With DVD revenues suffering, major movie studios are talking up "Premium VOD" deals with cable operators, hoping that consumers will pay as much as $30 per show to see movies via their TV sets soon after a theatrical movie's release. Sony Pictures, Warner Bros. and Walt Disney Co. are in talks with video-on-demand service In Demand, which is controlled by the largest U.S. cable TV system operators. Bloomberg first reported the news. Typical video-on-demand movies via In Demand and other services, charge around $4 a movie -- but they are available three or four months after a theatrical movie's typical release. These VOD airings occur around the same time as the DVD release for rent or purchase. In Demand is a partnership of Cox Communications, Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Cable. The deal may also include streaming films on game devices such as Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox and Sony Corp's. PlayStation 3. The report did not say how soon after a theatrical movie's release the new premium VOD films would play. Last week, a Time Warner Cable executive said the company expects to offer Warner Bros. films through an In Demand test later this year, with an offering price of between $20 and $30 per viewing. Disney is look at testing a single film in the first quarter of 2011. Movie studios have been hit hard by a pullback of DVD rental and sales. The largest DVD brick-and-mortar retailer, Blockbuster Video, just filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
Reach Media Group announced a new deal with Taxi Magic, which handles booking and payment for thousands of taxis around the country. The alliance allows RMG to introduce digital video entertainment and advertising to displays in the backseats of cabs. As part of the deal, Taxi Magic will be installing HD screens, speaker system, touchscreen, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capability and 3G connectivity in participating taxi fleets. It begins with a first wave of 5,000 vehicles in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and Denver. Like other taxi-based video advertising platforms, the RMG-Taxi Magic partnership targets a captive audience with relatively long dwell times: averaging 12-18 minutes nationwide. No surprise -- New York City is the most developed market. After a pilot program testing the GPS-linked screens in 500 cabs, New York's Taxi and Limousine Commission mandated the screens for all cabs in September 2007. VeriFone partnered with WABC to produce Taxi TV, featuring content from WABC's Eyewitness News, AccuWeather and Reuters Business News, as well as restaurant, nightlife, retail and hotel listings and ratings from the Zagat Survey. In June 2008, VeriFone announced the addition of additional content from People.com and PMbuzz.com. And in January of this year, VeriFone bought Clear Channel Outdoor's Taxi Media operation, combining VeriFone's initial network of 6,500 cabs with CCO's 5,000 for a total 11,500 -- or over 90% of New York's roughly 12,000 cabs. Other taxi advertisers include Eller Taxi Media and TaxiVision, both based in Las Vegas, Medallion Taxi Media, based in New York City, and The Ultimate Taxi, in Aspen.
Everyone has pictures they wish they could take again. They're blurry, off-center, dark or too bright in the foreground from a flash. Canon is looking to right a few of these wrongs with a new marketing campaign called "Your Second Shot." "There's a lot of clutter out there from a lot of different brands, with a lot of celebrity-endorsed products, but there's not a lot of technological propositions to the consumer," Michelle Fernandez, senior marketing manager for Canon, tells Marketing Daily . "We're really putting it in terms of what really matters to [people], which is getting a great photograph." The multimedia effort showcases the company's HS System, a technology designed to sharpen images even under poor lighting conditions. The campaign, which kicks off this week, begins by telling the story of Sofia and Dan, a young couple who traveled to Barcelona three years ago to take a picture where Sofia's parents first met. Unfortunately, the picture they took three years ago turned out blurry and dark. In a television commercial (and corresponding longer Internet video), the couple heads back to the spot to take a clearer shot using a Canon camera and the HS System. "Their story is one of missing that one singular moment," Fernandez says. "It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance, and they were not able to capture the photograph." Other stories that will be featured on the specially created microsite, www.usa.canon.com/yoursecondshot, show a woman recapturing the poorly photographed surprise she sprung on her father for his 60th birthday and a group of friends who made a bet concerning a mechanical bull. To increase engagement, Canon is also encouraging people to submit their missed photograph stories via the Web site, for the chance to inspire the next commercial in the campaign. The television commercial will begin airing in select markets this week before moving to cinema and cable outlets in November. The campaign will also include video and online components.
