Baidu announced it's teaming with EMI to launch a an ad-supported streaming online music service in China.

EMI's Typhoon Music Chinese repertoire will be available free to Baidu users in a specially created 'EMI Music Zone' residing on China's leading search engine (62.1%, according to the recent figures). The two companies will split the ad revenue, which a press release calls "a pioneering approach to monetising and promoting digital music in China."

The move is obviously geared toward promoting EMI's catalogue in China, with DRM and copy protection overtones: "The cooperation...also moves us towards jointly controlling digital piracy, something that is important to EMI in the Chinese digital music market. Our co-operation with the world's largest Chinese search engine is also part of EMI's strategic roadmap to expanding digital music development across the region," said Norman Cheng, Chairman of EMI Music Asia and director of Typhoon Music, in a statement.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 5:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Runaway Engine That Couldn't

An interesting, if not surprising, report from U.K.-based Screen Digest has predicted that the careening choo-choo train of user-generated content will not produce much ad revenue for the foreseeable future.

By 2010, Screen Digest projects, 55 percent of all video content consumed online will be generated by end users, representing about 44 billion streams. Despite that, amateur content will account for only about 15 percent of revenues derived from online video. Whether that's a little or a lot can be debated, given that close to zero percent of amateur video content is monetized in any meaningful way today; it's almost all run of network banners at this point.

At any rate, the report's authors note the usual problems of hyper-targeting ads against video content, the difficulty of assigning quality and appropriateness quotients to individual clips, and the conundrum that experimenting with ad models is somewhat at odds with the non-commercial caché sites like YouTube built up in their early days. (link to report)

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 4:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Venice Project is now Joost

The Venice Project, the pre-launch TV/Web crossover platform from the founders of Skype and Kazaa, has been given an official (and tiresomely 2.0) name: Joost.

The site aims to unite advertisers, content owners and viewers in a connected, community-driven environment and, owing to its illustrious founders, has been a repository for the collective hype of tech bloggers everywhere. Given its founders, it's certainly worth watching, but let's all keep in mind that TV/Internet convergence is a road well traveled over the last two years, and they're facing lots of competition from everyone from slingbox to Brightcove to Apple.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 2, 2007

Google Hiring for YouTube Sales in Six Cities

Jon Fine observes that Google is posting classified ads seeking sales executives for YouTube. One Mediabistro listing for a Boston-area account executive describes the ideal candidate as one able to "drive revenue for the YouTube business unit and consult with brand advertisers and interactive agencies on how to leverage the YouTube platform and participate in the YouTube community."

No big departure here from YouTube's pre-acquisition focus. Fine reports full time sales positions are being filled in New York, Dallas, Detroit, Boston, Chicago and San Bruno, Ca.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 28, 2006

John Edwards Embraces YouTube, Viral, SMS,

Presidential hopeful John Edwards jumped his own announcement of his plans to campaign in 2008, scheduled for today, by posting a video on YouTube yesterday in which he pre-empts the news.

Edwards' appeal is for Americans to join his OneCorps campaign, and his call-to-action is to do so either on his Web site or via SMS (text 'hope' to 30644). He makes sure to ask viewers to forward his message to friends.

And it seems to be working.The enthusiastic feedback on his YouTube page runs very much toward "you've got my vote."

Where the effort falls short, however, is the campaign's stubborn insistence to capture e-mail addresses, no matter what. Want more info via SMS? Want to learn more about OneCorps? You're not going to get it..unless you fork over your deets and get on yet another e-mail list. Even the reply to sending an SMS message is, "Please txt us your email."

It almost feels like you have to pay.

C'mon, Senator Edwards. You've gone this far in embracing new media. Take the final step and don't throw up barriers to your message, or to your supporters. Embrace other communications channels (To be fair, the OneCorps.com URL redirects to blog.johnedwards.com, but it's not loading today, so no word about RSS feed availability).

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 11:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 26, 2006

GreenCine Embedding YouTube Film Trailers

Why re-invent the wheel, or re-jig your site for rich media if it's not necessary?

GreenCine (the Netflix for discerning cinemaphiles) has always been quick to adopt Web 2.0 marketing principles. It was one of the first consumer sites with a blog, and also early to do really useful things with user feedback.

So it's no surprise the site is now embedding theatrical trailers already posted on YouTube on the pages that contain the DVD descriptions, synposes, and ratings. And why not? The trailers are already out there. Embedding them makes a thorough, useful site even more so.

Bet there's something on YouTube that could enhance your site, too.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 20, 2006

Pixsy Goes the Widget Way

Search platform provider Pixsy Corporation is hoping to extend its network tentacles beyond larger publisher partner sites. The firm just released a widget allowing anybody with a site, MySpace page, whatever, to drop a customized image and video search engine on his site. Site owners can choose which categories they'd like to include in their search databases, and can even narrow a search down to one category.

The company currently splits ad revenue with the larger publishers using its white label service; however, no ads will run in the new embedded search tool -- yet. Pixsy CEO Chase Norlin told ClickZ last week the firm needs to work out the kinks first. It'll be a chore to determine the best method for compensating bloggers and site owners, and figure out how best to serve ads via the multiple ad networks the company works with.

Another new offering allows people to place a standard IAB ad unit on their sites which will display category or publisher-specific photos, changing them dynamically.

Companies Norlin counts as competitors include Singingfish (multimedia search platform owned by AOL), video search outfit Blinkx (just signed by Dow Jones Online to enable video search) and AOL. "We have a healthy respect for [AOL]" Norlin said during our call the other day. Be that as it may, Pixsy claims photo search is even bigger than video search, and hopes that functionality will make them a more attractive potential partner to well-branded online publishers.

Oh, and they may use a different spelling, but you can indeed find Pixies videos on Pixsy.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 15, 2006

Numbers Guy Pans Viral Factory Video List

I'll be honest: We reporters have reams of numbers spewed at us on a daily basis, and most of us weren't exactly math masters. Even more the reason I'm so fascinated with this week's The Numbers Guy column in The Wall Street Journal Online. Digit wiz Carl Bialik takes on the self-proclaimed "viral marketing experts" at the Viral Factory. The firm put out a list of top viral video clips recently (that annoying kid with the light sabre topped it), based on numbers that are specious at best. Here's how Bialik breaks it down:

Videos are often spread via email, which, thankfully, can't be tracked. So the Viral Factory also counted the number of relevant Google search results for each video, estimated the number of versions of each video (people make mash-ups and homages of popular online videos), and guessed how many videos the average viewer watched. For some videos, these guesses were informed by informal email surveys among a couple dozen friends of the company's employees.

….The final estimate of 900 million came from taking the number of Google search returns today; assuming there are five times as many Web sites, cumulatively, since the video debuted in 2003; estimating that one-third of these are "blogs / articles / forum posts"; that each of those were read by, on average, 50 people; that of those people -- supposedly no one read more than one of those sites -- three of four watched one or more clips; that of those who watched, each watched on average 10 of the roughly 120 versions of the video; and that on average these "Star Wars" Kid fans would watch each clip once a year, or three times in all. That's 500,000 * 5 * 1/3 * 50 * 0.75 * 10 * 3 = 945 million.

This obviously has implications for online advertisers who go by numbers such as the ones employed here to determine what's of value online. It also serves to temper the mania surrounding CGM and viral video.

Sure, the fact is lots and lots of people have seen the videos that made it big online this year. But just think: All it takes is one late night talk show or goof off entertainment show (like the one I watch in the midst of Sunday afternoon hangovers, VH1's Best Week Ever) to show one of these clips and immediately dwarf the numbers it takes days, weeks, or months for big Web sites to garner.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 5:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 11, 2006

YouTube, The New Holiday Card Channel

Kiss those e-mail Xmas card goodbye.

The YouTube holiday greetings videos are already starting to arrive, like this one from Geary Interactive.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 4:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

RIP Pre-roll Ads

Pre-roll is about to die, according to a prediction from noted VC and blogger Fred Wilson. Wilson, a partner with Union Square Ventures, doesn't mince words in his blog post: "Pre-roll ads are going the way of popups and other intrusive ads. They won't be around in a couple years. And the online video services that use them to monetize their audience won't be around either."

The main gist of his argument is that there is always somewhere else to get content, so if you're making it difficult or unpleasant for users to get it from you, they'll go somewhere else. Since pre-rolls are annoying, and users are impatient, they're going to make people go somewhere else.

He thinks post-roll ads are fine, if they're properly targeted and entertaining. The reasoning behind that is that people will get something extra if the ads are done right, and can easily leave if they're not interested.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 21, 2006

Cult TV Show Gets New Life Online

MSN Video has scored a content coup, snagging rights to the entire three seasons of "Arrested Development," the critically acclaimed series that was canceled for not being mainstream enough for Fox TV, despite its cult following. The first five episodes were made available on MSN Video this week, and three new episodes will be added every three weeks until the entire 53-episode run is online by the end of next year.

Like other MSN Video content, "Arrested Development" will be divided into 5 scenes per episode, and ads will be shown before the episode begins and in between each scene.
MSN will augment the episodes with deleted scenes, blooper reels, and related DVD content. It will also build interactive features like message boards, fan areas, and other community areas around the show.

With the launch comes MSN's debut of a new video player with features specifically for long-form video, including several options to return to the last point in the clip that was viewed before an interruption, a 15-second quick rewind function, and a "sit back" mode for viewing content on large screens, like a TV.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 3:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 14, 2006

Amanda Ungeeked

Amanda Congdon, the first online video star and sex idol to a million Web geeks, has gone all big media on you and signed separate agreements with ABC/Disney and HBO to develop online and boob-tube shows. For ABC, she'll be videoblogging for ABC News and occasionally appearing on other broadcast news and talk programs. For HBO, she'll be involved in the development of a new cross-platform comedy show that she says will have original programming for both the Web and TV components. She makes the announcement here.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 5:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 9, 2006

E! Online Previews New Show

Coming in January is an animated show from E! Online, "Starveillance." The preview available on the site recreates a moment with Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, pondering what may have happened on their first date.

Posted by Enid Burns at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 31, 2006

Election '06 Blind Item: Campaign Kills Consulting Account after Ad Vendor Mishap

I'm pulling a Liz Smith on y'all today. Yep, it's blind item time! But this time it's better than celebrity gossip -- it's online political ad gossip!

