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August 29, 2007

BrightSpot.tv: Another Twist On The Get Paid To Watch Advertising Model

Duncan Riley

20 comments »

brightspottv.jpgBrightSpot.tv offers a newish twist on the get paid to watch advertising model.

The concept is nearly as old as the internet. Users must watch advertising in some form or another and then receive compensation for their time.

BrightSpot.tv model involves users viewing video advertising, often with the occasional question thrown in to make sure that the user is actually watching the ad, then compensates the user by funding things like a one month subscription to Napster or discounts off subscriptions to XM Canada, MLB TV and Gamefly.

It would be easy to dismiss any company running a model like this; BrightSpot.tv on the other hand comes with some interesting backers that might just make it a breakout in the space. Holding company BrightSpot Media has been funded by sports moguls Jerry Colangelo (Phoenix Suns, Arizona Diamondbacks and Team USA Basketball) and Jerry Reinsdorf (CEO of Chicago Bulls and Chicago White Sox). Other advisors include Paul Schrage (Original CMO of McDonald’s) and Eric Heneghan (Founder of Giant Step and current CEO of Elevation Inc). While a number of the backers don’t have web industry experience, millions of dollars in funding (the company has between $2.5m and $10m) can certainly buy the expertise required to pull something like this off.

BrightSpot.tv is not something I’d use myself, but targeted at teens with limited incomes who want access to paid services, it might just work.

The company will be leveraging its partnerships with Napster, the NBL and others to promote the service.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 29th, 2007 at 8:01 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  1. Ian

    August 29th, 2007 at 8:05 pm

    I don’t think the get paid to watch ads business model can ever work. Simply because the person getting paid is the most jaded possible viewer, making for very low returns with high costs.

    This is one of those ideas that looks better on paper. Apparently between 2.5 and 10m pieces of paper!

  2. prash

    August 29th, 2007 at 8:51 pm

    don’t know about jaded but i got a year’s subscription to “popular science” from http://adperk.com/

  3. Mac

    August 29th, 2007 at 9:03 pm

    Just signed up. Let six “spots” (my quota) play with the sound off while I was in the other tab reading other articles here on TC, then answered their silly questions after each one. That was an easy 3 bucks. Doesn’t tell me when I’ll be given more ads to watch.

  4. KingJacob

    August 29th, 2007 at 9:10 pm

    I dont really see how this will benefit advertisers other than being a sneaky way to get people to sign up for xm radio.

  5. David Ulevitch

    August 29th, 2007 at 9:41 pm

    This sounds like a wanna-be AdPerk. A wanna-be that’s already feeling like a has-been, never-was. AdPerk seems more in line with end-user interests.

  6. Anand

    August 29th, 2007 at 9:59 pm

    Sure, its going to be one hell of an ordeal sitting through all these ads just to get access to that elusive subscription…

  7. Ilan

    August 30th, 2007 at 12:03 am

    Exploit: Hire Indians / Chinese to start creating accounts :)

  8. Chris

    August 30th, 2007 at 2:38 am

    They don’t have plenty of choices, before they gave a good reward for every ad $0.50 or more, now they have reduced to $0.25 cents. They have gamefly, Napster, XM canada, but I wish they had more Blockbuster, Netflix and other options. The site has usability problems doesn’t allow the viewer to watch the ad, gets stuck in the sponsor list. I e-mailed more than a month ago, still not fixed.

  9. Rollo

    August 30th, 2007 at 3:47 am

    Surely there’s a contradiction. If it’s targeted at people “with limited incomes”, what use is the advertising going to be? Word-of-mouth recommendations, perhaps? Hmm. I suppose the marketing people must know what they’re doing.

  10. Tom

    August 30th, 2007 at 6:09 am

    isn’t this more about getting feedback on your ad creative before airing it on TV? Its cheaper than running focus groups. You never want to pay people to watch ads, its cheaper to buy TV

  11. Luke

    August 30th, 2007 at 9:33 am

    The site has bugs to fix. I watched about 6 spots and got asked questions on 2 of them, my account balance shows I’ve watched 1 spot and got paid $1 (2 spots @ $0.50 each). Also, the rating functionality didn’t work on mine.

    As someone who works in advertising, I actually like watching well-made 30sec spots…I’d also suggest the user to be asked questions on every ad, not just once in a while…you then weed out the fake watchers and get more feedback on ads.

  12. jackmayhofferr

    August 30th, 2007 at 10:50 am

    Good to see that the web1.0 Cybergold model is still alive and kickin’

    Get Paid for Doing It!

  13. David Mackey

    September 1st, 2007 at 7:41 pm

    Seems like an okay idea. I remember this from web 1.0. Wish I could recall their names - never were able to get enough advertisers though.

  14. francine hardaway

    September 2nd, 2007 at 2:39 pm

    Jerry Colangelo is one of my dear friend, and I respect him enormously, but I see he still doesn’t know much about investing in Internet companies :-)

  15. Charlie

    September 4th, 2007 at 1:58 pm

    Navigation buttons don’t work, and trying to exit the site locks up my Vista.
    You’d think for all those millions, they could hire a competent geek to build their website.

  16. THE LEADER

    September 17th, 2007 at 3:58 pm

    I have created a model that confirms a 100% that the viewer watches the TV commercial. Does anyone know what the average tv spot costs for the average primetime show? and how many of the viewers actually watch the tv spots?

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