• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, February 2, 2007

VH1 has entered a partnership with user-generated advertising platform ViTrue to create a series of user-submitted content sites for the music network. The first site developed, talentload.tv, serves as a promotional tool for advertisers, as well as a filter for casting reality shows on VH1 and MTV.

Last month, Warner Bros. used talentload.tv to promote the Feb. 14 release of "Music and Lyrics," starring Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grant, with a contest that invited users to upload videos of original love songs. The competition, which ran until Jan. 20, drew 400 videos from aspiring singer-songwriters and more than a million page views. The winner chosen by online voters will be flown to Los Angeles to attend the movie's premiere and will have their song professionally recorded.

MTV also is using Talentload.tv to screen music acts for the fourth season of the P. Diddy vehicle "Making the Band." VH1 declined to provide a representative to discuss the ViTrue deal. But in a prepared statement, Fred Graver, executive producer of VH1's "Best Week Ever," said, "Through our partnership with ViTrue, we were able to quickly create a site that empowers us to collaborate with our audiences and have them contribute to our network and our partners' properties in ways never before possible."

In recent months, ViTrue has created video-sharing sites for clients including TBS, Friendster and the Cincinnati Bengals. ViTrue founder and CEO Reggie Bradford said demand for the company's user-generated platform is growing rapidly. "We're seeing a major sprouting of these types of sites across all media companies, whether they're trying to find new comedians or bands or are getting consumers involved in programming," he said.

Bradford added that the company already has at least a dozen new sites planned for the first half of 2007 after launching ten last year. ViTrue's partners include Denuo, the media and advertising consulting unit of holding company Publicis Groupe.