Daily Marauder

In a bid to promote the September return of FX’s “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” MySpace will stream an episode Aug. 16 to 23, a month before the comedy series aimed at young males returns to the network. Viewers are “clamoring, especially online” for new episodes. (http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117970258.html 8/14)

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Hearst-Argyle Television launched a multiplatform high school sports portal sponsored by Canon USA combining social networking, music and HD video across TV, web and mobile devices. Users will be able to open profile pages, create video mash-ups and participate in SMS voting during games. HighSchoolPlaybook.com will utilize footage from Hearst-Argyle station reporters as well as trained student journalist to create a video-centric hub for high school sports, including game schedules, stats, athlete profiles and even game-day weather forecasts using local stations’Doppler radar technology. Coverage will launch initially in 7 of Hearst-Argyle’s 26 markets.

AOL also relaunched its video game-themed GameDaily site, with new community features, improved search and browse functionality and more content partner integrations. The site has long been a resource for game cheat codes and short cuts, as well as a news on up and coming titles.

Traditional advertising is ineffective on social networking sites, according to a study by Forrester Research. Users of such sites don’t want “interruptive” brand communications; they want “interactions with their peers” and “true value” from companies through “communities for sharing ideas.” (http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2196857/traditional-marketing-failing-social-networks 8/17)

Google is entering a deal with film-financier Media Rights Capital under which “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane and Disney Channel star Raven-Symone will create video clips that the search giant will embed on Web sites across the Internet as free, ad-supported streams. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070817/ap_on_hi_te/google_videos 8/16)

Family Guy

Disney Online’s Disney Family.com reached a milestone of 1 million unique users in July after unveiling ParentPedia, a wiki site for Mom’s full of user contributed and professionally edited articles on parenting.

Buenos Aires-based Dori Media Group has partnered with YouTube to launch two branded telenovela channels on the service, the first two dedicated to the popular international format. DMG’s Dori Media International GmbH maintains a library of over 4,000 hours of telenovela content including the hit series Rebelde Way, which will have its own channel. Trailers, clips and behind-the-scenes footage will be featured.

Long-running video sharing site Bolt.com turned off its servers and filed for bankruptcy. A plan to acquire the 10+ year-old company by GoFish fell through earlier this summer.

eBay’s peer-to-peer internet phone service Skype fell victim to software glitches that have left millions of users without serviced worldwide, with account holders in the U.S., Germany, Brazil, Columbia and Finland reporting difficulties. Voice-Over-IP provider Teleblend, which acquired SunRocket’s customers earlier this summer, has also been experiencing outages.

Yahoo’s new breed of “smart” display ads that change their look and messaging depending on who is viewing them are proving to be more relevant in early tests, according to The Wall Street Journal. A SmartAd trial promoting Yahoo’s travel search engine Farechase yielded two-to-three more click-throughs than conventional display ads, a result Yahoo hopes will translate into appropriate fee increases to future advertisers.

News audiences are ditching television and newspapers and using the Internet as their main source of information, in a trend that could eventually kill off local papers, says a report from Harvard University. Meanwhile, traffic is increasing to online news aggregators and blogs. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070816/tc_afp/usmediatechnology 8/16)

The FCC appears to be trying to distance itself from the proposal to utilize unused wireless spectrum to offer free ad-supported nationwide internet access. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin circulated a order last week to deny the proposal according to M2Z Networks. The venture backed by several top Silicon Valley venture capital funds which submitted a license application for use of the “white space” back in May of 2006. Earlier this week Microsoft refuted the FCC’s earlier finding that internet devices would cause interference to broadcast signals. 

Wieden & Kennedy’s “Quick is Deadly” webisodes, shot by digital effects house Guerilla FX (GFX) as part of Nike’s Zoom campaign, are now up on Nike.com. GFX’s HD cameras capture up to 1000 frames per second in super slow motion.

A homemade video clip featuring a surreal, stop-motion sequence that was posted on YouTube last November is leading to multiple job offers in advertising for its creators, Paul Cummings and Tony Fiandaca, both 27. The duo recently produced an online ad for Nestle’s Butterfinger. (http://boston.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2007/08/20/story4.html?b=1187582400%5E1508332 8/17)

Tony vs. Paul

The University of Washington is standing behind a news release that provoked Disney CEO Bob Iger to demand a retraction. UW head Mark Emmert insists that a university news release, which said that baby videos may hinder infants’language development, is completely accurate. (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003840462_disney17m.html 8/17)

In a surprising counterpoint to many viewers’determination to avoid watching commercials on TV, a growing number of users are choosing to “opt-in” to watch ads on video Web sites. “Everything is about control,” said David Droga, creative chairman of Droga5, New York. “If an ad is interesting to you, you’ll have the conversation with the brand. If it’s not, it’s a waste of time.” The New York Times (8/17)

News and current events topped all other online video genres downloaded and streamed in the U.S. last year, according to eMarketer, garnering a 13.7% market share, more than double that of full length TV shows and clips. Video viewers as a percent of overall internet users are projected to climb 10% points to 72% this year. Online video viewers who view video ads will also increase to 81% in 2007, according to eMarketer, topping out at 90% in 2011 when 165 million Americans will have seen online video ads.
 
Types of Content Downloaded and/or streamed by US Online Video Viewers, 2006 (% of total)
Genre                                   % of online video audience
News/current events                           13.7%
Movie/TV trailers                                12.0%
Music videos                                      10.9%
User-generated videos                          9.4%
Jokes/bloopers                                     9.3%
Weather information                             8.0%
Entertainment news & reviews                7.3%
TV shows (full episodes or clips)              6.5%
Sports clips/highlights                           6.4%
(a partial list)
Source: eMarketer