I spoke recently with a trusted source who assisted in the development of a rich media ad campaign for a gubernatorial candidate this year. The rich media ad vendor was so unresponsive when it came to making necessary changes to the ads, the campaign's consulting outfit (the company that hired the ad vendor) lost the account.

"It was so bad it cost them the client," my source told me.

Imagine. Problems with the ads actually spurred angry responses from users who complained to the candidate campaign team. Evidently, after a post-labor day launch, the sites running the ads requested changes that only the ad vendor could accomplish -- things like making sure certain multimedia components were user-initiated. Ad tags weren't set up correctly, either, said my source. And while the consulting firm and its media firm partner awaited changes, "horrific e-mails from users" were piling in.

As for the ad vendor, "they weren't responsive mostly," said the source.

There's already a pittance spent on online ads in the political arena, this year and in previous years. If word gets around about this campaign mishap, it could deter already online ad-leery campaigns from using formats from which they could benefit.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 5:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 18, 2006

MTV Pacts With Baidu and New Chinese Mobile Provider

Fresh on the heels of its distribution deal with Google, MTV has reached a distribution agreement with another Internet Goliath. China's leading search engine, Baidu will help extend the MTV brand deeper into one of the media industry's most coveted markets.

MTV and Baidu will initially distribte some 15,000 videos online, as well as MTV programming such as "Pimp My Ride." Some will be free to viewers, others entail a yet-undetermined fee. MTV's sister network, Nickelodeon, will also supply material.

According to Bill Roedy, vice chairman of MTV Networks who has long been responsible for the network's international expansion, censorship won't be an issue as the programming will already have been approved for broadcast. About 70 percent of MTV videos available on Baidu will be by Chinese performers.

MTV also pacted with China's second-largest mobile provider, China Unicom, to offer ring tones, entertainment news and other services. The company already has a similar agreement with China Mobile, the country's leading provider. The company says it now has access to all of China's 400 million mobile phones.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 16, 2006

CNET TV Makes Its Way Online

When CNET launched its video-on-demand service a few months ago it said it also planned to offer the content on its Web site. That happens this week in the form of downloadable content to supply videos to "consumers while they are on the go," a statement said. CNET also said it added Verizon as a distribution partner for its on-demand content.

Posted by Enid Burns at 5:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 10, 2006

Election '06: MySpace/YouTube Effect on NJ Races

A quick video clip featuring Republican NJ Senate candidate Tom Kean ducking away from an Iraq soldier's mom has been viewed over 43,000 times on YouTube. It was posted by the camp of his Democratic rival and current interim Senator Bob Menendez.

Just how much this sort of thing will affect voter decisions remains to be seen.

According to a NorthJersey.com story (from The Bergen Record?), "It marks the second time in the hotly contested Senate race that the camera work of Patrick McKenna has taken center stage. The 25-year-old Menendez operative works as a 'tracker' and follows Kean at campaign events, which he films with a $200 handheld video camera."

Such folks are becoming campaign fixtures this year as online video viewing and free hosting proliferates. (Check out this entertaining piece on the subject from yesterday's Wall Street Journal).

As seen on NJ.com, The Star Ledger has another great story about local Jersey candidates using MySpace, or not.

Chris Adornato, Independent candidate for Mayor of Woodbridge (that seat was once held by our upstanding ex-guv, Jim McGreevy, by the way), has dived head first into the world of MySpace campaigning, even employing an automated MySpace friend-adding software to send friend requests to voter-age users in Woodbridge based on zip code.

According to the story, "Once he has all those friends, Adornato writes comments on their pages so their friends can read them."

The 29-year-old Adornato was quoted as saying he'd met eight people while door-to-door campaigning recently who recognized him as "the guy on MySpace."

I'm trying to decide whether this automated MySpace approach would bug me or intrigue me. I have to say that I am impressed by local candidates who have a Web presence of any kind since in the past they've been so few and far between when it comes to Jersey City or Hudson Country pols. Still, there are few people I don't know who I've added as MySpace friends, and I'd have to feel really good about a political candidate to do that.

Again, my biggest question this year about the usage of social networking tools and YouTube in political campaigns is how will this affect voters? Can this sort of thing really sway somebody, much less get him out to the polls if he wasn't planning to already?

To use the recent Kean video example, I'd venture to guess that viewing a clip that highlights the weakness or evasiveness of a candidate (which this intends to do) could certainly sway a voter who's on the fence. This is a super-tight race, even in Blue Jersey, so I suppose every little bit helps/hinders.

Still, I'm inclined to believe the majority of people viewing this sort of stuff, or on MySpace, are a.) not going to vote or b.) already decided voters.

Consider this comment on Adornato's MySpace page: "dude you should def put a skatepark in colonia if you are voted…if i was old enough to vote id def vote for you man".

Ahhh...the future leaders (and voters) of America.....

Posted by Kate Kaye at 12:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

vMix Powers San Diego Site's CGM Video

CGM video tech firm vMix is powering a new user-generated video section on Tribune's San Diego CW 5 site. Folks can upload video and comment in the new site, deemed Yovio. There's lots of room for display ads running alongside the content. At this point, those spots are being used to promote vMix user registration -- no pre-roll ads either.

vMix also works with clients including Warner Bros., Fox Home Entertainment and Bravo TV.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 5, 2006

Need Advice? Ask Mr. T

Any child of the '80s will remember the mohawked, gold-chain-wearing tough guy from the "A-Team," Mr. T. Now TV Land, MTV Networks' home of classic TV, is bringing back the straight-talking action star, sans chains, for a new reality show, now being promoted with video clips on Yahoo TV and TVLand.com.

"I Pity the Fool" shows Mr. T traveling around the U.S. giving advice, motivating slackers, and sharing his wisdom, including a pearl about public speaking: "Cut out the jibba-jabba."

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 2:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 3, 2006

WSJ's Utterly Oxymoronic Take On Pre-Roll Ads

In a none-too-enlightening piece examining the pre-roll conundrum in video advertising, The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) makes a statement today that sums up just how much ignorance there is out there regarding online advertising.

"What makes pre-rolls attractive to advertisers -- but off-putting to viewers -- is that they don't allow fast-forwarding," says the Journal.

Excuse me, but if pre-rolls are off-putting to their intended audience, what the heck is the benefit to advertisers, the very people trying to reach that audience?

At least our own Dorian Sweet gets it (but then, he always does). "They don't have a channel flipper or a mute button, but they do have the ability to just completely ignore it and go to someplace else," Dorian told the WSJ.

It's not just the length of the pre-roll (often longer than the video segment a user is trying to get at). Frequency caps on all those pre-rolls would help, too, an angle the Journal story completely (and bafflingly) overlooks.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 2:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 28, 2006

Election '06: YouTube's Still Got Political Video Upperhand

Any political candidate with a clue is using YouTube as a second online home to distribute video ads, event footage and the like. There's a new site that aims to be a one-stop shop for this stuff called The People Choose 2006. It's affiliated with LinkTV, a channel featuring international current events and educational programming (which, if you're a current events geek like me you've probably watched).

One cool thing about the site is it categorizes all candidate videos by state. The thing is, the site doesn't feature all the video that's out there. Video services firm Jumpcut.com, which was justacquired by Yahoo, is a tech partner of the site.

I took a quick trip around the site, searching for videos from candidates in Jerz, the state where I hang my hat. When I visit the New Jersey page, there are only a couple videos from one congressional candidate available. Meanwhile, I can go to YouTube and search on "Menendez" and come up with a
slew of videos – commercials, etc. – featuring the Dem senator. There is also a bunch of video clips shining a bad light on his Republican opponent, Tom Kean, Jr.

So, unless sites like The People Choose can get their acts together and truly provide a comprehensive catalog of everything out there, I expect YouTube to remain the top spot for campaign video this election season.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 1:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 25, 2006

Forbes.com Picks Podbridge's Tools

Advertisers looking for an opportunity to sponsor a podcast, but who also want the backing of a big brand can look no farther than Forbes.com. Podbridge will provide its audience measurement tools and ad insertion services for Forbes.com's audio and video podcasts.

Podbridge's tools can tell advertisers how many times a podcast is viewed or listened to, in addition to the number of times it was downloaded, with breakdowns by audience demographics.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 6:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 15, 2006

LonelyGirl15 Cashes Out

A follow-up to yesterday's thoughts on Revver: Looks like LonelyGirl15, who's just-peaked celebrity will go down as the media's first big crush on video blogging, is migrating to Revver for hosting. It's hard to know exactly what that means, since her (their?) gig is certainly up -- at least as far as the "real v. fake" debate goes. Maybe she and her creators hope to continue with the story, illusions of authenticity be damned. Or maybe she'll fess up directly to her viewers, and keep vlogging in a different way.

Update: Looks like she *did* just fess up. And now her v-log has apparently morphed into a "hit Internet soap opera." Oh my.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 3:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 13, 2006

ABC Cuts Affiliates Into the Broadband Sweetness

ABC reached a deal with its affiliate stations to let them feature its broadband player on their local sites and sell local ads to online viewers. The affiliates get to keep 100 percent of the revenue from those sales. Interestingly, ABC affiliates will promote the player on the air, as well as online.

Programs to be shown on the broadband player the day after their broadcast premiers include "Lost," "Desperate Housewives" and "Grey's Anatomy," which were included in last season's trial. Some new shows have been added, among them "Ugly Betty," "The Knights of Prosperity" and "The Nine."

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 4:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yahoo Gives Users a Reason to Buy Viiv

Yahoo and Intel have teamed up to give users a reason to buy a Viiv-enabled media PC. Yahoo Sports for TV launched today, with an initial focus on providing fantasy football information to TVs connected to PCs with Intel's Viiv technology and Windows XP Media Center.

The service lets users get real-time updates on league scores, standings, or stats on players on fantasy football teams on a Yahoo Sports account. It uses the remote control for navigation, without changing the channel from the show -- presumably a football game -- they're watching.

Apple made its own move to take over the living room this week, adding feature films for download via the iTunes store.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 4:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 16, 2006

CBS Brings Out the Big Guns for Innertube

CBS is stepping up the quality of its content, adding top shows to its lineup of Web video play Innertube the day after they air on TV.

Three flavors of "CSI," "Survivor," "Numb3rs," "NCIS" and the new "Jericho" shows will be made available in the morning after their on-air debut, and will remain online for at least a month. Ads will be :15 to :30, unskippable pre-roll and possible mid-roll video ads.

