In a sign of Hulu's growing clout for building brands, Pepsi has crafted retro-themed spots to run with Hulu's selection of shows from the 1970s and '80s.
The 15-second ads promote "Pepsi Throwback," a beverage launched in April to tap into the nostalgia market. It features packaging reminiscent of '70s designs -- and uses real sugar like the soft-drink recipe did 40 years ago.
Pepsi is running the commercials, beginning today, with vintage fare on Hulu like Hill Street Blues, Battlestar Galactica and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. In all, Pepsi plans to run 11 spots with more than 200 programs through June 15.
The beverage giant hopes the ads will connect with a youth audience that is discovering programs from the '70s and '80s thanks to Hulu. While many of the service's most popular shows are current TV hits, some older entries -- like Doogie Howser, M.D., Alf and Married...With Children -- have found a second life on the site.
"We know Millennials are craving this content," said Ana Maria Irazabal, Pepsi's U.S. brand marketing director. "What happened in the past is not old, it's considered new because they haven't seen it before."
In one spot called "Pet Rock," a Pepsi Throwback can chats with the U.S. Bicentennial-era collector's item about how the two "go way back." The clip closes with a shot of the Pepsi Throwback can on a shag carpet and the message "Made with real sugar" in psychedelic font. Other iterations feature the can bantering with other touchstones from the era, such as a fondue pot, an eight-track player and a Polaroid camera.
The program sprung from a collaboration between several Pepsi agencies, including brand shop TBWA\Chiat\Day, media agency OMD and digital strategy firm Undercurrent.
Pepsi also worked with IAC-owned youth entertainment site CollegeHumor.com to create three of the commercials. CollegeHumor's spots feature two guys spoofing the '80s. In one, they are shown playing videogames when a phone call arrives from someone who uses vintage catchphrases like "Eat my shorts."
The challenge was creating compelling ads on a shoestring budget, said Irazabel. "If we don't have cost efficiencies we wouldn't be able to produce 12 spots," she said. "They need to be nimble."
Hulu, which publicly launched 14 months ago, has quickly registered impressive growth. Estimates of its audience vary widely. According to ComScore, it attracted 42 million visitors in March. Nielsen, parent of Adweek, estimates its audience that month at 8.9 million. Both services believe Hulu's audience and views are up sharply.
Its advertising efforts have not kept pace, despite keen interest from brands in attaching themselves to high-quality, professional content. Hulu visitors frequently see public service ads, and nearly all the site's commercials consist of repurposed TV spots. Hulu CEO Jason Kilar has complained that not enough advertisers are crafting spots geared to the environment.
"Our goal is to target highly relevant environments and experiences for users and for advertisers' brands which ultimately allows us to increase the effectiveness of our advertising platform," Hulu svp of advertising J.P. Colaco said in a statement. "The Pepsi example is one that allows us to uniquely bring together more than 200 relevant archived shows with retro-themed advertising to create a more immersive and engaging experience."
[the article was originally published at http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/agency/e3i505437152ed713675ae9ae9f8bf96bf6]
Showing posts with label hulu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hulu. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Nielsen: Hulu's Traffic Soars While FIM's Plummets
Hulu’s video traffic has grown at a staggering clip over the past year—driven in part by an older (35-plus) Web audience. Meanwhile, over the same period of time, former Web video powerhouse Fox Interactive Media has seen its streaming traffic plummet. And all the while YouTube has maintained its dominance of the category—accounting for 58 percent of all video streamed on the Web in the U.S.
Those are just a few of the findings in the latest VideoCensus report issued by Nielsen Online. For example, in April, Hulu streamed over 373 million videos, a whopping increase of 490 percent versus the same month last year. According to Nielsen’s analysis, a big chunk of that growth can be attributed to adults 35 to 49, who make up 30 percent of the site’s audience. In the past six months Nielsen found that demo’s time spent per viewer increased by 154 percent to 416 minutes per month on Hulu. That minutes-per-month figure is 10 percent larger than any other age group found on the site—indicating that the 35-plus crowd is drawn to Hulu’s collection of longer-form content—much of which is sourced from TV.
