State Farm, AT&T, and Georgia Pacific have signed on as sponsors for Disney Online's site for the new Disney and Pixar animated movie "Cars."
The official movie site,
www.disney.com/cars, offers visitors a plethora of features beyond the now-standard trailer--including games, trading cards, and podcasts, among others. In addition to the three main sponsors, the
site is also running banner ads from Fandango--which offers a widget for users to obtain showtimes, and a link to purchase tickets--as well as from other marketers.
The initiative marks the first
major ad effort surrounding a movie site since Brad Davis, vice president of ad sales, joined Disney Online last September. Davis served as a director of sales at Comcast Cable's Spotlight division;
he also worked at AOL. While Disney Online built a similar site for "The Incredibles," that site just had a single sponsor.
Davis said that Disney Online plans more content-rich movie sites.
"This will be a major component of our sales strategy going forward." The next movie site that Disney intends to build out with multiple sections and sponsors is "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's
Chest," set for release next month.
The "Cars" site is being promoted on Disney's own editorial properties as well as the sites of its sponsors.