This move follows in the footsteps of NBC and ABC in tying its online efforts to its top TV shows. CBS had held off on adding new shows to the Innertube lineup while it worked out deals with TV affiliates, but it's not sharing any details of the outcome of those talks.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 4:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 9, 2006

"Snakes On A Plane" Re-Memes

Those flying snakes sure are viral.

A Web meme before it even went into production, the Samuel Jackson starrer has now got what has to be one of the best viral campaigns going. Within minutes, the first person I sent it to turned it around and sent it back to me.

But don't take my word for it. Give it a go yourself and send a friend a personalized message from Mr. Jackson himself.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 8:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

MSN Likes Jazz

MSN and the JVC Jazz Festival in Newport, Rhode Island made a deal to stream the concerts and activities live on MSN. Beginning Sunday, those not in New England can watch performances by artists including Arturo Sandoval, Savion Glover, Angelique Kidjo, The Bad Plus, The Robert Glasper Trio, Dr. John & the Lower 911, the McCoy Tyner Septet and the Dave Brubeck Quartet.

In April MSN sponsored and streamed the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.

Posted by Enid Burns at 4:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

PointRoll Gets Burst Seal of Approval

Another sign that streaming video ads are becoming more and more prominent: the Burst Media network is now accepting PointRoll's NetStream video ad format. The format streams video in a stand-alone 300x250 player unit and allows for a customizable player skin and a unit that remains on the page after the video plays. Burst already works with PointRoll competitors Eyeblaster, Klipmart and Viewpoint.

I'm not sure, but Burst's relationship with Tacoda may have facilitated this one since Tacoda, which has a relationship with PointRoll's new parent co. Gannett enables behavioral targeting for Burst. Then again, rich media tech companies obviously want to have their formats accepted on as many sites as possible, and it makes sense for Burst to offer a variety of technologies to advertisers.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 12:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 8, 2006

Notes on the ClickZ Track at SES

It was a long, crowded, fruitful day at ClickZ's track on broader advertising and marketing issues on this, the first day of Search Engine Strategies in San Jose. Herewith, a few notable quotes and impressions.

At the session on video advertising, AKQA President Tom Bedecarré showed what amounted to his shop's interactive video reel. Waitamminit. Interactive shops now have reels?

IPG's emerging media labs' Brian Monahan shared recent research conducted on who creates video CGM and posts it on the Web. 86 percent are young men; 72 percent are under 25; most spend less than an hour creating the submission and a third post more than a few times per month.

Hans Peter Brøndmo discussed open source marketing and exhorted the audience to "learn how to hate Google."

Gary Stein on the "clique": "Don't think of MySpace as a group of 300 million users. Think of it as 75 million groups of four people."

Ian Schafer showed a video created by a band for their song "Die Hard." The song plays over -- you guessed it -- scenes from 20th Century Fox's feature film, "Die Hard." Unlicensed, of course. And here's the punchline: one of his account executives plays in the band. Oh, and Fox is a client. They don't know about the video, but betcha they will soon.

Later, in discussion about all the copyright fallout surrounding YouTube, someone accused marketing executives at TV networks and film studios surreptitiously posting videos, then praying legal would stumble over them. PR is born.

TerraPass' Adam Stein wowed the audience by explain how his $0 marketing budget, together with some judicious blogging and e-mailing, led to coverage in both "The New York Times" and "The Los Angeles Times," resulting in a deal with Ford.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 12:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 4, 2006

ABC to Stream More Shows

Disney-owned TV network ABC said yesterday it plans to stream more of its prime time shows online using its ad-supported video player. Tests with four shows in May were so successful, users crashed the site with the volume of requests for "Lost," "Desperate Housewives," "Alias" and "Commander In Chief."

ABC shared some of the results of that test, saying that it streamed 5.7 million individual episodes in May and June, most within 24 hours of a show's on-air debut. The majority of viewers said they were streaming the shows because they missed them on TV.

ABC also reported that 87 percent of users surveyed were able to recall specific brands advertised on the online versions. In addition, 84 percent said that watching ads in exchange for free content was a "great deal."

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 1, 2006

Agency.com Pitches Subway -- On YouTube

Is this as bad an idea as Steve thinks it is?

Wouldn't go that far, but it's a big, big risk.

Agency.com created a 9:00 video of the agency creating a pitch for the Subway account -- and uploaded it to YouTube.

We'll know if it worked when they either win or lose the business. Meantime, don't hold your breath waiting for a rash of social/viral pitches. It's been done.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 3:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 28, 2006

Multi-Platform Syndication Models

Fox Entertainment's cult-followed TV series "Arrested Development" just got a multi-platform syndication deal. The show will air in rich media format on MSN; hi-definition on HDNet; and cable on video game-focused channel G4. All three seasons, 53 episodes, will be available with this distribution deal.

It was previously believed that syndication wouldn't work because it would deteriorate relationships with U.S. and foreign markets. The release on three platforms shows an evolution to syndication models. Broadcast companies are willing to pay for syndication rights even with content freely available on the Web. Increasingly networks are moving content to the Web either on their own sites or through distribution deals. Even Fox this week expanded an existing distribution deal with video-sharing site vMix .

For Fox Entertainment and "Arrested Development" the question is whether any of these platforms will grow the audience that the Fox network couldn't establish.

Posted by Enid Burns at 3:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Shave...Geraldo?

Broadcast is really getting obsessed with online video advertising, if all the shows I've been on lately discussing the phenomenon are any indication.

Even Geraldo wants a closer look. I just taped a segment for "Geraldo At Large" discussing TribalDDB's Shave Everywhere campaign for the Philips Norelco Bodygroom. Yeah, I thought Geraldo was unlikely for this story, too, but the questions on what viral video campaigns such as this one mean for the future of media were some of the best I've gotten from commercial television.

The segment airs today. Check your local listings.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 12:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 27, 2006

Podcasting Pervasive?

Is it a sign that podcasting is going mainstream when, on the way to work, I pass a stand with paper flyers advertising a course in "Podcasting for Writers" ? Here's how the copy starts: "Create your own podcast and add an audio dimension to your blog, enhance your Web site, or have a forum to talk about your favorite topics."

Well, this is the San Francisco Bay Area, I suppose.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 3:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 21, 2006

TurnHere Tricks Out Google Terra

Local short film production firm TurnHere has a new integration with Google Earth that's kinda neat. When users map a city or neighborhood that TurnHere has a short film about, an icon tags it as such. Clicking the icon launches a pop-up window displaying a still from the film and brief description. There are a whole bunch of them up there -- from Punxsutawney to Seoul. If you've got Google Earth, you can download the app.

At the moment, all the films are of the "neighborhood" variety, as opposed to the advertorial films TurnHere creates for paying advertisers (lots of restaurants and shops). According to the company's director of business development, Keith Louie, getting the ad films into Google Earth is something he'll "definitely have some conversations" with Google about. However, he's not so sure that will fly with the Web behemoth because "the thing about Google Earth is it's very editorial driven."

Still, Google makes its money through advertising; I'd bet it's only a matter of time before the company integrates Google Local, Google Base and ads into its Earth app.

I spoke with TurnHere's CEO Brad Inman the other day about the project, and he told me, "We worked hard to do it…. These things seem so simple and they're not."

Posted by Kate Kaye at 3:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 14, 2006

A Lengthy "Sneak Peek"

Now, I've heard of giving viewers an online taste of offline content, but a 24-minute-long preview? Yup, that's what the "A Scanner Darkly" (Keanu Reeves' latest futuristic flick) marketers are doing, distributing an exclusive 24-minute-long preview to the gaming audience via IGN.com. The site is also offering video interviews with the actors and director.

Initially, I thought it was crazy to offer this big a bite of the new movie, but 24 minutes is really just long enough to get you through "act 1" where things start to get exciting, in your typical feature film. With that in mind, this seems like a good call. (Though I might have gone more wide to YouTube, etc.) Interestingly, they're having to age-restrict the preview since it's "R" rated.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 13, 2006

Google Radio

The Internets are alight with speculation about Google radio ads, since Tim at TechToolBlog reported receiving a survey that touched on talent brokering for voice work. Back in May at Google Press Day, CEO Eric Schmidt told me (and other reporters hanging on his every word) that he envisioned a system whereby advertisers could upload audio creative to Google that would be distributed to multiple platforms. The idea that the company would help provision voice talent would be perfectly consistent with this approach, given the lack of resources available to many of Google's small business customers. (As others have mentioned, SpotRunner /A> -- the next logical acquisition for Google -- aims to handle the creative and distribution issue for TV.)

Then again, given Google's fondness for technology, maybe the company could do dynamically-generated audio creative like IHT.com is considering.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 6:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 12, 2006

TNT Creates Broadband Channel to Promote On-Air Series

TNT just announced it will create an online broadband "channel" to promote its new series "Nightmares & Dreamscapes" From the Stories of Stephen King."

It has the ring of DVD "extras," only for the Web.

Content will include actor and director interviews, behind-the-scenes footage and even feature films related to the content, which TNT will trot out of its library.

The Web site, built and hosted by Veoh, officially launches today -- as does the series.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 30, 2006

USA Today Airs Talking Tech

USA Today is taking its Personal Technology section to video. Tech columnists Ed Baig and Jefferson Graham will host "Talking Tech" with weekly segments becoming available on Thursdays. Video will be available at tech.usatoday.com or on iTunes.

The initial sponsor is AT&T with its branding campaign launched earlier this year. However preroll and synchronized banner units for Frontier Airlines, VisitFlorida and Microsoft's "The Greatest Asset" spot played before the video during repeated refreshes. Prior to running the preroll unit, the screen says, "Video is always free thanks to support from our sponsor." But at this point AT&T is not clearly visible as the advertiser.

Posted by Enid Burns at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 29, 2006

Praise for the Print Version

When does a complaint about non-user-initiated (or not-intentionally-user-initiated) audio get interesting enough to make the virtual pages of Gawker? When the ad in question is for a certain Pfizer product much in the news of late, and the first few seconds of audio describe the problem the drug solves.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 7:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Priceline Beams Shatner Down to YouTube

Priceline's come up with a new William Shatner TV spot. Before they dump zillions into air time, they're previewing the clip on YouTube "for a limited time."