However, to keep things in perspective, even as Hulu soars, YouTube is hardly shrinking in its wake. The Google-owned video site saw its total volume of streams climb by 36 percent in April to nearly 5.5 billion videos compared to the same period last year. That’s almost 15 times as many videos as Hulu streamed last month. The 35 to 49 crowd also spent three times as much time on YouTube as they did on Hulu (nearly 3 billion minutes versus less than 1 billion).
Meanwhile, Fox Interactive Media (FIM), which includes social networking giant MySpace, is quickly losing its stature among the top Web video players. FIM properties generated 201 million streams in April, representing a slide of 39 percent year over year (and just 54 percent of Hulu’s video volume). That places FIM behind Yahoo, which delivered 203 million streams, a decline of 8 percent versus last year for the portal.
Gaining ground on FIM is MTV Network’s Nickelodeon Kids and Family Network, which theoretically targets a much more niche audience. According to Nielsen, Nickelodeon Kids and Family Network streamed 176 million videos in April, an increase of 16 percent versus the same month in 2008.
[the article was originally published at http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/content_display/news/local-broadcast/e3id8b91cde574aee6561378e0eb5ff80bb]
Those are just a few of the findings in the latest VideoCensus report issued by Nielsen Online. For example, in April, Hulu streamed over 373 million videos, a whopping increase of 490 percent versus the same month last year. According to Nielsen’s analysis, a big chunk of that growth can be attributed to adults 35 to 49, who make up 30 percent of the site’s audience. In the past six months Nielsen found that demo’s time spent per viewer increased by 154 percent to 416 minutes per month on Hulu. That minutes-per-month figure is 10 percent larger than any other age group found on the site—indicating that the 35-plus crowd is drawn to Hulu’s collection of longer-form content—much of which is sourced from TV.
However, to keep things in perspective, even as Hulu soars, YouTube is hardly shrinking in its wake. The Google-owned video site saw its total volume of streams climb by 36 percent in April to nearly 5.5 billion videos compared to the same period last year. That’s almost 15 times as many videos as Hulu streamed last month. The 35 to 49 crowd also spent three times as much time on YouTube as they did on Hulu (nearly 3 billion minutes versus less than 1 billion).
Meanwhile, Fox Interactive Media (FIM), which includes social networking giant MySpace, is quickly losing its stature among the top Web video players. FIM properties generated 201 million streams in April, representing a slide of 39 percent year over year (and just 54 percent of Hulu’s video volume). That places FIM behind Yahoo, which delivered 203 million streams, a decline of 8 percent versus last year for the portal.
Gaining ground on FIM is MTV Network’s Nickelodeon Kids and Family Network, which theoretically targets a much more niche audience. According to Nielsen, Nickelodeon Kids and Family Network streamed 176 million videos in April, an increase of 16 percent versus the same month in 2008.
[the article was originally published at http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/content_display/news/local-broadcast/e3id8b91cde574aee6561378e0eb5ff80bb]
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Hulu's tug of war with TV
Online video site Hulu trumpeted its ascension to the media big time a few months back with a dash of sardonic humor. In its debut TV commercial, in which Alec Baldwin mocks the audience's addiction to the very shows he creates as a fictional network executive, the site calls itself "an evil plot to destroy the world."
The joke is uneasily close to the truth for some in the television business.
Once dismissed as "Clown Co." by Silicon Valley critics who scoffed at the notion that old media giants could ever harness the Internet, the website with a name that sounds like a Hawaiian dance has quickly upset the status quo. Hulu's traction with users has entrenched entertainment companies worried that the video site's runaway success could undercut the financial underpinnings of the industry.
Those companies are fighting back, and the result could mean no more free passes for many signature cable programs that appear on Hulu.
NBC Universal and News Corp. publicly launched Hulu a little more than a year ago as a gamble on television's digital future. The website allows viewers to watch thousands of episodes of TV shows for free, from current hits like "Family Guy" and "The Office" to old favorites like "WKRP in Cincinnati" and "I Dream of Jeannie." Hulu's simple design, expansive catalog and no cover charge have elevated it to one of the most popular websites for watching video.
With 42 million viewers in March -- an audience nearly twice the size of TV's most popular show, Fox's "American Idol" -- Hulu whizzed past Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN, and is now nipping at the heels of Google's YouTube.
"Hulu has certainly exceeded all of our expectations," said Jean-Briac Perrette, NBC Universal's president of digital distribution. "We've come a long way from Clown Co."
