ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
On Thursday, NBC and News Corp. announced that former Amazon.com executive Jason Kilar will head up the two companies’ online video joint venture. The new Web site, which will take on YouTube, is moving cautiously toward launch, which was originally slated for summer and then pushed back to September, and may be pushed back again, according to this article. (Los Angeles Times 6/29)
VH1 is streaming the 6-hour “Concert For Diana” online concurrently with the live broadcast on VH1 and MHD, beginning Sunday at 11 am EST. DoubleClick will execute a banner ad across several MSN properties during the day, embedding live video clips from the show.
Google announced a new initiative to foster third part gadget development, offering grants and seed investments for developers. Google Gadget Ventures will give up to $5,000 to developers who have created applications already in the Google directory that garner at least 250,000 page views. Up to $100,000 is available for previous grant recipients who have a viable idea for a business.
NBC Digital Entertainment is adding a user-generated feature to its DotComedy broadband channel, called DotComedy’s Viewer-Made channel, that allows comedic hopefuls to send in their own clips. DotComedy also has rolled out “video-to-go” ad-supported downloads. C21 Media (6/29)
IM website Meebo launched a partner-friendly version of meebo rooms, allowing rich media to be added to the virtual rooms members create to meet up, chat and view videos with their friends. New features include brand customization and flash skinning, ad tracking and traffic/data reporting. Music sites, labels and artists have been first to jump into the phenomenon; more than 75,000 meebo rooms have been created since the feature initially debuted May 15.
TLC announced Street Custom, a new 6-part original series to be featured on the Discovery broadband site Turbo and geared around custom car builds. TLC is also getting into the casual gaming business with TLC Games for Grown Ups. Six games are up so far including “Dump The Chump” where users toss an ex-boyfriends’ stuff off the balcony, and “In The Mood” where players must figure out how to spice things up for a romantic evening at home.
BravoTV.com added new extensions to support the premier of real estate reality show Flipping Out, including character video blogs and weekly mobile-delivered messages from the show’s disgruntled crew. The site also launched a microsite around docu-series Welcome to the Parker, featuring video previews, deleted scenes and photo galleries of famous hotels.
Oglivy & Mather launched a weekly broadband series to promote Hellmann’s mayonnaise, a Unilever brand. The 12-episode series, “In Search of Real Food,” follows the Food Network’s Dave Lieberman across the U.S. searching for down home recipes. Dave chooses one each week to cook up for visitors to Yahoo’s food portal. Meanwhile French’s mustard unveiled webisodes of its own, beginning with one on “speed dating” between a hot dog and a bottle of French’s.
Lionsgate’s Digital Media team launched a new Flash-based interactive website to promote Bratz: The Movie featuring a visual user interface and many digital goodies including games, a MySpace layout generator, video e-cards and all 19 tracks from the Geffen soundtrack. Lionsgate will add additional features including video mash-up tools that allow users to create their own music videos using clips from the movie.
Online video sites vary greatly in the way they record and report video views, found Berkley, California-based video analytics company Tubemogul in a new report “What Counts as a View?” Loose standards and a lack of standardization have led to rampant artificial inflation of views, downloads, video starts and unique visitors, complicating matters for advertisers. The company analyzed video viewing data from a multiple sources to study reliability. Tubemogul rated Yahoo! Video and Metacafe as the “most stringent” in measuring usage. YouTube was rated as “stringent”, Dailymotion as moderate, MySpace as “less stringent” and AOL Uncut and Revver as the “least stringent”.
Over 70% of viewers aged 12-34 engage in instant messaging, emailing, texting or talking on the phone while watching sports, according to an independent survey of 1,000 young sports fans by Solutions Research Group. They connected with an average of 3.1 friends, co-workers or significant others while watching, and many conversations revolved around big plays, team performances or predictions about who would win. The Watching the Big Event survey concludes such multitasking presents a huge opportunity for marketers and an important impetus for programmers to develop complimentary, multiplatform programming.
Cablevision has rolled out its Optimum Online Web portal that includes personalization features, including location-based news and information. (CED Magazine 6/28)
ClipSyndicate 6/29, Reuters 6/29, The Dallas Morning News/Associated Press 6/29)