Dimension Promotes 'Scary Movie' With iPod-Synced Ads

Consumers who come upon Web ads for Dimension Films' "Scary Movie 4" later this month will get an unfamiliar invitation to "Download Videos to iPod." With a click of acceptance, their iTunes accounts--in many cases synced with their video iPods--will launch, and then download an automatically updated "Scary Movie" podcast folder.

The technology--which literally establishes a bond between Dimension and willing consumers--was developed in-house by the studio's interactive ad agency, Deep Focus.

"When you click on this display ad, you're actually signing up to receive a stream of video over time from Dimension," explained Deep Focus founder and CEO Ian Schafer.

Into consumers' podcast folders will flow "Scary Movie" trailers, movie clips like a pillow fight between Hugh Hefner's girlfriends, and whatever other short-form video that Deep Focus and Dimension decide to send out.

The ads, slated for release on March 31, will be running on Yahoo, Fandango.com, Movietickets.com, and World Wrestling Entertainment's Web site, WWE.com, among others.

For now, anything that Dimension and Deep Focus send to consumers' podcast folders will be related to "Scary Movie 4," said Schafer. In the future, however, it is not implausible that Dimension could use that channel to promote, say, "Scary Movie 5".

Separately, "Scary Movie" has already achieved viral success on the Web, thanks to a relationship struck recently between Dimension, Deep Focus and the wildly popular video-sharing site YouTube.

YouTube drew a whopping nine million unique visitors in February, according to Nielsen//NetRatings--second only to heavyweight MSN Video, which led all video-sharing sites in Feb. with 9.3 million uniques.

Nielsen//NetRatings clocked YouTube at 9 million unique users in February. The startup has also gained a lot of publicity for receiving subpoenas and requests to remove copyrighted material uploaded to its site. Sequoia Capital invested $3.5 million in October 2005.

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