• St. Louis Post-Dispatch , Thursday, May 24, 2007 12:17 PM

During its first quarter earnings call on Tuesday, Anheuser Busch, the nation's largest brewery and one of the globe's largest ad spenders, said the company would begin slashing costs, starting with superfluous marketing expenses like the branded entertainment site Bud.TV. AB said Bud.TV would "probably fade a bit" this year in response to weak demand and rising costs for manufacturing its beverages. The beer maker spent more than $12 million to create 2,000 minutes worth of proprietary content on the branded site.

Since the site's launch on Super Bowl Sunday in early February, Bud.TV has been met with mixed reviews: it would either be another notch on AB's successful and varied marketing belt, or it would fall flat. It's fallen flat. Bud.TV was designed to be a content destination for the beer-drinking, football-watching, male 21-and-over crowd, but it turns out that tight controls on the site -- such as not allowing anyone under 21 in -- put the company in "a no-win situation." Visitors also balked when asked for personal information like name, email, address and zip code.

So what does this say about branded content sites? Don't spend $12 million? Maybe. Certainly, you don't want a Fort Knox-like registration system for a marketing product, but AB was in a weird situation because of the drinking law. But maybe it also says adults simply won't go for branded Web portals the same way kids would.

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