Late last month, Walt Disney Co. overcame its initial skepticism and signed on as an equity owner of Hulu, which has nearly 150 content partners. That gives the video site even more star power with the addition of ABC's "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost," and cable hits such as ABC Family's "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" and Disney Channel's "Wizards of Waverly Place."
"Our feeling is that -- and some of this is instinct, by the way -- media consumption online is growing and will continue to grow," Disney Chief Executive Robert A. Iger said in a call last week with analysts who grilled him about Hulu. "It is really important for us to establish ourselves there."
But in making a bid for the next generation of Internet- attuned viewers, Hulu's owners have strained their lucrative relationships with cable and satellite operators. Companies like Time Warner Cable Inc. and DirecTV Group Inc. pay cable networks billions of dollars each year to carry programming. Believing that they should have exclusivity because their payments support the enormous cost of producing TV shows, such companies have been pushing back against the Hulu freebies.
Investors also are wary that the media companies' embrace of the Internet-content-should-be-free philosophy threatens one of Hollywood's biggest profit centers: cable programming.
"If you give away your premium content for free, you are basically hastening your own demise, signing your own death warrant," said Laura Martin, a media analyst with Soleil-Media Metrics. "There is a choice that companies have to make."
Hulu illustrates the quandary that media executives face as they weigh the potential of the Internet against their dependable, old-line businesses. If the television industry does not find a way to preserve its two pillars of revenue -- advertising and subscription fees -- the consequences could be dire. Analysts point to the rapid deterioration of newspapers, which traded paying print subscribers for the expectation of big bucks from online advertising that have not materialized.
The conflict has forced Hulu to make concessions that have hurt users who have come to expect a rich menu on the video site. In recent months, entire seasons of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" were abruptly taken off the site, along with episodes of other cable TV shows such as "In Plain Sight" and "Psych."
Hulu even blocked access to a technology that lets its users watch content on their TVs. The move provoked outrage among fans of the software, called Boxee, drawing 385 angry comments on the company's website.
"Big Media had better come out of their hole and embrace the power of Internet streaming or they'll be in big trouble down the road," wrote one poster who identified himself as Lew Ciokiewicz.
Hulu's pullback in the case of "Always Sunny," one of the site's early favorites, underscores the tug of war within established media companies over the wisdom of placing TV shows on the Internet for free.
The quirky sitcom about a group of slackers has become a signature of the FX cable channel. (FX is a division of Fox, whose parent company, News Corp., is one of Hulu's founding partners.)
Even as FX acknowledged Hulu brought it new viewers, the cable network nonetheless demanded that the video site drop three seasons from its free online offerings over fears it would undercut the show's ratings and hamper lucrative DVD sales.
"We are not going to take steps that ignore the needs of our partners," explained Hulu Chief Executive Jason Kilar.
[read more at http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-hulu11-2009may11,0,5771665.story]
The joke is uneasily close to the truth for some in the television business.
Once dismissed as "Clown Co." by Silicon Valley critics who scoffed at the notion that old media giants could ever harness the Internet, the website with a name that sounds like a Hawaiian dance has quickly upset the status quo. Hulu's traction with users has entrenched entertainment companies worried that the video site's runaway success could undercut the financial underpinnings of the industry.
Those companies are fighting back, and the result could mean no more free passes for many signature cable programs that appear on Hulu.
NBC Universal and News Corp. publicly launched Hulu a little more than a year ago as a gamble on television's digital future. The website allows viewers to watch thousands of episodes of TV shows for free, from current hits like "Family Guy" and "The Office" to old favorites like "WKRP in Cincinnati" and "I Dream of Jeannie." Hulu's simple design, expansive catalog and no cover charge have elevated it to one of the most popular websites for watching video.
With 42 million viewers in March -- an audience nearly twice the size of TV's most popular show, Fox's "American Idol" -- Hulu whizzed past Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN, and is now nipping at the heels of Google's YouTube.
"Hulu has certainly exceeded all of our expectations," said Jean-Briac Perrette, NBC Universal's president of digital distribution. "We've come a long way from Clown Co."
