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Last week IPTV company Joost announced it had signed up 32 companies including Coca-Cola, Nike, Purina, HP, Intel, Taco Bell, Lions Gate and others to advertise on their soon to be released service.  Today,  Joost announced its commercial launch.  

Though the service is proclaimed to be widely available, access is limited to people who receive an invitation from friends and affiliates (similar to what was done with Gmail, though Google called that offering a beta test).  That marketing tactic is a little risky.  On the one hand, it will allow the company some measure of controlled growth and  protect against initial traffic “bursts” that could theoretical impair their  offering.  The marketing gimcick may also create an artificial sense of exclusivity and community.  On the other hand, the tactic could alienate potential users and impair growth.

Joost, which was previously called The Venice Project (prior article can be found here), promises more than 150 channels of broadcast quality programming served on an IPTV peer to peer platform that is ad-supported.   Click to Read More

The Hollywood Reporter is reporting Sony launched its own video sharing site in Japan on Friday.   The site, which is called eyeVio (meaning “one’s viewpoint”) is planned as a social environment for sharing user-generated content.

The site is something of a test-case for Sony.  It has functionality similar to YouTube, but more importantly for Sony (as the Sony graphic, which can be enlarged on a new page with a mouseclick, tries to indicate), it is designed to allow more seamless integration with Sony video devices (PSP’s, Camcorders etc), and may even allow integrated copyright monitoring or protection.   Under a similar guise of copyright protection, Sony may be offering the services to companies looking for a public outlet for some of their productions.

No advertising partners are currently signed up for the service.

The integration to Sony’s consumer products is a unique twist. Sony has shown in the past, that  it is willing to invest in a loss leader if it will drive product sales .  As investments go, this one is probably so trivial that it makes sense. (Recent gambles on the PS3 described here may not have been as shrewd)

If successful in Japan, an expanded version eyeVio may be rolled out in Europe or stateside.

User Generated Video content uploaded onto websites like YouTube often have a limited amount of meta-data that describes what is in the video.  The absence of that data makes archiving and searching the video content somewhat difficult.

Google, and Truveo (acquired by AOL in ’06) have created tools to try and work around this.    Startup,CastTV, which hopes to compete with a solution of its own, announced a $3.1m Series A financing round yesterday.

The CastTV approach, like Truveo and others, tries to compensate for the lack of meta-data by mining surrounding text content for context.  It also indexes any available tags. The technology then takes it’s combined data and searches the web for any additional data. The whole mix is put into their index and theoretically provides more accurate results.

The company is still in early development.  A private beta test is a few months off and a commercial release not do at least until mid summer based on current press.

On April 13th Google announced a definitive agreement to buy Double Click from private equity firm Hellman & Friedman for $3.1b in cash, a price equal to approximately 20x EBITDA.  Rumors of the sale had been floating for a few weeks (Business Week ran a story on April 3rd) but the deal and the price have raised more than a few eyebrows.

Here’s a brief look at the deal and some thoughts:

DoubleClick is known largely for its Display Ad network which large advertisers rely on for brand building and general online presence.  The network which was founded in in 1995 provides ad-management for pay-for-impression (Cost Per Impression: CPM Based) internet advertisers.  Double Click has more than 1,500 clients, most of which participate in its impression-based business and many of which are major online publishers including AOL and News Corp (MySpace).

Google’s ad business, while varied, is best known for its success with search advertising and pay for performance (P4P) model that generates revenue based on viewers click-thru behavior (sometimes called Cost Per Action or CPA).  Through this system Google has a huge pool of partner sites sharing revenue and displaying the ads.

In Display Advertising, Google has generally lagged and not had tremendous comparative success.  In acquiring Double Click, Google is buying a complimentary service that enhances an area where it is weak.  It is also buying a significant client list, and some valuable, but lesser known technology.  The marriage of services and client lists should give Google a nice opportunity to bundle and sell a larger range of services to its clients.  Buying DoubleClick will help Google compete Strength to Strength with Yahoo in the Display Ad Market.

