Video will play a starring role in Time Inc.'s digital future, and the company sees itself in an ideal position to compete directly with networks by creating compelling original stories that arise from the voices of its strong publishing brands. Executive Vice President John Squires repeatedly touted the video promise during a 90-minute Digital Outlook briefing for the media at Time Inc. headquarters Monday. "I am very bullish on Time Inc. TV," he said in describing the new Time Inc. Studios formed last November to develop video content. "We can now compete with television for ad dollars, and [the video] is built into our existing Web infrastructure." Squires opened the briefing with a nod to the passing once again of Life, the print magazine--but promised the brand will endure in a more compelling way as a Web property making a digitized version of its 12 million photographs that can be used and manipulated by consumers. He said two other partners are involved in the project, which will be ready for full disclosure in about four months. Squires hinted at how Life may be reborn as he described future products enabling consumers to create personal pages encapsulating significant moments in their personal histories. Squires said the Web should contribute 18% to the total 2007 profit of the Sports Illustrated brand, and 17% to the CNN/Money franchise. He said if Web-based revenues can grow to 25% of each print title within a few years, "we won't have any trouble growing our business." Citing syndicated data from comScore Media Metrix, Squires said Time Inc. brands ranked 14th in February engagement, averaging 20.4 minutes per visitor to its sites. He celebrated People.com for becoming "the stickiest site in entertainment journalism" in just four months. Among the "next generation" success stories in the new Time Inc. online arsenal are elements such as the Entertainment Weekly "What to Watch" widget pushing television listings onto Google. Redesigns of both SI.com and CNNMoney.com all rely heavily on aggregating outside content and pushing information out to consumers rather than requiring repeated page loads. And yes, there is video everywhere. Chris Peacock, editor of CNNMoney.com, said for the first time the site created video to accompany its "Best Places to Live" feature. A Business 2.0 series on the "101 Dumbest Business Moves" engaged the services of a comedian to crack wise about such items as Radio Shack firing its employees by email. The redesign of SI.com moved the featured video from the bottom of the page to a prime above-the-fold position. The switch resulted in a 25% increase in video streams, said Managing Editor Paul Fichtenbaum. Paul Speaker, president of the new Time Inc. Studios, described his first project--bringing to life through video a promotion already set for Essence magazine filming six men using hidden cameras as they proposed to their fiancés on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. The "Will You Marry Me?" videos then played on the Essence Web site. Traffic quadrupled and 10 million votes were cast for the couple to win a honeymoon in South Africa. (All six were eventually awarded a prize.) The event, conceived by Essence's editor, was sponsored by Tiffany and generated $250,000 in revenue for the magazine. Two more projects are in the works for the title, including a "30 Dates in 30 Days" reality dating series in which readers will tell the daters where to go and what to do. The strategy, Squires said, will be to continue to use the huge print audiences to promote and steer readers to such new online content as the personalized My SI and CNN/Money.com cookie-based portfolio mashup streaming real-time quotes and news on the 10 stocks you most recently checked.
Avenue A|Razorfish, an operating unit of aQuantive, promoted Colin Kinsella to president of the West region where he will lead all operations in the Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and Los Angeles offices. As general manager of the San Francisco and Los Angeles offices since 2004, Kinsella was responsible for overseeing all the agency's discipline areas, including analytics, strategy, delivery, media buying and creative campaigns for such clients as Visa, Singapore Airlines, Genentech, Sony, Williams-Sonoma and Westfield. "Avenue A|Razorfish has seen tremendous change in the digital marketplace, and we continue to challenge ourselves as we find new ways to help our clients acquire and service their customers," said Kinsella in a statement. "I am very proud of our success to date and look forward to continuing our efforts across all the West regional offices." "Colin's passion, teamwork and creativity exemplify all the core assets we value at Avenue A|Razorfish," said Clark Kokich, worldwide president. "After assessing both the external and internal talent pool, Colin emerged as the clear choice for the position of West region president--he's a trusted leader with our clients and internal teams." Kinsella has more than 20 years of experience in traditional and online advertising. Prior to joining Avenue A|Razorfish, he led the creative, strategy and business-to-business efforts at QuinStreet, an online marketing and technology company. Prior to that he was an executive vice president and a member of the leadership team at Foote Cone & Belding in San Francisco, and had stints at FCB London leading Europe, Africa and the Middle East as well as FCB Chicago, where he led major national brands such as AT&T, Coors, SC Johnson, and Gallo, among others. In addition, he is Vice Chair for the Northern California American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA); Chairman of the AAAA Western Region Interactive and New Media Committee; and is an Advisor to the Board of Animated Speech, which produces software that builds speech and language skills for children with autism, hearing loss, apraxia and other language difficulties. Kinsella will continue to report to Kokich.