Making good on its vow to bolster content, AOL on Tuesday announced the acquisition of popular video sharing startup 5min Media. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The deal is part of AOL's broader content-centric strategy, which CEO Tim Armstrong has been pursuing for the last year. "5min Media is the perfect complement to our powerful video capabilities -- it provides a missing piece in the AOL value chain that completes our end-to-end video offering," Armstrong said Tuesday. "AOL is building a video ecosystem for the next decade." 5min is a syndication platform for instructional, knowledge and lifestyle videos -- both professionally produced and user-generated. To date, its success has been largely attributed to partnerships for branded content with top media companies like Scripps and Hearst. To win the content game, AOL is presently hiring hundreds of journalists, editors and various multimedia creators to flesh out its content offerings. Earlier this year, it brought on David Eun, as president of AOL Media and Studios, to "galvanize and build content networks of scale that can win," he told Online Media Daily. "I don't think it's a secret to say that the turnaround of AOL is hinged on content ... It's going to make or break [the company.]" Last December, 5min attracted 30.5 million unique viewers, according to comScore. To put that number into perspective, AOL saw 30 million unique viewers that same month. In terms of videos streamed, 5min saw 75.4 million streams, while its video library now boasts 150,000 videos across a variety of categories ranging from food and health to home and garden. AOL said it has already begun to integrate 5min Media's video content on its sites through a commercial agreement executed prior to the acquisition. Earlier this month, 5min struck a syndication partnership with News Corp.'s IGN Entertainment. Per the deal, IGN Entertainment joined the 5min Video Games Channel. Using its proprietary VideoSeed technology, 5min is semantically matching short-form videos like IGN's game reviews, instructions and news from its gaming brands across the 5min network of more than 800 sites, including MegaGames.com, GGL, NextGenWalkthroughs.com and PlayedOnline.com. Founded in 2006, 5min is headquartered in New York City with offices in Tel Aviv.
The voice of the social community will guide the direction for a portal and business consortium that Hoover's and contributors Outsell, Selling Power, and Shore Communications plan to launch Tuesday. For the first six months the group will focus on building and sharing its collective expertise on marketing and sales, along with a variety of business topics for entrepreneurs. The aim is to launch the site with seeds of information and have the community run with the topics from there. This content delivered through training sessions, events, videos, blogs and other social media will support the site. Similar to American Express OPEN Forum, Hoover's and partners will design processes and best practices to maximize the effectiveness and value of execution for small businesses. The focus to create community and a place where ideas are shared will allow people to learn from each other rather than "try and reinvent the wheel," according to James Rogers, Hoover's EVP of marketing. "The community will become a place where people can benefit from the experience of others." Initially, the consortium will focus on the creation of a Business Information Adoption Path. The site, www.B2Bbuzz.org, will provide a platform to foster dialog, where people can exchange ideas. Rogers says Hoover's has been in talks with American Express to "potentially consider becoming a partner." Allbusiness.com, a Hoover site geared toward small businesses, could lend content to the new site. The details have not been worked out, but the site will tap Twitter and YouTube to contribute content, including video. "We intend to invest in video product, so some of the pieces are done in the YouTube style," he says. "It's not about promoting Hoover's product, but rather bring content." Rogers will measure success with page views, unique visitors and adoption, meaning participation and contributions from members and those visiting the site. We know the business information people need and the life cycles," he says. "If you're a salesperson, you get a contact list and identify customers for the product. Then you run an industry and segment analysis. Who are the decision makers in the company you want to sell to, and what is the company's financial situation? These are things you might need to know for a prep call." A community moderator will attempt to foster conversation among site members to identify best practices not listed or previously talked about. It's about finding an in through social media, Rogers says. Marketers and sales reps have found social media tools like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter manage to get the attention or test ideas of prospective clients. It is one idea contributors have yet to work out.
