Articles of the Day
Brightcove Strikes Video Deals With Time, TV Guide - Time Inc. and TV Guide on Monday both announced plans to boost their Internet video offerings in partnership with Web video provider Brightcove. Time is creating an in-house studio to help produce original Web video across its 150 magazines, while TV Guide is teaming with Brightcove to syndicate online video, including behind-the-scenes footage from hit TV shows and celebrity interviews by Joan and Melissa Rivers.
YouTube To Stream ‘Gumby,’ Other Classic TV Shows - Amid ongoing tension with content owners about piracy, Google’s YouTube has struck a deal with online distributor Digital Music Group to carry kitschy TV classics like “Gumby,” “My Favorite Martian,” and “I Spy” free of charge for viewers. YouTube plans to show ads on the pages where the videos will run, and will share the ad revenue with Digital Music Group.
About.com Adds 500 Videos - About.com has doubled its video ad inventory–adding 500 new videos in a variety of categories including home, autos, gadgets, food, health, and parenting to its site, the company said Monday. The New York Times Co.-owned site also launched a new embedded video player, designed by Brightcove.
Covering All Bases: CBS RIOT Sells Cross-Platform - CBS has announced the creation of a locally targeted cross-platform ad-selling division months after leaving behind a similar, mostly national ad unit at former sister company Viacom. The new unit, called CBS RIOT–which stands for radio, Internet, outdoor, and television–focuses on local marketing and ad deals, rather than network TV or national media.
Looking Around the Whole Online World - The US remains the single largest Internet market in the world with 181.9 million Internet users in 2006, but China is likely to take the lead before the decade is out. Morgan Stanley estimates that by the end of 2007 there will be over 1.3 billion Internet users worldwide. Included in the article are statistics on global and country-specific internet penetration.
Time For Hollywood To Expand Web Investment - The latest financial disclosures from News Corp. and Walt Disney Co. showed steady growth in the traditional media firms’ budding digital departments. The bulk of their new media revenues, however, came from either a rare original enterprise (MySpace in News Corp.’s case) or the monetizing of traditional media content delivered in digital form. Here’s the catch: with the exception of clips from YouTube and MySpace, we’re consuming the same content on a different medium. Big media needs some new ideas. Instead, it’s myopically focused on fighting piracy, which may be a losing battle.
Local Advertising 2.0 - Virtual mapping is opening new doors for Madison Avenue. It’s inevitable that tools like Google Earth and Microsoft’s Virtual Earth 3-D will help those searching local neighborhoods to find the products and services they want. Car companies like Saturn are taking the lead. This spring, the automaker is rolling out an ad campaign for its new Aura sedan that utilizes Google Earth. It’s unclear whether users have to click on an ad or listing first, but without downloading a thing, users’ screens will zoom all the way from space down to the nearest Saturn dealership, located by their IP address, where a salesperson offers them a test-drive.
Earnings: The Knot Posts Quarterly, Annual Profit Gains - The Knot (NASDAQ: KNOT), a wedding-related content publisher, posted both 4Q and annual revenue gains, though it was helped mostly by tax benefits and a legal settlement. For 4Q06, The Knot reported net revenues of $21.7 million, a 70 percent increase compared to $12.8 million posted in 4Q05. For the year that ended Dec. 31, The Knot’s revenue rose to $72.7 million, an increase of 41 percent from $51.4 million in 2005.
Online Newspapers Are Attracting More Local Ad Dollars With Streaming Video - All forms of traditional media realize that survival depends on offering quality streaming video in order to retain and attract advertisers. Newspaper websites captured $81 million in locally spent streaming-video advertising, while local TV sites collected $32 million in ad spend last year. As E&P noted in their take on the report, this is a particularly small market, with the total ad dollars amounting to $161 million in 2006, although it’s a growing form of advertising. The Portsmouth, VA,-based consultancy projects that in five years, local online video advertising will exceed $5 billion, roughly one-third of all local online ads.
ESPN Makes Another Acq-Hire; Buys NBA Blog TrueHoop.com - Another day, another acq-hire for ESPN as the network looks to established online voices. Yesterday the Disney division announced it had picked up the Talented Mr. Roto and signed its founder Matthew Berry. Now the company has acquired TrueHoop.com, a leading sports blog covering the NBA, and signed blogger Henry Abbott as an NBA expert.
ESPN Makes Another Fantasy Sports Play; Acquires ‘Talented Mr. Roto’ Site; Free Fantasy Baseball - ESPN is making another pitch at the lucrative fantasy sports market. The Disney network has picked up Talented Mr Roto in what might be an acq-hire (I’m still looking into terms): founder Matthew Berry is joining the company as senior director of fantasy games, fantasy sports writer and on-air analyst. The site was launched in March 2004 as an online fan group and boasts a network of more than 50 contributors (columnists, reporters, scouts and stringers) who now will feed ESPN.com.