While there is a clear value proposition for the transaction, one motivation for  the deal, and the price, is likely defensive.  There’s two parts to the defensive front:

First, thought not widely known outside the industry, DoubleClick’s portfolio includes a strong affiliate P4P /Affiliate advertising platform that it acquired through a company called Performics (which retains its name inside Doubleclick.) The search and affiliate marketing tools Performics offers are considered by many in the industry to be among the best products available from a technology standpoint..  In acquiring DoubleClick, Google will successfully keep this little jewel away from competitors who would have been able to use it to potentially eat in to Google’s stronger markets.

Click to Read More

Ebay (NASDAY: EBAY), reported a rise in profits in Q1 earnings.

Net income ws up $377.2m (.27c/share) over $248.3m (17c) for the same period last year on income of $1.77m (above analysts’ expectations of $1.72m).

The Paypal payments division showed growth with revenue up 31% to revenues of $439m.  The communications division, home of Skype, showed revenue of  $ 79m  (up from $66m in Q4).  Skype saw an 11% increase in calls and a 135% increase of fees, numbers I suspect, much lower, than eBay has been hoping for.

While profit margins were up, along with revenue and that was spun as a very positive piece of news, auction volume in the increasingly efficient auction marketplace was flat.  Non-store listings were up 4% over last year, but down 4% from Q4.  It was the third time in the last four quarters eBay failed to see quarter-to-quarter growth in auction listings.  Its European focus was also less than expected.

Initial market reaction to the news was mixed.

More detailed press coverage on Ebay’s finances can be found at:

Yahoo Finance
Google Finance
Marketwatch

Yesterday I looked at the way marketers have been exploring both interactive tools and user-generated content sites in order to create broad multimedia campaigns.  The couple examples from TV and publishing showed advertisers/marketers creating fake companies, or websites, or aggressively using User-Generated-Content (YouTube etc) sites to hype and promote their products.   There are a multitude of other examples from Film, Television and other products; even luxury car brands like Audi are not immune.   Anheuser-Busch is getting in to the arena too. BudTV, which launched after the Super Bowl, provides several channels of Net TV video content created to help promote Budweiser for user who register to use the site.

The efforts to plug in to the viral marketing benefits of user-generated-content and willingness to embrace new technologies are notable.  Ultimately, I think they help legitimize the technology platforms as much, if not more, than they help promote products. But hijacking sites like YouTube, or MySpace, for advertising purposes (and creating hoax content) borders on problematic.  Today’s focus is those problems:

There is a fine line between content that is entertaining or engaging to fans versus content that irritates potential viewers/customers with misleading information.  Consumers are constantly inundated with marketing materials and have grown sensitive to the tone and nature of what’s directed at them.  A small misstep could significantly harm a campaign, or taint a potential fan/customers reaction.  Marketers needs to ask themselves if their efforts are clearly fun and entertainment, or more likely to be viewed as misleading. 

In 2004, Sci Fi Channel demonstrated what not to do with an effort that was clearly misleading. Click to Read More

Question: What do fake blogs, phony or misleading websites, promo MP3 releases and even dummy MySpace accounts have in common?

 

Answer: They are all part of sophisticated New Media, multi-media marketing campaigns for Television, print and other entertainment content. 

Following on the heels of books like Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point (which theorizes about how trends develop),  and no doubt  influenced by the  increasingly rapid  viral growth and acceptance of web properties from MySpace to YouTube, media marketers are embracing new technologies and techniques to hawk their offerings.  

Some efforts go so far as to create fictional stories, or companies and full interactive environments around them.  These efforts don’t just promote a Television show or book; they’re also helping legitimize the technology platforms they’re built on.  Traditional Media was slow getting to the ball during the first wave of Internet activity; they’re looking like they don’t want that to happen again.

NBC’s popular show Heroes probably leads the pack of current offers when it comes to this kind of creative interactive marketing. Click to Read More