My good friend Tod Sacerdoti posted a provocative article last week titled "Mobile Video Advertising Is Irrelevant," making the argument, and I'm paraphrasing, that video is video no matter where and on what screen that video is viewed on. This is a subject we've thought a lot about as you can imagine, and I wanted to point out that he is wrong for one big reason: specificity works. Consider where the digital advertising world is today. Sure, there is tons of inventory, and many people are buying just as Tod suggests, with no less regard for how that inventory is targeted or where it is displayed. We call that "spray and pray." But more and more dollars are becoming very platform and site specific, because purpose-built inventory always shows better results than "spray and pray" buying. That is why you are seeing site-specific buys with big budgets such as the New York Times Home page shutters and Pandora's wrappers and CNET's story interstitials. Remember the Apple video ads on the New York Times home page where Mac and PC were in the sidebar talking to the banner space above? That was super-captivating because it was super-site-specific. That kind of destination specificity captures attention, drives engagement and shows better brand metric results. Good agencies bet their reputations and their creativity on understanding the difference between buckets of inventory and exploiting those differences to meet aggressive marketing objectives. That buying beats "spray and pray" every day. With mobile video we've consistently seen better brand engagement metrics than online video. We've seen performance such as nine times purchase intent over online video, and 19 times aided awareness. With mobile-video-specific buying, we have the ability to target on exciting vectors such as location. Imagine you are an hotelier who can put a video ad in front of everyone in an airport? Isn't that more powerful than the "every video is the same" advice? There are many other specific engagement models, the nuances of which matter when constructing an effective media plan. Lastly, buying specifically from a mobile video partner can ensure, for example, a zero-latency and zero buffering ad experience that is optimized for quality on the individual device and well-integrated into the overall mobile experience. That matters to users and it should matter to buyers. I get what Tod is doing. He's trying to say that buying mobile through him is the same as buying it anywhere else, so he can capture more share of an exploding market. Cute. Savvy marketers, however, know that best of breed and purpose-built inventory always performs better than "spray and pray."
If you watch a music video three times in a row and can't remember a lyric or chorus, there must be another reason you're wasting time at work. Such is the case with White Knuckles, the latest video from the band OK Go. OK Go has never embraced a normal path for popular music. They've been making hit viral videos since before YouTube mattered, and have had more success getting their songs into video games than into people's iTunes libraries. Early this year, OK Go broke from its relationship with EMI, not long after the lead singer, Damian Kulash, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times where he essentially opined that the record industry and the band didn't agree on how to leverage the value of online music videos. The band formed its own label and, effectively, a new business model for how artists can connect directly with their audience and marketers, and indirectly benefit by promotion and awareness that drives merchandise sales and touring. Whether their model provides better economics (even for them) has yet to be determined. These videos do take time and they do cost money -- more than $200k in the case of their Rube Goldberg video for the song "This Too Shall Pass," according to the band's manager. But think about the potential payoff. The current video generated 3 million views in three days. That's about $60k in media value to a brand advertiser. The Rube Goldberg video has gotten 18 million views in 6 months. That's more than $350k in media value. That video was also sponsored and partially underwritten by State Farm. The band's videos have been seen nearly 100 million times in total on YouTube -- that's probably an audience of over 20 million. Even if only 1% of them ever bought one track, that's still 200,000 tracks. And some of them must have gone on to see a show or buy a T-shirt, right? The "White Knuckle"s video was done in support of the ASPCA. But the band didn't stop with the video. They've gone on to develop a re-mix contest with the higher-def audio content for sale on their site. The contest is underwritten by Rock Band. As the traditional music money pot continues to shrink,musicians are increasingly open to engage marketers with creative projects that help both sides achieve their goals. And in many cases, music videos and social networks are creating the currency that makes all this worthwhile. Kudos to OK Go for connecting their unique form of entertainment with good causes and smart brands.