Late last month, Walt Disney Co. overcame its initial skepticism and signed on as an equity owner of Hulu, which has nearly 150 content partners. That gives the video site even more star power with the addition of ABC's "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost," and cable hits such as ABC Family's "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" and Disney Channel's "Wizards of Waverly Place."
"Our feeling is that -- and some of this is instinct, by the way -- media consumption online is growing and will continue to grow," Disney Chief Executive Robert A. Iger said in a call last week with analysts who grilled him about Hulu. "It is really important for us to establish ourselves there."
But in making a bid for the next generation of Internet- attuned viewers, Hulu's owners have strained their lucrative relationships with cable and satellite operators. Companies like Time Warner Cable Inc. and DirecTV Group Inc. pay cable networks billions of dollars each year to carry programming. Believing that they should have exclusivity because their payments support the enormous cost of producing TV shows, such companies have been pushing back against the Hulu freebies.
Investors also are wary that the media companies' embrace of the Internet-content-should-be-free philosophy threatens one of Hollywood's biggest profit centers: cable programming.
"If you give away your premium content for free, you are basically hastening your own demise, signing your own death warrant," said Laura Martin, a media analyst with Soleil-Media Metrics. "There is a choice that companies have to make."
Hulu illustrates the quandary that media executives face as they weigh the potential of the Internet against their dependable, old-line businesses. If the television industry does not find a way to preserve its two pillars of revenue -- advertising and subscription fees -- the consequences could be dire. Analysts point to the rapid deterioration of newspapers, which traded paying print subscribers for the expectation of big bucks from online advertising that have not materialized.
The conflict has forced Hulu to make concessions that have hurt users who have come to expect a rich menu on the video site. In recent months, entire seasons of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" were abruptly taken off the site, along with episodes of other cable TV shows such as "In Plain Sight" and "Psych."
Hulu even blocked access to a technology that lets its users watch content on their TVs. The move provoked outrage among fans of the software, called Boxee, drawing 385 angry comments on the company's website.
"Big Media had better come out of their hole and embrace the power of Internet streaming or they'll be in big trouble down the road," wrote one poster who identified himself as Lew Ciokiewicz.
Hulu's pullback in the case of "Always Sunny," one of the site's early favorites, underscores the tug of war within established media companies over the wisdom of placing TV shows on the Internet for free.
The quirky sitcom about a group of slackers has become a signature of the FX cable channel. (FX is a division of Fox, whose parent company, News Corp., is one of Hulu's founding partners.)
Even as FX acknowledged Hulu brought it new viewers, the cable network nonetheless demanded that the video site drop three seasons from its free online offerings over fears it would undercut the show's ratings and hamper lucrative DVD sales.
"We are not going to take steps that ignore the needs of our partners," explained Hulu Chief Executive Jason Kilar.
[read more at http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-hulu11-2009may11,0,5771665.story]
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
ABC to Add Its Shows to Videos on Hulu
Three of the four big broadcast networks now own stakes in Hulu, the popular video Web site.
ABC Enterprises, a unit of the Walt Disney Company, announced Thursday that it would join NBC Universal, which is owned by General Electric and Vivendi, and the News Corporation, owner of Fox, as a partner in the joint venture.
Hulu, which in the last 18 months has become the third most popular video site on the Web, behind YouTube and Fox Interactive Media, displays free, high-quality versions of television shows and movies, supported by advertising. It said it would add ABC shows like “Lost,” “Desperate Housewives” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live” to its online library by late summer, pending regulatory approval.
Anne Sweeney, president of the Disney-ABC Television Group, said that while most of the network’s shows will continue to be available on ABC.com, that site attracts mostly core fans. By distributing them on Hulu, Disney hopes to reach Hulu’s much-larger audience of 42 million visitors a month.
According to people briefed on the terms of the deal, ABC will give Hulu an exclusive license to distribute its shows on Hulu.com and across the Web on Hulu’s partner sites, like MySpace and AOL .com. ABC will also give Hulu around $25 million in marketing credit, which Hulu can use to advertise itself during ABC’s broadcast shows.
In exchange, Disney will take a 28 percent stake in Hulu.com, a little less than the stakes of the joint venture’s founders, NBC Universal and the News Corporation. As part of the deal, NBC and the News Corporation also renewed their commitments to provide their shows exclusively to Hulu for an additional two years.
