In an effort to monetize the growing number of music videos on its site, MySpace has just launched a new pilot advertising initiative that places attractive overlays at the bottom of some clips, allowing users to buy the song they’re listening to or immediately jump to the artist’s homepage.
The new initiative stems from MySpace’s partnership with Auditude, a content detection and management company that can identify copyrighted content and serve relevant advertising, even on user-submitted video. Now Auditude is applying the technology to music videos, which in the past have largely relied on banner ads and static text links to music stores for monetization.
On Wednesday the site, in a partnership with Warner Music Group, placed an overlay ad on a video for My Chemical Romance’s cover of Desolation Row. Users were presented with the option to buy the song either on Amazon, or (in an interesting twist) on a vinyl disc. Over the 24 hours that the ad ran it posted an impressive 1.2% click-through-rate (significantly higher than rates seen on typical banner ads), encouraging MySpace and Auditude to expand the program to more videos. Today the site began displaying advertising on U2’s new single Get On Your Boots, with plans to expand the program more broadly in the near future.
Much of the overlay’s success probably stems from the fact that it doesn’t look too much like an ad – it actually shows informative content like the album the song came from, the year it was released, and a link to the artist’s profile. I wouldn’t say I like having it there, but MySpace could have done a lot worse. And frankly in the current economic climate it’s encouraging when companies can find advertising methods that actually work without being ridiculously annoying.
YouTube launched a similar program three weeks ago, allowing content owners to insert overlays for products into their videos (MySpace’s overlays are significantly more attractive, but they both serve the same purpose). YouTube wouldn’t provide any exact numbers, but a representative confirmed that in general the site has seen significantly improved clickthrough rates when ads are embedded in videos themselves, as opposed to appearing in surrounding banner ads.
Oh No! Now i’ll see bunch of people writing tutorials
How to make money with myspace video …
http://tinyurl.com/ahzvtb
My Chemical Romance’s “Desolation Row”? You were kidding right? You mean MCR’s VERSION of “Desolation Row”. The song was originally penned and popularized an obscure singer from the ’60s. His name was Bob Dylan. Please post a correction when you get a chance. Sorry for the tone, I get touchy when people don’t give Bob his due. Thanks.
An “obscure” singer, Dylan? How quickly they forget.
Yeah, like bush was an obscure president?
ob·scure
1 a: dark , dim b: shrouded in or hidden by darkness c: not clearly seen or easily distinguished : faint
2: not readily understood or clearly expressed ; also : mysterious
3: relatively unknown: as a: remote , secluded b: not prominent or famous
4: constituting the unstressed vowel \\ə\\ or having unstressed \\ə\\ as its value
BTW: THAT’S WHAT COVER MEANS
Download MySpace video with Video Download Capture is very easy.
interesting idea
I went to their DevJam at SF yesterday, I hope they have something for application developers calso to monetize in their applications.
I took some notes from there that I scribbled here :-
http://socialap...l-applications/
It’s interesting how no one picked this up:
http://finance....f-14273746.html
“Revenue from other sources, including the social networking site MySpace, fell 7 percent to $743 million. The “other” group swung to a $38 million operating loss from a $23 million gain a year ago, hurt partly by the cost of launching MySpace Music.”
It cost them roughly $38 million last year to pay off and satisfy the RIAA. $61 million if you count the swing from positive to negative growth. That’s ridiculous- and people still wonder why more innovation and players don’t become involved?? They can’t. They are priced out of the market before they even begin (meanwhile, as I keep saying, all these agreements do is prop up what should otherwise be a dying industry trade organization)… and as for the money, how much again makes into the pockets of the ARTIST themselves?? yeah.
Call me unimpressed that they have relevant ads on videos since the sole intent is to continue to pay off the RIAA so they can in turn sue people, pressure ISP’s, or lobby to introduce a special ‘tax’ on consumers use of the internet.
and I should add, myspace has the most CHOPPY videos of any service in the history of the internet. If only * 1 * would stream properly, they might be worth watching, but none do.
you should get off dial up.
i never have issues streaming content on myspace.
ha! I’m in AMERICA, not in some cave in a 3rd world country. Their stream just sucks. It’s nothing personal.
Fair enough
same here. i keep up with prison break and a few other full length shows on myspace. no streaming issues. im using time warner cable in southern cali.
Hmmm.. they’re streaming ok in NZ. Are we 3rd world?
No:-) NZ is in no way third world.
nice.
My Chemical Romance’s “Desolation Row”? You were kidding right? You mean MCR’s VERSION of “Desolation Row”. The song was originally penned and popularized an obscure singer from the ’60s. His name was Bob Dylan. Please post a correction when you get a chance. Sorry for the tone, I get touchy when people don’t give Bob his due. Thanks.
Yeah, this was a stupid mistake on my part. I even know Dylan originally penned the song, just wrote it wrong when I did the post. It won’t happen again.
“1.2% click-through-rate (significantly higher than rates seen on typical banner ads)”
What source did you use for stats about “typical banner ads”?
I’m surprised Youtube isn’t doing this too.
They are
Let’s see how long it takes until youtube offers a similar feature.
This is an overdue concept. How they roll it out will determine the success.
The initial ones are less intrusive and don’t annoy me too much.
looking for live streaming channel? check it at http://www.livestreamshow.com
Agree that the ad doesn’t look too “ad-like”. It’s more ‘advertising as content’.
the above one which ramzkie stated also have the same feature
@kevin and @deleo: youtube already has advertisements on videos
@paul: interesting arguement
@frank: *laughs*
Sigh, people and their MySpace addiction; they need to beat it!
interesting, when techcrunch posted about youtube muting videos, an user posted a comment about monetizing music videos instead of muting them. nice to see that myspace took the lead.
As a marketing professional, it’s good to see a case where an advertisement isn’t met with disdain or annoyance. At its best, advertising should be a positive force which keeps consumers learning about new technologies, services, products, etc. In reality, this “education” is usually forced and unwanted, therefore perceived as an annoyance.
Companies that figure out how to make advertisements more acceptable for consumers are the ones that are going to find the most success. Maybe if us marketing folks got in the mindset of “educators” rather than “promoters”, we would find more success here.