Advertisers Join the Social Video App Showyou

September 2, 2012, 8:12 pm

By TANZINA VEGA

As marketers debate the efficacy of online display advertising and users ignore the standard blocks of ads found on many Web sites, many advertisers are turning to videos that blur the line between content and marketing.

On Monday, OMD, the media planning and buying agency that is a unit of the Omnicom Media Group, part of the Omnicom Group, will announce a partnership with the video platform Showyou that will allow advertisers to show users video ads alongside other video content.

It is the first time Showyou will be available to brands. The Showyou app allows users to see videos on their iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and Web browser by logging into the app using a social networking account like Facebook or Twitter. Users can share the videos they like with other users in their social network.

“We're in this age of abundance,” said Mark Hall, the chief executive of Showyou, of the amount of video content users find online. The partnership will “create something that is elegant and seamless with advertising, which is historically what you've had with magazines and newspapers,” Mr. Hall said.

A group of brands including Doritos, Levi's, Monster, Showtime and Mountain Dew were invited to use the new service, said Alan Cohen, the chief of OMD.

“What Showyou does for us is it allows us to find the space that our clients love where there is a blending of advertising and content. We don't have a lot of companies that say, ‘Give us 50 banner sites,' ” Mr. Cohen said of traditional display ads.

The partnership, which will begin this month, will run for a 90-day trial period. Depending on its success, Mr. Cohen said i t “could mean a longer-term partnership with deeper relationships.”

Julie Channing, the director of global digital marketing for Levi Strauss, said the brand would first run 30-second television ads on the platform, but was also creating original video content for the Web. “We thought this was a great way for us to not only test a video platform but also find out what stories our viewers find more interesting and worthy,” she said.

Ted Gilvar, the executive vice president and chief global marketing officer at Monster.com, said the company would use Showyou to promote its new social job app, BeKnown.

“There is fatigue with traditional banner ads,” Mr. Gilvar said. “People are voting with their time and attention and they only give their time and attention to things that are worth consuming.”

Small Music Labels to Court Asia

September 2, 2012, 7:51 pm

By BEN SISARIO

To compete in the global marketplace, the major record companies have branches and subsidiaries all over the world. Most small labels do not have that advantage, so for help they are turning to federal and state government agencies.

On Wednesday, the American Association of Independent Music, or A2IM, a nonprofit trade group for about 300 small labels, will take a delegation representing 15 of its members to Hong Kong; Seoul, South Korea; and Shanghai to meet with business contacts and study foreign markets. Participating labels include Ultra, which releases dance music; VP, reggae; and Daptone, rhythm and blues, and funk.

The trip will cost about $200,000, of which A2IM members will pay $32,000. The rest will be covered by grants from Tennessee, New York State and the federal Small Business Administration. On Friday, A2IM announced that it had received a $284,000 grant from the United States Department of Commerce for future trips. The grant is part of the Commerce Department's Market Development Cooperator Program, which frequently supports small and midsize businesses.

“Over half of our members don't have offices outside the U.S.,” Rich Bengloff, president of A2IM, said in an interview Friday. “If they do, most only have offices in London or are focused strictly on Europe.”

Mr. Bengloff said the trips were part of an effort to solicit for American labels and artists the government support that has long been available in Canada and in Europe. Many countries, for example, offer grants to musicians to tour and represent their cultures at industry gatherings like the annual South by Southwest Conferences and Festivals in Austin, Tex.

Another goal is simply to help American music and labels when the United States market - while still the largest in the world - is slipping. In 2005, the United States represented 34 percent of the world's wholesale music business, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry; in 2010 and 2011, it was 26 percent.

“For our members, most sales have been in the U.S. marketplace,” Mr. Bengloff said. “The U.S. marketplace is not enough now.”

HBO Will Offer Channel by Internet in Northern Europe

September 2, 2012, 7:39 pm

By BRIAN STELTER

The pay television service HBO is about to make a lot of Internet users in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden very happy.

HBO announced last week that it had formed a joint venture for HBO Nordic, bringing shows like “Game of Thrones” and “Sex and the City” to the four countries. Starting next month, HBO Nordic will do something that HBO has yet to do in other countries: let people subscribe to its channel via the Internet, bypassing traditional cable and satellite distributors.

“Our target group is younger and more urban than the existing premium pay TV subscribers and they consume TV on multiple screens, particularly on computers, smartphones and tablets,” Hervé Payan, the chief exe cutive of the joint venture, said in a statement.

A similar subset of consumers in the United States has been craving a version of HBO via the Internet. The company has been resistant, because an Internet subscription option could upset its much more lucrative relationships with traditional distributors.

For now it streams a catalog of shows via the Internet to people who have subscribed the traditional way. But the European expansion hints at another way, one that some analysts say is inevitable for companies like HBO as consumers exercise more choice over their media diets.

HBO Nordic also demonstrates that HBO, a unit of Time Warner, and Netflix are increasingly competing head-to-head for subscribers. Netflix plans to start selling its online television and film service in the same four countries by the end of the year.

The Netflix chief executive Reed Hastings, who previously identified HBO as his company's main rival , wrote on Facebook last Thursday, “Excited to see HBO join us in offering stand-alone streaming service in Scandinavia … what about the USA?”

He added, “We thought the first matchup would be in Albania.”

The Time Warner chief executive Jeffrey L. Bewkes took a shot at Netflix in a 2010 interview: “It's a little bit like, is the Albanian Army going to take over the world? I don't think so.”

HBO declined to respond to Mr. Hastings' comment last week, though a spokesman said by e-mail, “I must admit it was funny.”