It is not enough to be a destination site anymore. Everyone now wants to become an ad network. MTV Networks on Monday announced that it has expanded its vertical ad network strategy by building ad networks around the service’s core properties.
Each vertical ad network will be called a “Tribe.” Much like In contrast to what LinkedIn is trying to do with its new ad network (reselling access to its audience no matter where they may roam on the Web), MTV.com is basically reselling access to its advertisers audience. It is striking deals with other sites that share a similar audience (i.e., speak to the same Tribe) and offering its existing advertisers inventory on those hand-selected sites.
Each Tribe is made up of the partner sites and the people who visit them. In this case, the “MTV Generation Tribe” is supposedly made up of sites targeting that hard-to-reach youth demographic that is interested in music, movies, videogames, sports, and sneakers. According to MTV Networks, each of its online properties has users that are staggeringly similar and can form the basis of an advertising Tribe. (Yeah, we thought tribes were made up of people, but MTV thinks that Websites can be grouped into tribes as well. Who knew?)
Once the Tribe is formed, MTV will sell advertising inventory and packages using demo-targeting, geo-targeting, day-parting and contextual targeting that it believes will capture the right audience for the right advertiser.
The MTV Tribe ad-network, which is anchored by MTV.com, launched today with Pepsi as its hallmark sponsor. CMT, Spike, and VH1 Tribes will be launching later this month and the Comedy Central Tribe will launch during the first quarter of 2009.
MTV Networks’ decision to categorize each service into Tribes is following a trend across the Web. In essence, companies are taking a destination site’s targeted audience and repackaging it into an ad network in the hopes that it will garner more revenue for all parties. The strategy assumes that advertisers will want to spend money targeting that specific audience based on their shared interests.
This will only work for destination sites that attract enough unique visitors that have enough overlap with other Websites to make them want to sign up as advertising partners. (MTV had 9.4 million U.S. visitors in August, according to comScore). That is why both MTV Networks and LinkedIn are only signing up partners on a case-by-case basis.
Does every niche destination site need to become its own ad network, though? Ultimately, it would make more sense for an existing ad network to offer a way to target all of these different communities of interest. But then the ROI on the ads would have to more than make up for the fact that the money would be split at least three ways. (In MTV’s case, since it has its own ad sales force, the money is only split two ways).
Isn’t MTV knocking off Seth Godin’s newest idea by calling groups “tribes”? Seth even has a website built around the idea of tribes. (Triiibes.com with 3 I’s)
hmmmm, ad network, niche, tribe, location, social, categories, inventory. sounds familiar. maybe they are on to something?
everyone is a “ad network now.” whos next…….
McDonalds and Subway form strategic ad network for fast food. Papajohns launches ad network widget for open social platform.
AdvertisingLocator.com
Anyone know anymore about Linkedin’s ad system? In this era, although MTV will of course pull in revenue form their big sponsors, the demographic information of Linkedin and their audience can and will command some serious ROI.
The fact that MTV is going this way shows clearly that there is a lot of potential out there. With the growing ad networks, one or two key players will emerge to lead the show.
There’s going to be a lot of available automated ad space and I just wonder if the ad supply will be there. Pretty soon (if it hasn’t happened already) there are going to be turn-key solutions for having your own ad network for your site that you can implement yourself.
Like “Music Plugin” said, the market will correct and consolidate over time.
Don’t know if I trust MTV being an ad network.
These are actually vastly different deals. LinkedIn has an exceptionally attractive demographic and a huge amount of data to leverage. MTV has an unbelievable sales organization, but lacks quality inventory. They will argue that there is demographic anaylsis in tribes, but it will be contextual based on where they went on the site, not who they are. MTV is about sales. LinkedIn is about data. The differences between old and new media can seem like a broken record.
lot of potential for mtv
this has failure written all over it
I agree with Aaron that these are completely different situations.
LinkedIn in addition to having a desirable audience that is very well profiled (targetable); they have a unique relationship in that their users are coming to the site to accompolish a fairly narrow set of purposes (professional networking, seeking jobs, or seeking employees). I would imagine that the user relationship to the MTV site is much more casual and less defined.