TV Guide wants to be the brand for online video search. On April 16, Gemstar-TV Guide International Inc. plans to launch a beta version of a video search tool for consumers to find clips and full episodes of TV shows online. At launch, the TV Guide Online Video Guide will not host the content it tracks down--not even short preview clips. Instead, it will drive consumers to content-owner sites. This, however, could change over time. "We have good relationships with many of the sites we'll be scraping, so previewing clips is most likely an option in the future," said Eileen Murphy, TV Guide's senior vice president for corporate communications. Bypassing the countless clips of consumer-generated media flooding online these days, TV Guide will hone in on the professionally produced stuff--focusing on roughly 60 mainstream sites ranging from ABC and AOL TV, to ESPN and MTV. The move comes less than a week after a venture announced between NBC Universal and News Corp. to distribute premium online video content over a network of sites estimated to reach 96% of all U.S. Internet users. The as-yet-unnamed venture will offer full episodes from NBC's "30 Rock" and Fox's "Prison Break," along with films from each parent company's libraries and series from various cable networks under the NBCU and News Corp. umbrellas. There is no shortage of Web video destinations, from the portals and YouTube to smaller outfits like Joost--a start-up from the founders of Kazaa and Skype, which just announced plans to offer ad-supported versions of a host of Viacom programs--and BitTorrent, a large peer-to-peer network that plans to start offering ad-supported TV programs by the end of the year. Setting itself apart from the competition, TV Guide will be able to tie the "meta data" that its search tool will find surrounding online video to its decades-old database of show write-ups and listings, the company said. A mobile product is also in development.
KickApps Corp. today announced the launch of the 2.0 version of its hosted platform designed to quickly and easily add social media experiences to any Web site. The platform provides sites of all sizes with a range of building blocks that include user-generated content, social networking, video players, Web cam applications, widget-building, media/member management, and reporting. Corporate users and Web masters can mix and match building blocks from the widget library to crate a more customized or branded solution. "Viral widget syndication is as powerful or more powerful than natural search," said KickApps CEO Alex Baum, a former president of JumpTV, who previously spent eight years in a senior programming role at America Online. The New York-based company's tools have powered a successful Procter & Gamble Tag Body Spray community effort. Within six weeks of launch, it drove 772,400 page views and 260,000 unique visitors, according to KickApps. My43.net used the tools to raise monthly site traffic by 30% with no on-air promotion. Other companies using it include AFL Network, Cycling.tv, and National Lampoon, Universal Music/Interscope and others. Many of the 600+ sites carrying its intuitive tools are self-powered. "With this latest release of our platform, we continue to broaden an already robust set of building blocks necessary to transform existing destinations into live community-oriented open portals," Baum said. KickApps is also serving targeted ads to relevant audience clusters, allowing for the monetization of sites. KickApps is backed by Spark Capital and Prism VentureWorks. Its board members include former Liberty Digital and E! Entertainment CEO Jarl Mohn and former MTV and NFL President Sara Levinson.