So far, all the user comments are favorable. Who knows? If this thing goes viral enough, Priceline may heed its own money saving mantra and eschew the broadcast buys.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 3:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 23, 2006

Google Tests Ad-supported Video

Google is running another ad test this week, this time for Google Video. Under the Free Today program, selected clips from the Google Video Store will be available for free download, instead of the usual fee, which ranges from $0.30 to $14.99. The current free offerings were previously priced as high as $4.95.

The catch, of course, is the free videos include ads. There is a persistent text and image branding unit above the video content, which links to the advertiser's site. There is also a :15 to :30 post-roll video ad. Ads are from a single advertiser; the winning bidder in an auction, according to a Google spokesperson.

The ad-supported clips will not be able to be saved to a file, as the paid downloads are. The free videos are promoted on the Google Video home page

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 21, 2006

Dispatch from Supernova

Oliver Luckett from Revver, which has been hosting the famous Diet Coke and Mentos video from EepyBird, says the video's creators have now netted $23,000 in revenues from their video over 13 days. In fact, Mentos has now come forward to sponsor EepyBird, Luckett said.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 7:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 20, 2006

Ask a Ninja's Got Audience

According to Mark McCrey, founder and CEO of Podtrac.com, Ask A Ninja is the top podcast and has over 250 million unique viewers that download its content as it becomes available each week. Then there's a YouTube audience and other delivery not tracked by Podtrac.com. That's quite a brand, anyone brave enough to send him the question, "How does a ninja feel about taking preroll advertising?"

UPDATE Maybe because I was sitting in the nosebleed seats at the ARF conference yesterday, or possibly because the panel occurred right after lunch when I was given a plate of vegetables at lunch (everyone else had beef) and was a little dizzy from the lack of protein, but the 250 million figure is apparently overstated. According to a release Podtrack posted about Mark McCrey speaking at the conference, Ask A Ninja is the video "most watched on a portable device" though it also said that 82 percent of its viewers watch online. It's still a significant audience.

Posted by Enid Burns at 3:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 16, 2006

Online Video Still Just Repurposing?

Moderator Pete Blackshaw just asked audience members whether they agreed with panelist Julian Zilberbrand, associate director of digital operations at MediaVest Worldwide, when he characterized the current state of affairs as largely the repurposing of TV commercials. The majority of the audience raised their hands. Thankfully, it seems like the panels, and the audience members, are interested in moving things beyond the current state of affairs.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 2:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 15, 2006

Everything That Can Be Bloggable Will Be Bloggable

And another we-launched-a-blog release crosses the wires....

Scoial media site imeem has hooked up with Virgin Records to create "the first ever concert tour video blog for viewing on the Internet." The blog follows We Are Scientists' summer concert tour.

"The unblogged life is scarcely worth living -- a blunted, petty little thing, that much we know," Chris Cain, the band's bass player, said in a statement, "Let us live life to the hilt, I say! Let us blog this tour, and blog it daily!"

Amen to that.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 4:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's Not TV, It's Podcast

HBO began airing new shows this week, with the return of "Deadwood" and "Entourage," and two new series "Lucky Louie" and "Dane Cooke's Tourgasm." Each show will get a series of podcasts to add to an existing library produced for HBO series, films and documentaries.

The video podcasts are available for free at HBO's Podcast page or Apple's iTunes Music Store. Even if you download from the HBO site, you still need to have iTunes on you computer.

Each show has different programming, but highlights include recaps of previous seasons, location and behind-the-scenes content, and interviews with the cast and producers of each show. HBO already has podcasts for some of its other shows like "The Sopranos," "Big Love," "Rome," "Six Feet Under" and reports hitting the one million download milestone for "Real Time with Bill Maher" podcasts.

The venue provides a way to hype new and existing shows airing on HBO, as well as keep attention on shows in production. Because of the existing catalog, I would say it also helps to extend the life of a few classics that have been put to rest like "Six Feet Under"

Posted by Enid Burns at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 13, 2006

Green Screening the Web: Snickers and Travelers

Looking at a few new video experiences this morning. One is Snickers' attempt to assimilate Hip Hop into the brand through a series of short films at InstantDef.com, starring The Black-Eyed Peas. It's very well done creative, complete with green screen action sequences and some good B- and C-list cameos. My only complaint is the UI – at least for Mac -- is not too smooth. And if you're sinking a few hundred thou into an elaborate online video experience, you don't want that.

Another sent to me today is an interactive experience Fallon created for Travelers Insurance. The In-synch Challenge uses a quiz format and 3D representations of homes and businesses to test the user's knowledge of various risk factors that could result in the potential maiming of your grandmother, and oh-ho-ho-wait-a-minute, shouldn't you be insured for that? In seriousness, it's pretty good stuff and not too pushy. A bit stiff, but hey, we're talking about insurance here.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 8, 2006

Survey: Agency Perspective on Online Video Advertising

Hollis Thomases, who many of you know as one of our Agency Media Strategies columnists, is running a survey on ad agency perspective on the state of online video advertising.

She hopes to learn about agency adoption, concerns and future intentions. The survey asks about things like unique video content, tracking, publisher availability and adoption timeframes.

If you could take five minutes to complete the questionnaire, Hollis would be much obliged. And she promises to share results in her next column.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 5, 2006

Merchant Movie Star

If you caught my story last week about the official launch of local travel video producer and distributor TurnHere, you'll recall jeweler and sculptor Daniel Macchiarini. He's pretty much given up on local radio and newspaper ads. Now, he's taking a chance on a sponsoring a two and a half-minute film from TurnHere to promote his family's design and metalworks business. It's up on the site now.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 4:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Our Video Conference Looks Like A Winner

ClickZ's Online Video Advertising Forum takes place in New York next week on Friday, June 16th. I must say there's been a little unease around here after being out of the event business for so long, but we've heaved a sigh of relief. It looks like we've got ourselves a winner.

This event is the first in a series we're planning over the coming year under the rubric "ClickZ Specifics." The intention is to drill down on the issues marketers face, and to provide real insight on both strategy and practice. Video was the natural place to start. Looking over our News archives, we've been up to roughly 8 out of 10 breaking stories dealing with new online video ad deals, media products and technology announcements.

We've got an impressive list of sessions and speakers lined up for the event, and delegates are coming from agencies and publishers including Dentsu, R/GA, Conde Nast, Microsoft, Google, Oxygen Media, Scripps, Atmosphere BBDO, ESPN, Benjamin Moore, Pitney Bowes, Fildelity Investments...the list goes on.

It would be great to see you there, too. If you can manage to attend, please don't forget to come up and introduce yourself!

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 2:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 23, 2006

Talking Goog on CNBC at 7:00 EST Tonight

I'll be joining Variety's Michael Wolfe for a little debate on CNBC's "On the Money" tonight at 7:00 EST.

The topic is Google's contextual video advertising launch and whether or not the move will kill television. I represent the "no" vote.

Should be a ton of fun. Not only is "Variety" my journalism alma mater, I've also done marketing at two TV networks. Feels like everything's somehow coming together today!

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 22, 2006

Another New Video News Distribution Play

It looks like online news video footage has another distribution outlet in ClipSyndicate, a firm reported on by The New York Times today. According to the story, ClipSyndicate is owned by online video search company Critical Mention, and "indexes videos from Bloomberg, The Associated Press and other news outlets."

Publishers can show videos distributed by ClipSyndicate as long as they're not broadcast firms. And, like Voxant, a similar company I reported on last week, publishers can earn a cut of the in-stream video ad revenue:

Publishers either pay an undisclosed fee to ClipSyndicate each time they show a clip — then display their own ads with the clip — or they can run the videos with ads sold by ClipSyndicate and earn 5 percent of the advertising revenue. The video's owners, meanwhile, receive 30 percent of whatever revenue is generated from each clip.

It appears there are a couple differences between ClipSyndicate and Voxant, and both are related to Voxant's viral component.

ClipSyndicate requires potential affiliate sites to be submitted for evaluation. Voxant, however, enables anyone who wants to grab video directly from distribution partners and other affiliates. Content creators can add a button alongside the clip inviting users to "Mash this story," or grab it to put on their own sites. Rather than evaluating sites for inclusion in the network, Voxant has an interesting real-time monitoring interface that allows original content publishers to keep an eye on who's posting their clips.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 5:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 18, 2006

Google Breaks Out the Movie Promos

The Jennifer Aniston, Vince Vaughn vehicle "The Break-Up" is catching a break on Google. Columbia Pictures brokered a deal with the search engine to feature its film on Google Video. In addition to being able to view the trailer, visitors are encouraged to upload video about their own break-ups. That will run through June 2.

This is the second movie to have a sizable promotion hosted by Google. Last month it ran a 24-day contest for Columbia Picture's "Da Vinci Code.

With the announcement of "The Break-Up" promotion, Google co-opted the opportunity to introduce its more user-friendly video-upload system. The procedure now lets users upload video through a Web-based tool in multiple formats, and video will be available faster than before.

Posted by Enid Burns at 3:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 17, 2006

ABC Web Video Strong, but Content Is What Counts

PaidContent reports today on a couple interesting ABC/upfront related items. First off, evidently ABC execs say the new 4-show streaming offering ("Desperate Housewives," "Lost," "Alias" and the lame duck "Commander in Chief") has garnered 2 million streams, and 86 percent ad recall, "roughly twice the amount for regular TV." That may be misleading since each episode has one sponsor showing 3 ads, some with interactivity.

Still, it's interesting to consider this result when reading another report from the ABC upfront which suggests that President of ABC Entertainment Stephen McPherson shrugged off questions about the company's streaming content, concerning himself more with the shows themselves than which platform they're on.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 1:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 15, 2006

From Poli/Tech Conference: V-Blogging, Control or No?

At today's 3rd annual Personal Democracy Forum Conference here in NYC, where the likes of Elizabeth Edwards, Jon's wife, and Web celebs like Doc Searls, Chris Nolan and Kos milled about, I attended an interesting session about video blogging.

A lot of the panelists were discussing ways political candidates or advocacy groups can use video blogging (either campaign-produced, or volunteer/supporter-produced) to engage voters online.

V-blog aficionado Steve Garfield shared his experiences working on Boston City Councilor John Tobin's '06 campaign. Garfield convinced the candidate to create short video clips for his site -- stuff featuring him at local events promoting initiatives, at a council meeting, in the public square, that sort of thing. Evidently, Tobin was so taken with the potential for video blogging and his site he had all his bumper stickers and lawn signs changed to read, "VoteJohnTobin.com" -- that's it. The candidate created a new video for each of the 9 days leading up to the city election.