Creating tribes is resource intensive and generally requires complete re-branding. I imagine MTV’s audience to be fairly finicky, and branding efforts will take time and there will be flops.
On the other side arguing in favor of tribes, I heard a case study recently about Gannet splitting up their Cincinatti Enquirer audience into 30 or 40 tribes, and it’s been pointed to as a huge success story in an industry that doesn’t get much good news these days. I was impressed by cincyMOMS in particular. It allows reader/users to come to the site to accompolish several everyday tasks as well as to get news.
I think a theme is developing here: users accompolish a relatively narrow set of tasks on the site that fit well with the site content/media.
I’m interested to see how the tribe concept combines with ad networks. This feels like new territory.
The TRiBEs aren’t only “reselling access to its audience” on their properties. These networks also include third-party sites which MTV will represent to advertisers. My site will be a part of the Spike TRiBE when it launches in the next month or so but I’m not sure what other sites they’re representing, specifically in the network that already launched.
Well, unlike most websites, MTV has some real properties to sell ads on, so that might be a big draw for brands looking to do integrated Web+TV campaigns around the 18-24 demographic.
Which is what everyone is looking to do these days.
I doubt,if MTV will really get MTV big returns out of it..
artist linkedn pages seem like a MTVN , but there can be misunderstandings like,
there are going to be turn-key solutions for having your own ad network for your site that you can implement yourself
this will never work. why would anyone ever trust Viacom to monetize anything for them? Since when are they good at the web?
Hey,
what happened to that html 5 article that was on this site this morning ?
Tech crunch seems to be only interested in reviewing multi-million dollar venture capital-backed companies. My company has recently launched a revolutionary p2p product, we have sent numerous requests to tech crunch in order to have the product reviewed ALL EMAILS HAVE BEEN IGNORED. Yet every day I visit tech crunch and read another lame story about another multi million dollar aquisition.
Umm, thats strange, only huge companies are given any kind of coverage. Could this be to do with the fact that tech crunch ARE PROBABLY BEING PAID TO REVIEW SITES OF THIS NATURE.
WHEN ARE PEOPLE GOING TO WAKE UP AND REALISE THAT TECH CRUNCH INTERESTS LAY NOT IN HIGHLIGHTING NEW INNOVATIONS IN THE TECHNOLOGY MARKET PLACE, BUT RATHER IN LINING THERE OWN POCKETS!!
A link to “your” website would have been helpful. you must promote it and yourself everywhere you possibly can. I think mike is very generous with his website. we know there is a little curve ball in the tech industry but tc does one of the best jobs banging on the fences of innovation and letting others bang too. Share Yourself. Join the show. a little showbiz might just get your company somewhere. Plaster your Premise! everywhere.
P2Person.com
I heard about this over the Summer, it sounded like a bad idea then and it sounds like a worse idea now. None of these networks have any true staying power.
I’ve seen this kind of network, um, work, although on a smaller scale. Overamerica’s Hype Circle (http://www.hypecircle.com/) get great CPMs with a carefully selected network of sites targeted towards a specific aesthetic of streetwear, sneakers, etc.
The keys – at least for them – are to be really choosy about what sites to include and to match them with campaigns that are really relevant. That takes a lot of individual attetion, it’s not something you can automate.
This is interesting…
http://www.medi...88&p=456009
Tribes make alot of sense on the mobile platform. I think mobile advertising works best when it’s highly personalized and targeted.
The description of an “ad network” sounds like the MTV tribes will be siloed off from one another. If I’m an advertiser that wants to reach 16-24 year old guys, I would want to buy all of your male 16-24 audience not one tribe at a time. At this point I guess that gets into issues with limited ad inventories. So maybe splitting the audience up into tribes is a good sales strategy on MTV’s part.
It’s a great idea. Ask the publishers, the sh** they have to go through with Ad Networks. The 1-1, niche ‘Tribe’ should definitely work, specially in markets where advertising is run my monopolistic Ad agencies (check SE Asia). If MTV can open up their Advertiser contacts to me, I’d love to gift them >25% commission.
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