Confident in its new sales team, political news and notes site The Huffington Post is winding down its use of IAC/InterActive Corp. to sell its ad inventory as it simultaneously expands its content. IAC Advertising Solutions has served as Huffington Post's outside sales team since last June. The transition is expected to take a month. The eight-month-old partnership with IAC Advertising Solutions was always seen as a temporary fix until HuffPo could get its own sales structure in place, according to Kenneth Lerer, co-founder of Huffingtonpost.com. "We always planned to use IAC for a limited period of time while we built our own sales team," said Lerer. News of the switch was first reported by industry blog Paid Content. In that vein, James Smith came on earlier this year as HuffPo's first chief revenue officer. (Smith came over from AOL's Advertising.com, where he served as chief of publisher services.) And this past month, HuffPo has grown its sales staff from one to five, said Lerer. IAC and Huffington Post are tied up in a number of other deals, "23/6" foremost among them. A spoof on the phrase 24/7, "23/6" is being developed as a multimedia comedy news program, and an online alternative to NBC's "Saturday Night Live" or Comedy Central's "The Daily Show." News reports that HuffPo is unhappy with the CPMs that IAC's team has been delivering are untrue, Lerer insisted. "I was thrilled with their sales, but it was always our plan to bring sales in-house as soon as we could," he said. "There's no reason why we wouldn't use IAC's sales team in the future." IAC Advertising Solutions representatives did not return inquiries by press time. While new media companies can't have enough partners these days, the future of Barry Diller's IAC/InterActive looks strong with or without Huffington's business. Despite flat profit margins, revenue at the company's media and advertising unit grew to $159.8 million last quarter, marking a 46% increase from the same quarter in 2005. In January, IAC tapped former About.com CEO Peter Horan to serve as CEO of IAC Media & Advertising. Horan, who reports to President and COO Doug Lebda, now oversees Ask.com, Citysearch, IAC Advertising Solutions and IAC Consumer Applications and Portals. Since securing $5 million in venture capital last summer, Arianna Huffington has worked to expand her brainchild with video content, as well as business and editorial staff additions. In a recent e-mail exchange with OnlineMediaDaily, Huffington repeated her stated goals for HuffingtonPost.com, along with some new ideas. "We're looking to build on what we're doing by adding more video, more original reporting, more investigative pieces, more content directed towards women, and more satiric content." The site also plans on hosting the first-ever online presidential debate to be moderated by PBS's Charlie Rose, and in partnership with Yahoo and Slate. "We'll be broadening our editorial scope to include sections on Business, Technology, Entertainment, and Lifestyles (religion, food, fashion, relationships, etc). We're also adding a host of technical features that will allow the HuffPost community to be even more involved with the site including Huffit, which is a new Community Powered News tool that allows the HuffPost community to become virtual news editors." "Readers can huff (vote for) news anywhere on the Web that they think should get more attention and the most huffed or voted for news appears on the front of the Huffington Post." Now nearly two years old, The Huffington Post drew 1.1 million unique visitors in February, according to Nielsen//NetRatings.
MapQuest has launched upgrades to its free "Send to Cell" services that allow users to create driving directions and maps on their desktops or laptops and send them to any Web-enabled cell phone. Once directions or maps are created on a computer, users click on a Send to Cell link. The information, which is "right-sized" for cell screens, is accessed on mobile devices via a text message containing a URL link. The service is available on several major carriers at mapquest.com. The enhancements are part of MapQuest's ongoing integration of its desktop and wireless services. "This is another great convenience," says spokesperson Dori Salcido. "Too often, people print out maps and directions, and realize after they're on the road that they've left the directions on their desks." MapQuest is not supporting the enhancement with advertising at this time, but is "looking into it," according to Salcido.
When I started as an Internet marketing strategist back in 1993, I was usually asked, "Jim, can we really sell things online?" I would lead clients through their Web awakening, explaining that the Internet is a communication tool and could be used for all contacts with customers from awareness (advertising) to education (marketing) to transactions (sales) and solving problems (customer service). If you can sell over the phone, you can sell online. During the next few years, the question was, "Jim, how do we make our Web site better?" My immediate response was, "Better at what? What are you trying to accomplish?" I met their blank stares with a listing of the wide variety of things they might achieve: increase brand awareness, qualify prospects, increase sales, lower costs, open new territories, improve customer relations and so forth. The only problem was that nobody can do all of those things at once. You have to prioritize. That invariably kicked off days of political discussions exposing me as a corporate therapist who used the Internet as the conversation starter. Many Web sites were created out of pure joy that a Web site could be created. Many were created because the competition had a site. Many were created because the CEO read an in-flight magazine or had a son learning Java in school. These days, now that I am focused on online marketing optimization, my clients ask, "What should we measure?" My response is, "That depends. What are you trying to accomplish?" and we're right back to discussions about goals and priorities. If you want to get the most out of your Web site, you must know what success looks like. Business goals drive Web site goals. Which is the most important business goal at the moment? There are three tried and true goals of any business.