We also learned about another current candidate, Ned Lamont. The candidate for Senate from Connecticut has lots of supporters using YouTube to distribute video in support of him (and apparently to dis Joe Lieberman, his Dem primary opponent, too).

The consultant working on the Lamont campaign stressed, "You don't want to control the message," and he thinks enabling supporters to put out their own CGM-developed video through a site like YouTube is a good way to have voices heard that may not be suitable if directly disseminated through the campaign itself.

Interesting to note: Councilor Tobin took the opposite tack, stating in a V-blog clip, "with TV and radio time so expensive and so controlled…video blogging allows you to control your message." It makes sense he'd appreciate this inexpensive means of getting his message out without being encumbered by media interpretation. However, I suspect this will be an ongoing debate among techno-politicos. In the same way that commercial marketers are struggling to determine the best ways to incorporate CGM and distribution channels like YouTube, political and advocacy campaigns exploiting these media will also be debating what makes sense -- more or less control. Of course, whether they truly have the ability to make that decision is another story....

Posted by Kate Kaye at 8:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

IAB Broadband Summit Notes

Only had time to dip into a couple of morning sessions at the IAB's Broadband Summit in New York today. Some of the more interesting comments were on a panel covering creating content for broadband, moderated by Jack Myers.

AOl's EVP, Programming and Products Jim Bankoffwent beyond user-generated content, saying what AOL is looking at is user-generated context.

MTV's Chief Digital Officer Jason Hirschhorn talked user-generated distribution. "If a user ports an iFilm move to their MySpace page, how do you get your content tagged, indexed and branded in this environment?"

Food for thought indeed. And ideas we'll be examining at ClickZ's Video Advertising Forum on June 15th. Hope to see a bunch of you there.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 2:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 10, 2006

Two Edgy Video Plays from Bravo

Bravo has announced two broadband video channels with a bite.

The bigger deal of the two seems to be OUTzoneTV.com, a broadband play for the gay/lesbian audience that'll launch in June.

Named after a well-known programming block on the TRIO cable network, the site is a a joint venture of NBC Universal's Bravo and sales/promotional partner PlanetOut. In addition to a full brunch buffet of Bravo and non-Bravo video content ranging from "Queer Eye" episodes to men's bikini fashion show segments, OUTzoneTV.com will have blogs, a news feed, a "Gay of the Day" photo and message boards, among other features.

Also, Bravo will push its "Brilliant But Cancelled" ode to decommissioned shows online. BrilliantButCancelled.com will host a number of programs that were either cancelled shortly after the pilot aired or never aired at all. Billed as "too smart, too edgy or too hip for TV," the site is aimed at the same audience of TV-philes AOL's going after with In2TV.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 3:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 5, 2006

MSN Video Promoting Spaces and Splenda

I've been checking out MSN's Jazz Fest video streams (see ClickZ story on this). My first reaction: Bruce Springsteen needs no more promotion. The main page highlights two songs from his festival performance. There are already two Bob Dylans: Tom Petty and Robert Zimmerman. We don't need a third.

But I digress.

They announced they've gotten over 845,000 streams and over 1.2 million page views since the launch last weekend.

I've noticed a couple of interesting things: There's a link in the video player window to "The Microsoft MSN Video 2006 Jazz Fest Trivia Sweepstakes." It looks like the prize is a Gibson geetar (with an MSN logo on it - ?). The interesting part is that the link goes to an MSN Spaces blog post by someone who calls herself the "Dish Diva" and writes about entertainment and celebrities. Of course, she's a Microsoft employee hired to post about and link to MSN entertainment content (recent posts feature a "Hoot" movie contest and an X-Men stars Q&A promo).

Another interesting tidbit: There are display ads within the video player linking to videos labeled as paid placements. Both advertainment/advertorial features tell tales of how Splenda has changed people's lives. There's a family concocting a good-for-you apple dessert, with Splenda, packages of the product prominently displayed on the counter in one shot. There's another mini film called "King of the World" featuring a cute li'l kid named Nick who did a science project comparing Splenda to sugar for use in baked goods. The irony is that in parts of the short he's dressed in army fatigues for Halloween: the most sugar-laden day of the year!

Anyway, don't bother trying to watch any of the Jazz Fest videos or the Splenda vids or the video of Rumsfeld promoted in hilarious juxtaposition with the Springsteen clips in Firefox. It's IE only.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 11:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 3, 2006

Philips Bodygroom: Making Ass Shaving Manly

How do you make something as vain as men's body shaving seem proudly masculine? By associating it with promiscuity, of course, and casting the microsite with a caricature of machismo.

Have a look at the slick yet lowbrow interactive video experience Philips created to promote its Bodygroom hair removal unit for the elimination of back hair, underarm hair, (ahem) etc. It calls to mind another site MTV and Axe set up to promote the show Gamekillers. Both have fixed-frame video elements with characters speaking directly to the camera, all against a paper-white backdrop. Same target audience as well: horny guys 18 to something slightly older than 18.

I haven't determined what agency created the Bodygroom site, but wouldn't be surprised to learn it was Glue Society, which did the other. (via threeminds)

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 1:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

May 2, 2006

Napster for the Unsigned, Unsung Heros?

Just spotted a Napster ad pushing their new free service on MySpace, while I was listening to a new demo from Cheeseburger, a fave Brooklyn band of mine.

The thing is, not only can I listen to the demo on their MySpace page as many times as I'd like, Napster doesn't have it. And unless these guys ever get picked up by a bigger label or one with broader distribution or a major, Napster never will. In fact, when I searched for Cheeseburger, knowing full well Napster wouldn't have 'em in their 2-million tune archive (Cheeseburger only has two EPs released on Kemado records), Napster search results listed Chasper Wanner, a jazz fusion guy.

As better known outlets for small acts become more influential, will we see Napster and its competitors develop relationships with smaller indie labels or distributors to offer or showcase the local bands that flood the Web (and MySpace almost exclusively if they have a Web presence)?

These are the bands that don't care about the rights issues; they just want free promotion. It seems to me that somebody could set up a Napster-style interface that's entirely free and ad-supported that showcases the countless bands with four-track homemade cds and not much else...the guys who would be glad to have people downloading their music and passing it around...for free.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 1:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 27, 2006

FireFox Flicks Winners Announced

It killed us that we're so busy at Ad:Tech, we couldn't get over to the announcements of the Firefox Flicks
video contest winners at the San Francisco International Film Festival this afternoon.

The grand prize winner, Pete Macomber's "Daredevil," will be short-listed for the NY Festival of Advertising's 2006 International Advertising Awards in May. Finalist and runner-up videos will be incorporated into Mozilla's 2006 marketing activities.

The Firefox Flicks campaign continues throughout 2006.

More user-generated submissions can be viewed here.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 6:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 19, 2006

Rovion Puts a Tiny Man in My Computer

There's a tiny talking man on my computer monitor! If you've visited TVGuide.com or FoodNetwork.com lately, you've seen him, too. The network is running a campaign on its own site and TVGuide.com using Rovion's InPerson video technology. The spot automatically streams an image of perpetually chipper Food TV host Marc Summers as he petitions viewers to click on him and vote for their favorite contestant in "The Next Food Network Star" battle.

The 10-day campaign began on April 12, launching with a more introductory branding-style creative and culminating now with a call-to-action to vote online. Viewers can also vote via their mobile phones for the big winner, who will be announced April 20 during the final episode of the season.

According to my chat with Rovion CEO Len Ostroff today, the first creative running on TVGuide.com garnered about a 40 percent full-video watch rate and about a 4 percent CTR, while the call-to-action spot is getting about a 45 percent watch rate and about a 4 percent CTR. Not surprising, the FoodNetwork.com numbers are a lot higher: about 53 percent view rate and 8 percent CTR.

(Still, I checked out the ad on both sites and it goes by so quickly, there's not really enough time to register the fact that Marc Summers has invaded your computer before he's done.)

Rovion also ran a campaign on TVGuide.com promoting the 2006 Miss America Pageant on CMT. The 5 day campaign got over 7 percent click-through according to Ostroff.

"After now producing and running a number of campaigns with TV star personalities, we continue to believe that the InPerson technology creates that bridge between broadcast and broadband," Ostroff told me.

Rovion serves the ads and takes care of the ad production using raw video from its advertiser clients. The company has run its streaming spots on ABC owned and operated station Web sites, CBS Radio station sites, McClatchy newspaper sites, and others.

(By the way, if you know what song I referenced in my headline, you remember when Eddie Murphy was actually funny.)

Posted by Kate Kaye at 5:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 14, 2006

Will ABC's Online TV Shows Pave Way for 'Next Big Idea'?

In a straw poll of media buyers, I found that the recent decision by Disney to stream some of its TV shows online for free the day after broadcasting is seen as an interesting, though not revolutionary development that will continue the changes set in motion by the real game-changing event: Apple's release of the iPod with video last Fall.

"This is another sign that content is slowly being set free," said Jeff Lanctot, VP of media and GM of Avenue A/Razorfish. Lanctot said that advertisers will need to adjust their creative to match that freedom, and give consumers a more personal experience across all media.

"In the short-term, this will look a lot like TV, because that's the way advertisers and content providers work. Over time, all advertising will have to be one of three things: invited, engaging or relevant. If it's not at least one of these things, advertisers will struggle, whether it's on TV, a PC or a mobile device," he said.

The most interesting aspects of Disney's implementation, said Carat Fusion EVP Greg Smith, is that it consists of long-form programming with uncluttered advertising opportunities, and it's very nearly first-run programming.

"This looks a lot like TV advertising, but it can be a lot more," Smith said. He suggests possibilities like filling the three one-minute pods with sequential messages that tell a story, or a call to action to visit the company's Web site, or running something else entirely in those spaces.

"This is a catalyst for the next big idea. Now that we have TV online, what will we do with it? TV commercials have to command attention, they assume you're nto watching and have to shout to get you in from the other room. Here you don't have that," he said. "What would you do if your audience was ready to pay attention?"

