Heavy's Husky Targets Young Men With Skins

In the never-ending pursuit of additional inventory, video entertainment site Heavy.com has launched an ad network named Husky. To set itself apart from other ad networks flooding the market, Husky is targeting Heavy's core demographic of young men and specializing initially in "skins"--a branded ad format that wraps around a site's video player, and arguably interferes less with a consumer's viewing experience than pre-roll advertising.

Heavy is in discussions with about 25 medium-sized publishers, which would give its network an aggregate audience of 50-60 million unique monthly visitors, according to company co-CEO Simon Assaad. (That doesn't include Heavy-owned sites, including a sports site due this fall to be dubbed Burly Sports.)

"We are starting to build out channels," Assaad explained. "Like in the area of action sports: It's hard for advertisers to find a large volume of those guys anywhere. So, if we can put together a bunch of those sites with one to two hundred thousand visitors each, that would make a great audience."

One the Husky's first major sponsors is New Line, which is using the network to promote films this fall. Other advertisers include Coors, Nissan, Panasonic, Diesel, Axe, Sony and Nike. CPM Rates for the skins are between $10 and $20, according to Assaad.

The Husky Network wraps any video player--YouTube, Revver or Google, just to name three--with a branded ad. Husky also hopes to lure advertisers with the ability to access specific psychographics, including vertical networks covering such areas as music, gossip- entertainment and action sports.

Despite Heavy's confidence in video skins, Assaad insisted the skins are just the beginning.

"We'll be experimenting with all different types of ad formats," he said. "But we've been testing skins for three years, and we know they're very effective."

At the beginning of the year, Heavy received $20 million in capital funding, largely from Polaris Venture Partners, to expand beyond bloopers into sports and other areas.

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