Articles of the Day
AOL Secures Rights To Carry ESPN Video — Distinguishing itself further from other content portals, AOL has secured rights to carry ESPN video directly on AOL Video and AOL Sports. AOL is the first portal to carry ESPN content, which will include highlights from games and major sporting events as well as ESPN original programming clips. For ESPN, an expanded reach online equals the potential for greater ad revenue.”Our advertisers benefit from a larger online video audience,” said Matt Murphy, senior vice president, digital video distribution at ESPN. “The potential is tremendous.”
Google App Engine Launches: Goes Directly After Amazon — MG at VentureBeat has details on a new product launch tonight from Google called the “Google App Engine” (link will work after midnight). MG notes, “With this new release, Google is aiming squarely at Amazon Web Services (AWS), specifically the popular Simple Storage Service (S3), SimpleDB and Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) services.” Brady notes that the app must be in Python for now. The first 10,000 developers to signup using the link above at midnight will get access to the Google App Engine. The accounts come with enough free power to handle up to five million pageviews a month. Pricing past that has not been release as of yet. You know it’s the crack model - give them a bit for free so they get hooked for life.
Roo Group Rebrands As KIT Digital — Online video provider Roo Group has rebranded as KIT digital following its takeover by former JumpTV executive Kaleil Isaza Tuzman last December. The name change to KIT–an acronym that stands for “Knowledge, Imagination and Technology”–is meant to reflect changes under Tuzman aimed at refocusing on the company’s core business of providing video services to companies across the entertainment, financial, automotive and other industries. KIT allows clients to publish, manage and distribute digital video content, as well as tap its 100 syndicated video channels and 40,000 syndicated videos for content. KIT CEO and Chairman Tuzman previously said a key change for the company would be to focus on delivering live streams instead of video-on-demand for third-party sites.
Gorilla Nation Launches GNMulticultural Vertical Market — Gorrila Nation Launches GNMulticultural, its newest vertical market aggregating dozens of leading Web properties servicing the African-American and Latino communities. The company will target and sign premium Web properties that cater to multicultural audiences to augment its existing offering of African-American sites such as Mocha City (www.mochacity.com), Bossip (www.bossip.com) and ClutchMagOnline (www.clutchmagonline.com); and Latino sites such as Lossip (www.lossip.com), LaMusica (www.lamusica.com) and VivirLatino (www.vivirlatino.com).
Online To Overtake TV In The UK In 2009 — Incredibly, Internet ad spending is on pace to overtake television as the biggest advertising medium in the UK by the end of next year, according to the latest report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau, PricewaterhouseCoopers and the World Advertising Research Centre. The report said that spending last year grew 38 percent to $5.6 billion, thanks to the introduction of cheap laptops, an increase in television content online and an overall increase in Web penetration. “With broadband speeds on the up and consumers spending more time on more sites, the outlook for online advertising is rosy–in fact, we expect it to overtake TV in 2009 when it will become the UK’s biggest medium,” IAB chief executive Guy Phillipson said in a statement. TV spending in the UK was $8.02 billion last year, followed by print advertising, which was $7.33 billion.
Zucker: Hulu.com Sold Out, Talks With Media Giants Ongoing — NBC chief executive Jeff Zucker was proud to announce that ad inventory on Hulu.com–the joint content distribution venture from News Corp. and NBC Universal–had sold out, although more ad opportunities were being created. Zucker, speaking at the International Advertising Association’s 41st annual World Congress in Washington on Monday, said that advertisers were interested in the site because they have more assurance that the content is professionally produced and appropriate for all audiences. “Advertisers want to be on something where you know what you get and not on something where you could be advertising [next to a video of] a cat on a skateboard,” he said, referring to the kind of videos one might see on video-sharing sites like YouTube. Zucker added that negotiations to add more traditional content producers to Hulu were ongoing. “I am hopeful that [CBS, Viacom and Disney] will be part of it in the years ahead,” he said, adding that Hulu partners don’t have to provide the site with exclusive rights to their content.
60 Percent Of Large Companies To Cut Marketing Budgets — Marketing execs polled by MarketingSherpa for its “Marketing During An Economic Downturn (pdf)” report are giving a version of a theme we’ve heard a lot of, lately. The storyline: big marketers are cutting back overall budgets this year, but not not online spending, which is being largely left intact or getting a small increase in 2008.Total budgets down: 60% of large companies had either cut or are planning to cut marketing budgets 2008, the survey says, compared to 29% of midsized marketers and only 13% of small ones. Only 16% of big marketers said they were increasing budgets, and 19% reported no change.Online budgets flat, or up slightly: 38% said they planned to increase online spending, while 45% said online spending would stay the same in 2008.