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 4:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 6, 2006

Klipmart Saddles Up Its Own 'Digital Upfront'

Here's a nice follow-up to our recent story about Heavy.com trying to institute a pre-emptive "digital upfront" in hopes of stealing some TV money from the gluttonous broadcast spending spree in New York this month.

Klipmart says it's undertaking an "initiative to put online video into the mix of the traditional television upfront." The effort is to be led by Cory Treffiletti, until recently the engagement architect at Carat Fusion.

Here's Treffiletti's statement: "With the continued penetration of broadband, we offer advertisers the ability to take advantage of the online medium as they plan their TV buying."

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 3, 2006

Springsteen Reveals Video on Amazon

Amazon.com and Bruce Springsteen hope to garner interest for the release of the singer's forthcoming DualDisc format DVD by making available video excerpts in advance of the April 25 release. The song shown here is a video performance of the single, "John Henry" from the album, We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions.

Amazon.com is particularly jazzed about the deal, Springsteen's mug got prominent placement on the front page so it can't be missed.

Further video content will be available to customers who preorder the album. Video of studio performances for "Pay Me My Money Down" and "Erie Canal" are part of the promotion.

Posted by Enid Burns at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Geek Vault

Ziff Davis got video game publishers to open the archives for its video site GameVideos.com. The site hosts video of all things gaming; from commercials dating back to the early days of gaming to video game trailers, footage and user-submitted clips.

We covered GameVideos.com in February when another gaming site launched. The ZD site went into beta late last week and continues to add more film clips to its database.

Posted by Enid Burns at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 30, 2006

Citizen-Generated Cinema

Tomorrow is the opening day of the new Beastie Boys concert feature, Awesome: I Fuckin' Shot That.

The BBs seem to know nothing about SEM (I could only find the film's Flash site via beastieboys.com), but they're apparently up on CGM. Director Adam Yauch handed 50 Hi8 camcorders to fans in the audience of a Madison Square Garden concert and voila -- feature film. Never mind that some critics are calling the pic "unwatchable."

This is about control. Not as much control as citizens have on the Web with Google Video and YouTube, to be sure.

But the Beastie Boys are a brand, and in making this film (good or bad), they're allowing fans to participate in the brand, directly (the videographers) or vicariously (the film's audience).

Forget about the execution. Hold on to that idea.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 3:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 27, 2006

NBC Demonstrates Passion for IE

So NBC has just announced Passions Vendetta, a narrative unfolding over 24 clickable 2-minute online videos that will appear over 12 weeks. Maybelline and Garnier are sponsors.

The whole thing was created by Avant Interactive to promote the soap "Passions."

Let us know if it's any good, wouldja? Cause we've had-it-up-to-here with promotional sites that do nothing but demand we run IE 5.5 on Windows. Because we're not going to. You can't make us.

A straw poll of the ClickZ ed team, however, was unanimous: anyone watching daytime dramas is probably still using Explorer. So it's probably a demographic thing.

Still, why's NBC (not to mention its advertisers) taking that risk?

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 2:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 14, 2006

Gates Envisions Future of Mobile & Video

The digital advertising market is booming, "and we're still very much at the beginning," affirmed Corbis (and Microsoft) Chairman Bill Gates at that company's annual meeting in New York this morning.

Talking about the future of his digital images company -- which is rapidly morphing into other digital assets including, notably, video, Gates said he envisions a future in which more and more images are going to be consumed off better and better screens, large and small...

(continued after the jump)

Corbis saw 100 percent growth in mobile image sales last year, said CEO Steve Davis. Gates is bullish on demand for maps and "new kinds of advertising."

The other growth area he pinpointed is video. Gates believes Internet video is just around the corner. "Ads on that platform will be different. They'll be targeted to the viewer." And, he assured the assembled, skipping will be stopped to "make the economic model work."

Corbis also looks to be doing some interesting stuff in digital rights clearance. Davis showed an ad for Comcast that was, effectively, a mash-up on a 1978 episode of "The $60,000 Pyramid."

Rights management for mash-ups? This is going to be interesting.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 13, 2006

Klipmart Unleashes Shaggy Dog Ad with Web-Only Footage

Entertainment companies and TV advertisers have been mulling over the idea of shooting video exclusively for the Web for years. It's still pretty rare, but it looks like Disney dipped its toe (or should I say its paw?) in the water to promote its remake of The Shaggy Dog. Streaming video ad firm, Klipmart, has produced a 728 x 300 banner that when expanded upon rollover launches video shot exclusively for the ad. The campaign launched last week in conjunction with the theatrical release of the flick.

As if the image of The Shaggy Dog with Tim Allen's eyes isn't creepy enough, the ad allows users to "Shaggify" themselves, morphing their own uploaded photos with the canine character.

Sounds like a chimera. Does George Bush know about this?

According to the Klipmart release, "In any given week, Klipmart produces online ad units for from 4 to 6 of the top box office grossing films."

Posted by Kate Kaye at 3:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 7, 2006

Could Govt Intervention Muck Up Net Neutrality?

Today's Wall Street Journal features a commentary piece regarding the ongoing "net neutrality" debate, by Bret Swanson, senior fellow at Seattle's Discovery Institute. Not surprising, it takes the more libertarian approach to the issue. Admidst the big telecom takeover threat hype, Swanson's thoughts are worth considering. Even some folks I've spoken with recently regarding the issue have expressed skepticism that legislation will do any good. Here's a bit of what Swanson wrote:

Net neutrality supposedly seeks the modest goal of stopping the cable TV or telecom companies from "blocking" or "degrading" the content or services of online companies like Google, Vonage or AOL, which are invading traditional voice and video businesses....

Blocking and degrading Internet access would quite simply be business suicide for incumbent service providers. Compared to cable's other content operations like basic and premium TV channels, its broadband cable modem services are more than 50 times as profitable per unit of bandwidth consumed. This means that with just a tiny sliver of the usable bandwidth in its pipes, cable's Internet services supply about 20% of the revenue and the majority of their net income. Does anyone really think the bandwidth providers are going to kill their golden goose?

A net neutrality regime would invite endless litigation among service providers, hardware and software vendors, and content and applications dot-coms. Who gets access, when, and on what terms, to the other's network, the other's operating system, the other's platform? These questions -- the very ones that have stifled innovation in telecom for the last two decades -- should be left to business competition and, if all else fails, to common law and antitrust. Congress and the FCC cannot be the arbiters of every connection, interface and transaction. And if such laws somehow only targeted the incumbent bandwidth service providers, then they would turn out to be merely malicious political tools for business rivals, decidedly not "neutral" and unlikely to survive the scrutiny of the courts.

[The conclusion:]
AT&T's biggest challenge may be branding itself to a new generation of voracious communications consumers who are oblivious to "long-distance" and only know a world of no-distance chats, texts and blogs. It would be far better if Washington listened to these teeny-bopper baby belles instead of basing its merger, net neutrality and franchising policies on a Great Grandma Bell world that no longer exists.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 6, 2006

CBS to Stream March Madness Over Web

CBS SportsLine plans to air the first 56 games of March Madness at NCAASports.com via March Madness on Demand (MMOD). Even on the Web however, availability of each game is subject to blackout due to broadcast agreements in individual local market.

Eighteen advertisers signed on for the special content including Courtyard by Marriott and Dell sharing the role of presentation sponsors. Additional marketers include State Farm, Pontiac and Lowe's Hardware.

Inventory includes in-stream commercials that will air when the broadcast airs its own ads. A source at CBS SportsLine said that while some media buys were sold as packages, other advertisers bought separately. Many of the spots are repurposed TV ads.

Posted by Enid Burns at 5:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 3, 2006

Patent Woes Affect Flash Ads

The long-running patent suit between Microsoft and a small company called Eolas has finally seen a real-world result, one which could effect many online marketers.

Beginning this week, Microsoft began shipping an update for Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 that prevents plugins like Flash, Real Media and Java from playing automatically.

Those users will now have to click one more time to initiate these ActiveX controls, barring some workarounds by a site's developers.

Will this cause the end of Flash ads, or is it just a matter of consumers getting used to a new behavior?

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 5:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 28, 2006

Gamekillers

Gamekillers, an MTV show sponsored by Axe, has a site with extremely well-done interactive video elements. It's TV grade creative, top notch footage with decent acting. It helps that the writing's competent, if -- like the show's premise -- a bit meat-headed.

The site and show are being promoted online via AdWords and AdSense listings. The copy: "The Gamekillers: These are people who cause you to lose your cool & the girl."

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 2:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 22, 2006

Time Warner Welcomes Pirates

Time Warner launched OfficePirates.com, a men's interest broadband site with serialized video that parodies office situations like getting fired, office flings and boss and assistant dynamics. The site also hosts photos, jokes, blogs and viral elements like cards, posters and wallpaper.

While there's a decent amount of video at launch, other areas of the site have yet to be populated by staff and user-submitted content in each of the sections.

Currently advertisements seem to be limited to display ads for Dodge and Bacardi. No preroll was available on any of the videos we watched on the site but that's likely to come.

Posted by Enid Burns at 1:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 16, 2006

42M Super Bowl Ad Views on AOL

Told you so. There's no reason to watch the game on TV if all you want to see are the ads.

AOL is reporting a staggering 42 million video streams were generated by its Super Sunday Ad Poll, almost double last year's previous record of 22 million.

And that's just AOL. Don't forget, those same ads are still available on Yahoo!, MSN and elsewhere on the Web.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 14, 2006

Akimbo Launches "Click-to-Donate"

Now you can donate to charity with a click of the TV remote.

Video-On-Demand player Akimbo has launched the "Akimbo Cares" channel for non-profits, donating the cost of encoding, hosting and delivering videos supplied by the charitible organizations. All proceeds go directly to each charity, says the company.

The first charities to supply video programming are the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; BizWorld Foundation, which teaches kids money management and business; and The National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 9:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 3, 2006

So This Is Super Bowl Advertising!

I've never watched a Super Bowl and I never will watch a Super Bowl. There may not be a lot of certainties in life, but this is one of mine.

What's amazing is how suddenly easy it's become to catch up with practically a lifetime of Super Bowl ads. Heavy.com has the banned ones. Adverlicio.us has the online ones. MSN, Yahoo! and AOL will share Sunday's on-air spots, as will any number of Super Bowl advertisers who will host their broadcast spots on their Web sites after they air.

The Web's a great thing. How else could I keep my life spectator sports-free and still do the job?

