• by Paul Gough , February 23, 2003

Making a big investment in the power of broadband, ESPN.com has launched a new service that brings content and commercials to visitors’ desktops.

ESPNMotion, as it’s called, provides video of game highlights and analysis plus TV commercials, all with a higher quality than is available with conventional streaming video. The first ESPNMotion sponsor is Gatorade, which is running an ad with Michael Jordan.

After several months of tests (ESPNMotion started with ESPN.com premium subscribers back in October), the site began offering the service last Monday as part of an overall redesign. Already 650,000 have signed up for the service as of Friday.

“It’s remarkable how quickly this has taken off,” said Riley McDonough, ESPN.com’s VP of sales.

The user downloads a small piece of software, which takes about 45 seconds to get via broadband. It’s stored on the hard drive and there’s no buffering.

The clips, which run between 60 and 90 seconds, include a 15 to 30 second advertisement at the back end of the video highlight. ESPN.com estimates that there will be five clips available between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m., taking advantage of ESPN.com’s heavy at-work audience.

Gatorade’s first ad included Michael Jordan through the years, at age 23 in a Chicago Bulls uniform and then age 39 playing for the Washington Wizards. There’s also a walk-on by the college player. McDonough said the ad looks just as good as it did on TV.

“It really does offer the advertiser the value proposition of the one-to-one effect of the Internet medium, which we’re all very familiar with, and the power of the Internet to connect with an individual. It combines that with the impact of television – sight, sound and motion – the emotive character of TV to really get somebody excited by a product,” McDonough said.

ESPN.com and its TV units are focused on working on integrated sales programs and have forged a close alliance to serve marketers’ desire for more cross promotions. McDonough said this is an example.

“It’s an almost seamless way to do this … it leverages the existing assets of television advertising to extend the reach and the value on the Internet,” he said.

Although Gatorade is the first, McDonough said it isn’t going to be the last. ESPN.com sales people are now demonstrating the service and its benefits to blue-chip advertisers and said it’s well on its way to becoming profitable already given the response. He said that broadband is the right place to be.

“We’ve made this decision that we’re moving to where the market is already, but more important, where the market will be in a year or two years, when the broadband connection is going to be ubiquitous. There’s a real commitment in this company to be ahead in the market,” he said.