• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, July 7, 2006

NBC Universal's USA Network has turned to a site specializing in user-generated video to promote its new show "Psych," slated to debut tonight.

The promotion, which centers on a scavenger hunt for clips of the show, resides on video-sharing site Motion.tv--a joint venture of interactive advertising agency Apollo Interactive and marketing shop i20 Events.

The move follows an online scavenger hunt that USA ran earlier this year to promote the show "Monk." That contest, unlike the scavenger hunt for "Psych," ran on a site that USA Network created for the show.

Jesse Redniss, director of interactive marketing for USA Network, said that the network deliberately eschewed the larger video-sharing sites for the project. "We wanted to reach out to some of the smaller niche sites that are cropping up, before they became the next YouTube," he said.

USA Network also is marketing the show online at Yahoo and iFilm, but is not running the contest on those sites, Redniss said.

For the Motion.tv promotion, digital shop Apollo Interactive created five video clips, made with USA Network footage--and then hid them, scavenger hunt-style, on the motion.tv site. Visitors who find all five clips are eligible to win a prize. Viral marketing agency Electric Artists arranged for the placement on Motion.tv. The contest went live this week and will run for around a month, Redniss said.