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 31, 2006

Heavy.com Launches "Super-Banned Bowl"

This outta attract some eyeballs.

Heavy.com has just announced a line-up of banned Super Bowl ads. Highlights include the GoDaddy "director's cut" and two PETA spots, "Milk Gone Wild" and "Sausage."

Heavy.com's David Carson quipped, "The Super-Banned Bowl is for those companies and organizations who were denied their inalienable right to spend millions of dollars for 30 seconds of glory during the Super Bowl."

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 3:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hilton Journeys Branding Site in Holding Pattern

How much time would you spend waiting to immersing yourself in a brand? The new Hilton Journeys Flash-heavy site bears the tagline, "Travel should take you places."

Unfortunatly, the pleasing to look at site doesnt' take you anyplace quickly at all. Sections entitled Pamper, Empower and Entertain contain some nice features (create a dance move, send a photo to a friend), but are so slow to load, many are going to complete the voyage.

Nice shot at appealing to Hilton's carefully identified target audience segments. What they need -- and what the site doesn't deliver -- is a reason to stick around.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 1:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Spoken-Word TV Content Search

TVEyes has launched a "Spoken Word Index" that "crawls" every word in an audio or video file. So now, you can search Web TV for content -- well, at present only news content, but you can imagine the possibilities.

The TV search engine currently searches foxnews.com, cnn.com, msnbc.com, cbsnews.com, reuters.com and news.bbc.co.uk. Once you find clips containing your keyword, you can play video clips containing that keyword for verification before moving on to the news site to view or download the entire file.

TVEyes is encouraging content owners to make their sites available for indexing.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 25, 2006

Video: What Flavor Download Would You Like Today?

Impressive how quickly many sites, blogs and portals are adapting to mobile video.

From Google Video (but not Yahoo!) down to personal Web sites, video downloads are offered in two or three flavors: Windows/Mac; iPod and Sony PSP.

We're going to be seeing more and more of this. Content wants to be free -- from technology restraints. This is part of a much larger trend.

Take Steven Sonderburg's upcoming film, "Bubble," which opens in theatres, on DVD, and high-definition cable TV on the same day. Think IntelMac's Rosetta, which will be able to run both PC and Mac OS programs under the banner "Universal."

Want to get a message across? Don't make your audience scramble for a technology fix before they can hear it. Meet them on their own terms.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 24, 2006

Yo Ho Ho and A Streaming of Rum

Bacardi is hoping young adults will tune in to all Bacardi, all the time.

The rum maker just launched Bacardi Internet Radio "to further integrate our brand with music while offering...access to the Bacardi Experience 24/7." said Group Marketing Shane M. Graber.

It's a true multimedia experience; it's radio! It's adware! According to the company, users can customize their players with images, and will receive live promotion updates through a special ticker on the display. The player features a synchronized motion with the track "to complete the audio-visual in true Bacardi style." Listeners can even submit song requests.

The station can be found on www.BACARDIlive.com, where visitors can access a video library of Bacardi TV spots and event footage, photo galleries, recipes and downloads.

Heck, seems you can do everything but actually drink the rum.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 17, 2006

Friday the 13th, via Greenpeace

I was on vacation when we had Friday the 13th last week, but wanted to share this viral nightmare scenario film, courtesy of Greenpeace.

Non-profits are getting really, really good at online viral marketing.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 1:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 6, 2006

When Will Paid Video Give Way to Video Ads?

We are now deep into the second coming of paid content, and it's all about video.

We learn this morning that Google has joined iTunes as a provider of premium video downloads paid for on a per-episode basis. CBS is the first to pony up shows. It'll be déjà vu all over again as network after network pushes content into the Google video index, just as they've done with iTunes.

The waning of these content owners' enthusiasm for paid video should come in a year or two, as it becomes clear most consumers would rather not pay $1.99 for a single episode of Monk when they can Netflix a whole season. When that happens, in-stream video ads will be given a shot. If they're discreet and respectful of the user experience, my guess is the audience will grow enormously in a short time.

Advertisers will be thrilled in that event, as the amount of "online" video ad inventory explodes. Online has to be in quotes here, since these videos and ads may very well be served onto a television, PSP, iPod or other device. A larger number of homes will have Windows Media Center (or an equivalent Apple-made or third-party digital media server), and the merger of TV and Internet will have its tipping point.

In other words, every device with a screen will be online. There will be less and less television advertising that isn't delivered on the fly via a network.

That's my best version of how online video advertising becomes TV advertising and vice versa.

But we have to start with $1.99 downloads.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 3, 2006

The Future of Media? It's Getting Here Now

Sure, we knew that anywhere, anytime anything media consumption was right around the corner, but it's always fascinating to see how things take shape. Today DirecTV announced DirecTV 2Go, which is similar to TiVo's "To Go" service -- allowing users to transfer video content to a variety of portable devices. Additionally, Starz rolled out Vongo, an online on-demand and subscription video service. ("No ad-supported content at this time," Starz' Eric Becker told me.) Meanwhile, Sling Media is launching a service that lets you watch all of your TV channels on your mobile phone. In that kind of world, who knows where, and in what environment, your ads will be delivered?

Posted by Pamela Parker at 7:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 20, 2005

Skype: The Latest Promotions Channel?

VoIP provider Skype and EMI just announced a Coldplay fan will win a chance to chat with the band members -- via Skype. The contest launches today to promote their new single, aptly named "Talk."

To enter, fans leave a voicemail message for Coldplay on Skype, accessible through the contest Web site (wherever that is -- no URL was provided, nor could I find a link on the official Coldplay Web site). Contestants have 20 seconds to tell the band why they like the new song.

And if you can find that elusive site, you can buy the song as a download in various formats, including mobile.

Really interesting use of VoIP as a marketing medium. If only they'd tell you where the site is...

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 1:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

December 19, 2005

Video Content to Go From blinx

blinkx just announced blinkx.tv To Go. It enables users to search for video content on the Web, then one-click sync it with iTunes or personal video player software, regardless of the video's original format.

That should help get adoption of video iPods and similar devices rolling -- if blinkx can create consumer awareness that such a service exists.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 14, 2005

BBC Offers Video CGM Tools

Too cool!

Under the motto, "Don't just consume, create!" the BBC has opened its news archives to consumers and invited them to create their own video mash-ups of historic news footage of the past 50 years.

(more...)

"You are welcome to download the clips, watch them, and use them to create something unique. This is a pilot and we want to understand your creative needs. We'd like to see your productions and showcase some of the most interesting ones we receive."

Along with how-to guides, there's a feedback form inviting fledgling video editors to "tell us what your doing."

OK, the Beeb is a public, taxpayer and government-supported institution. Which brand will be the first one brave enough to proffer itself to the masher-uppers?

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 5:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 12, 2005

The Cable/Internet Convergence

Comcast is forming an Internet division and has named Amy Banse, who had been EVP of content development, to run the show. There's no word yet as to whether the new unit will develop ad-supported content -- Comcast officials I spoke with said it's too early to say.

The company has been doing a lot of interesting things with on-demand programming/advertising. It'll be interesting to see if any of it will be mirrored online.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 6:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

HGTV launches vertical broadband video channel

HGTV.com has launched HGTVKitchenDesign.com as part of its vertical content strategy, which was outlined in May.

The site is launching with six charter advertisers: Kohler, Moen, Viking, Dupont, Whirlpool and Sherwin Williams. Ad formats include traditional :15 and :30 spots within the videos, banner ads and integration in an interactive kitchen planner which visitors can use to test kitchen design elements. Scripps is also talking to advertisers about creating long-form videos early next year in their content categories.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 3:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 7, 2005

Filmloop Begins eBay Motors Pilot

As expected, Filmloop has launched a pilot program to stream eBay Motors listings to their desktop "photocasting" application. Users can subscribe to a particular make of classic car they're interested in, and then images from auctions in that category are streamed to a "loop" on their desktop. Images can be moused over for more information, or clicked on to go to the eBay listing.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 21, 2005

TiVO, iPod Hook Up

This (subscription required) should move some holiday hardware.

The Wall Street Journal reports TiVo plans to enable transfers of recorded programming to the new video iPod. That will greatly expand the amount of TV programming avaiilable for the device,as well as give TiVo an edge over competitive DVRs -- at least for the time being. It may also give the new portable video player a nice little jumpstart for the holidays.

The whole thing will be complicated and time-consuming, at least at the outset. "The whole process of getting an hour-long show onto an iPod could take more than two hours from the time a TiVo device finishes recording it," says the WSJ.

iPodded TiVo programming will contain ads, unlike the ad-free Disney shows sold on the iTunes at $1.99 a pop.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 18, 2005

First Seven Minutes of "Narnia" Coming Next Week

Narnia, Dinsey's holiday season blockbuster, will make a sneak peek available next week. The first seven minutes of the film will be made available online, at least so VitalStream's President and COO Philip Kaplan tells me.

Clips tailored for the Web and even for portable video devices are going to make for some very interesting film promotions. Stay tuned.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 7, 2005

Yahoo! and TiVo

An analyst in this Reuters article cracks me up. Here's what she says about the deal between TiVo and Yahoo! that has the DVR's online programming service integrated with the portal's TV section:

"I don't see how it's going to drive new incremental subscribers for TiVo. I don't see how it's going to drive incremental revenue for TiVo," said analyst April Horace of Hoefer & Arnett, who added that the deal still appeared "incrementally positive" for the company.

Hm... How could it drive incremental subscribers and revenue for TiVo? Maybe because the company's got the equivalent of a super-targeted sponsorship on one of the Web's top portals. On every single episode page on Yahoo! TV, a "Record to my TiVo box" link will appear. Indeed, even though I'm not registered for the service, when I look at the info about this Seinfeld rerun, I'm told "You can record this program to your TiVo." It involves a high-traffic portal. It offers utility and exposes the TiVo service (and its capabilities) to a TV-hungry audience. Seems like pretty smart marketing to me.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 9:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 26, 2005

2005 Eyeblaster Awards: Voting Open

Cast your vote for this year's Eyeblaster Creative Awards.

The '05 awards are divided into North American and international categories. Nominees of the, er, domestic variety include Liquid Advertising for Bard’s Tale and The Hulk, Modem Media for Delta, Peel Interactive for McDonald’s Dollar Double Cheeseburger, and True North for The Incredibles and Scrubs Season One. Overseas entries include The White Agency in Australia for NRL Bigpond, Feref UK for Ray, and Tyo Interactive in Japan for Maxell.

