XLNTads.com Furnishes Cheaper Spots To Allow Scale
- by Gavin O'Malley @mp_gavin, December 3, 2007
As such, Wasserlauf has partnered with consumer-generated media network XLNTads.com to furnish advertisers with cheaper spots, as well as develop new original programming for Broad Enterprises.
"We're prepared to put higher-quality ads online, but the costs are out of line with market demand at the moment," Wasserlauf explained.
Lower-cost digital production and distribution through YouTube and other platforms has led to a surge in consumer-generated media. A number of top brands, from Doritos to Heinz, have embraced CGM largely in an effort in to engage consumers.
The idea behind XLNTads, however, is to exploit the cheap labor and scale driving the CGM phenomenon. Launched just this year, the company serves as a middleman between advertisers and amateur ad creators.
If clients find something they like from the site's ad pool, they pay the producer somewhere in the ballpark of $20,000, and XLNTads gets a commission. XLNTads' present community consists of some 500 ad creators and videographers.
This saves clients the added cost and effort of developing CGM contests, as in the case of H.J. Heinz, which hired full-service agency Smith Brothers Advertising to execute its recent "Top This!" TV Challenge campaign. Consumers were lured by the chance to win $57,000--like the "57 Varieties" in Heinz's slogan--and national exposure during this fall's Emmy Awards.
But while amateurism might be XLNTads' stock-in-trade, the company is made up of seasoned industry professionals. The Philadelphia-based company was founded by Rick Parkhill, founder and CEO of Web marketing and media trade publisher iMedia Communications. Also, Tony Romeo, the startup's vice president and brand liaison, is founder and chairman of Unilever's Interactive Brand Center.
XLNTads will promote the partnership with Broadband Enterprises on its site, encouraging its community to submit two- to five-minute video trailers or pilot episodes for a six-part series of Webisodes suitable for sponsorship. Creators are being lured with the chance to earn $30,000.
Presently, Broadband Enterprises is producing two original online video programs, "The Fantastic Two"--a mockumentary series that chronicles a pair of sports fanatics and their fantasy football wars--and a celebrity news-focused "Access Hollywood"-like series named "Hollywood Fast Track."
With the help of Omnicom's OMD Digital, Broadband Enterprises has attached some big brands to its original programming. For "Cube Fabulous," a mock-makeover series made exclusively for the Web, OMD brought in AOL. And the deal paid off: It its third season, "Fabulous'" 16 five- to seven-minute episodes were streamed 200 million times by some 25 million unique users.
For Fantastic Two, OMD wrangled up none other than McDonald's. Since the series debuted this fall, it has so far been streamed 30 million times.
XLNTads has an existing relationship with Brightcove's Internet TV service to collect consumer media, program CGM and distribute video through branded broadband channels for marketing campaigns.
