The promotion, which will run until June 2, differs from the other campaigns that Google Video has taken part in--such as the promotion of "Everybody Hates Chris," which simply featured full-length episodes of the show on the video search site--in that it solicits user-generated content as part of the promotion. At Google's Press Day last week, search giant Google's CEO Eric Schmidt stressed that the company would be focusing on consumer-generated content in the coming months. "People have a lot to say," Schmidt said, adding that Google wanted to help users generate content, and also organize and search for work created by fellow users.
The promotion comes only two days after Google's "Da Vinci Code" promotion, which placed a display ad on the Google Personalized Home Page, with a link from the main search page--marking the first time that Google promoted another company's product on the home page.
Google's promotion of "The Da Vinci Code" met with some success--Hitwise reported that traffic at Sony Motion Pictures' Web site skyrocketed--increasing to about .0078 percent of all Web visits on May 6, from .0047 percent on April 15.