ClickZ is the EB Awards' returning media sponsor. The ceremony happens November 8 at the Show Nightclub on 41st street.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 18, 2005

Banned? Broadband.

Following in bigger brand Budweiser's path, whose banned Super Bowl ad garnered plenty of online traffic last year, is online retailer Bluefly.com

A number of cable channels won't air Bluefly's really not all that racy spots, but you can see 'em online at www.thatswhyibluefly.com.

The most controversial of the bunch,"The Dinner Party" finally tube-debuts tonight on Bravo!, The WB-Channel 11 and NBC.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 2:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 17, 2005

BMWFilms We Hardly Knew Ye

Last call for BMW Films! That's the gist of an e-mail BMW is sending around to registered users, telling them the granddaddy of online branded entertainment (and father of a thousand brand-sponsored film festivals) will come down October 21. Since the "The Hire" series launched, it's logged 100 million views, the company said. The take-down comes four months after the automaker parted ways with Fallon, the agency behind the pioneering film series.

The decision got us at ClickZ talking about the longevity of viral video. Should these things simply die after a certain time, or is it worth supporting them forever so long as you're only paying for hosting? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 4:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 14, 2005

The iPod is *Optional*

For the record: you don't need to own a video iPod to be rocked by what it means.

I like to call this the "podcast fallacy." Sure, you can play podcasts on an iPod -- hence the moniker. But you don't have to possess the iPod. At the end of the day, a podcast is an mp3 file, and there are scads of ways to listen to those, including on your PC.

Same thing with the $1.99 video from the iTunes store. Zach bought "Lost" yesterday morning. It default-played on his PowerBook in iPod size. While expanding the frame to almost fill the 12" screen didn't produce the crispest image you've ever seen, it wasn't half bad, either.

Sure, Apple's going to try to sell their new hardware. And that's fine. But it won't take consumers long to figure out this is video. They can watch it on other devices. This is convergance. This is pay-per-view.

The iPod is optional.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 3:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 13, 2005

Eyeblaster's Answer to PointRoll Included

Through a new program called EyeNet, Eyeblaster is incentivizing publishers to sell its formats, a la PointRoll's included network. From the release:

EyeNet's preferred publisher partners will be comprised of the online industry's leading rich media adopters. They will receive pricing incentives and a full suite of publisher products and services designed to answer their rich media sales needs. Additionally, preferred publishers will receive dedicated support from Eyeblaster's worldwide sales and marketing team.

Agencies will benefit from EyeNet by receiving an all inclusive media cost that does not segment rich media serving fees Another benefit for agencies will be access to EyeNet's vertical lists to simply and effectively target their campaigns. EyeNet's verticals were created to help agencies determine which category of 'preferred' publishers to select when planning a media buy.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 2:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 12, 2005

The Power of Broadband (Sponsored by Verizon)

Who knew there was actually a branded entertainment contest? ProMotion Pictures is a film competition that teams the marketing folks from NYU's business school with the artsy crowd from the university's film program. The result? This year, three short films sponsored by Verizon that highlight the power of broadband. Telling the stories of people whose lives were improved by broadband, the films are designed to tie in with the company's "Richer. Deeper. Broader." brand campaign.

Execs from Verizon, from interactive agency R/GA and from McGarry Bowen, the company's corporate ad agency, vetted entries into the competition. The filmmakers selected got $40,000 to shoot the short films over the summer.

R/GA built the site, verizonbroadbandfilms.com, that features bios, blog-like journal entries, storyboards and scripts. The Films site is part of Verizon's user-generated Broadband Stories project.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 6:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Apple's Message Stays Polished

What promised to be a speed-typing contest has fizzled into wait-and-see. Apple picked a WiFi black hole in which to announce its highly-anticipated "One more thing..." (it's pretty much a given that 'thing' is a video iPod).

Apple's certainly has its issues with bloggers. Still, deliberately putting the kibbosh on live-blogging (or reporting, for that matter) is a very interesting choice, control-the-buzz wise. It'll be interesting to see who takes the hit from this move -- Apple, or the media.

Update: It's a video iPod, all right. Advertisers, bring on the branded entertainment! Trade show exhibitors, here's the latest in lead-gen bait for your booth.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 2:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 5, 2005

Intel Uses Nearly-new Ad Units for Yahoo! Takeover

If you find yourself at Yahoo!'s home page on Thursday, you'll see Intel's implementation of what Yahoo! calls its "Expando East" and "floating element" ad units. In non-Yahoo-ese, that's a 300x250 rich media ad down the right side of the page, which resolves to 300x100, along with a floating rich media unit that moves around the page outside the traditional ad space.

The implementation has only been done once before, by Pepsi's Mt. Dew in August. The ad, featuring pro skateboarder Tony Hawk, is part of its new Centrino campaign pushing the entertainment power of its latest processors, and it really is a break from the specs-based ads most tech companies use, or even from Intel's own surreal Blue Man Group ads.

"A lot of technology advertisers will do more traditional advertising -- the 'speeds and feeds' kind of thing," Elizabeth Harz, category development officer for technology at Yahoo!, told ClickZ News. "This is a great example of a marketer talking about the benefits of technology, and really making the connection between technology and life benefits, instead of technology for technology's sake."

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 3:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

September 30, 2005

MTV VMA Results

Rafat over at PaidContent.org is reporting that MTV's video music awards generated 13 million unique streams since the original event. We wrote about the company's cross-platform plans for the awards last month.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 12:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 26, 2005

Google Looking More Portal-Like

Google has struck its first deal to promote TV programming through video content on its site. The search company is working with UPN to make the premiere episode of Chris Rock's "Everybody Hates Chris" available on Google Video.

As Gary Price notes on the SEW blog, Yahoo! previously "aired" the Kirstie Alley Showtime program "Fat Actress" and America Online streamed the WB pilot "Jack and Bobby".

Says UPN president Dawn Ostroff, in the press release:

"UPN's young adult viewers are avid online users, and streaming the premiere episode of EVERYBODY HATES CHRIS on Google Video is the perfect opportunity to reach this audience in a new and creative way," said Ostroff. "Everyone at UPN is very excited about this innovative relationship with Google, which offers viewers who may have missed the premiere the chance to watch it and hopefully motivate them to watch the second episode on UPN."

Posted by Pamela Parker at 5:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 23, 2005

The Source of South-Sourcing

Outsourcing. It's not just for programmers and developers anymore.

Zach's covered the trend among major agencies to oursource rich media work. I had a chance to visit an outsourcing source during my recent visit to Buenos Aires. I wasn't alone - OgilvyInteractive's Executive Director, Eric Wheeler, was down there, too. Sure, we were both speaking at the same conference. But I noticed Eric was also spending quality time with Mookie Tennebaum, head of BA-based United Virtualities. And Eric did tell me Ogilvy's more than open to outsourcing.

I spent an afternoon Gaston Silberman, United Virtualities creative director. He's been making the agency rounds recently in NY and SF. UV is handling all kinds of agency work down there, from banner resizing to creative production, Flash, and video conversion.

Seems sensible. Culturally, Argentina is firmly rooted in the same vernacular we are. Are there differences? Sure. But nowhere near Bangalore-size differences, and with communications, that's what matters. Heck, there's barely even a time difference to speak of. BA's only an hour ahead of New York.

I remember how we used to scrouge for Flash jockeys back in my agency days. They were in short supply -- and they could thus name their price. This kind of puts a new spin on things, doesn't it?

p.s. Ladies, slacks are strongly advised if you visit UV's all-glass headquarters. We're talking glass floors here -- and the place is multi-level. It's a lot of fun to look down between your feet and see what's on someone's lunch plate down below. But as easily as you can look down, they can look up.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 2:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 16, 2005

Internet on TV: Big in Japan?

Apparently, five Japanese TV broadcasters are cooking up plans for Internet TV-related with ad giant Dentsu and communications conglomerate Softbank. That's according to a report from Reuters that quotes "sources".

The sources said Softbank aims to create a new joint venture that will launch a Web site with more than 1,000 television programmes distributed by the broadcasters next spring that would be available to viewers at no cost and funded by commercials.

Interesting stuff. Also noteworthy -- U.S. cable player Comcast has been involved in the discussions. It's potentially providing programming, according to the report.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 12, 2005

Emmys Go Interactive

Who said iTV wasn't mainstream? The International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (the international chapter of the group that brings you the Emmys), have added three new categories to the International Emmy Awards.

• The Best Interactive TV Program award will recognize programming that's been enhanced by interactive content.
  
• The Best Interactive Channel award will showcase a non-linear on-demand channel that lets the viewer interact and engage with content.
  
• The Best Interactive TV Service will recognize a television service that lets users access multiple video, audio, data and interactive applications.
  

The organization is also handing out a Pioneer Prize, to go to an individual who has made contributions to iTV.

The awards will be handed out in Cannes in April, in conjunction with the MIPTV show.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 6:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 26, 2005

Live Events Online. Who "Gets" It?

Should we add MTV to the list of media brands that "get" how to put on live video events online? Well, judging from the company's announcement of its plans for the Video Music Awards, it looks like MTV may be about to join AOL on that short list. (You'll remember the highly-lauded showing the portal made in its production of Live 8.)

Even more interesting is MTV's cross-platform integration of its advertisers on the VMAs. According to a Wall Street Journal report (subscription), VMA advertisers like the Gap, Revlon, GM and Virgin Mobile are all offering original behind-the-scenes type video content on MTV's Overdrive broadband channel. Wonder how that will work out, ROI-wise. (The Journal quotes an unnamed source saying the integration deals are going for $4 million to $7 million.)

If MTV succeeds, it'll beat on AOL on the marketing side of live event production, though AOL's new venture shows it's got a lot more up its sleeve. Watch this space.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 3:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

August 24, 2005

Worksafe. But Not TV-Safe

Now this is rich media! In every sense of the word. The spot is for actor Alan Cumming's new fragrance, Cumming.

Uh-huh. Right. Strong brand, strong brand proposition, strong personality behind the brand. A little too strong, for some. This is a great spot, for the product and for the Web. Not just because it's all a little risque, but isn't that ad just a little, well, too intimate for the big screen?

Good going - I'd love to know which agency gets the well-deserved credit.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 1:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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