The deal is a blow to YouTube, owned by Google and by far the largest video site on the Web. It also courted Disney but struck a deal to display only short clips from shows on ABC and ESPN. People familiar with the negotiations said talks between Disney and YouTube broke down over how a deal would be structured, with Disney insisting on owning a stake in any joint venture.
Jeff Zucker, president of NBC Universal and a member of the Hulu board, said the experience on Hulu.com was superior to that on YouTube, for viewers and advertisers.
“Advertisers have made it clear that they want a safe environment unpolluted by videos of cats on skateboards,” Mr. Zucker said. “Couple that with the fact that Hulu has generated a user experience that is second to none. That has made Hulu the pre-eminent video site.”
ABC’s deal with Hulu also isolates CBS, which will be the only major broadcast network without a seat at the Hulu table. In a statement, CBS said it wanted to maintain control over the distribution of its shows online.
CBS has been offered a chance to join the joint venture several times, say people who have followed the continuing discussions, but has always declined. CBS distributes its shows on 300 video sites, including Joost, MSN and AOL. It also withholds some shows from the Web for several days after they are broadcast to ensure that the Web does not cannibalize the more profitable TV-watching audience.
That is a widespread concern among all the television networks and cable and satellite companies, and it is the reason Disney will not make cable shows like “Hannah Montana” available on Hulu. But Peter A. Chernin, president of News Corporation, said the answer was not to withhold material from sites like Hulu.
“The alternative of never making anything available on the Web is just silliness,” he said. “Then the pirates will just make it available for you. ”
Mr. Chernin said cable companies and Hulu were devising ways to identify the subscribers of cable and satellite services when they visit the site, so they can provide access to cable shows.
[the article was originally published at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/01/business/media/01hulu.html?_r=1&ref=media]
ABC Enterprises, a unit of the Walt Disney Company, announced Thursday that it would join NBC Universal, which is owned by General Electric and Vivendi, and the News Corporation, owner of Fox, as a partner in the joint venture.
Hulu, which in the last 18 months has become the third most popular video site on the Web, behind YouTube and Fox Interactive Media, displays free, high-quality versions of television shows and movies, supported by advertising. It said it would add ABC shows like “Lost,” “Desperate Housewives” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live” to its online library by late summer, pending regulatory approval.
Anne Sweeney, president of the Disney-ABC Television Group, said that while most of the network’s shows will continue to be available on ABC.com, that site attracts mostly core fans. By distributing them on Hulu, Disney hopes to reach Hulu’s much-larger audience of 42 million visitors a month.
According to people briefed on the terms of the deal, ABC will give Hulu an exclusive license to distribute its shows on Hulu.com and across the Web on Hulu’s partner sites, like MySpace and AOL .com. ABC will also give Hulu around $25 million in marketing credit, which Hulu can use to advertise itself during ABC’s broadcast shows.
In exchange, Disney will take a 28 percent stake in Hulu.com, a little less than the stakes of the joint venture’s founders, NBC Universal and the News Corporation. As part of the deal, NBC and the News Corporation also renewed their commitments to provide their shows exclusively to Hulu for an additional two years.
The deal is a blow to YouTube, owned by Google and by far the largest video site on the Web. It also courted Disney but struck a deal to display only short clips from shows on ABC and ESPN. People familiar with the negotiations said talks between Disney and YouTube broke down over how a deal would be structured, with Disney insisting on owning a stake in any joint venture.
Jeff Zucker, president of NBC Universal and a member of the Hulu board, said the experience on Hulu.com was superior to that on YouTube, for viewers and advertisers.
“Advertisers have made it clear that they want a safe environment unpolluted by videos of cats on skateboards,” Mr. Zucker said. “Couple that with the fact that Hulu has generated a user experience that is second to none. That has made Hulu the pre-eminent video site.”
ABC’s deal with Hulu also isolates CBS, which will be the only major broadcast network without a seat at the Hulu table. In a statement, CBS said it wanted to maintain control over the distribution of its shows online.
CBS has been offered a chance to join the joint venture several times, say people who have followed the continuing discussions, but has always declined. CBS distributes its shows on 300 video sites, including Joost, MSN and AOL. It also withholds some shows from the Web for several days after they are broadcast to ensure that the Web does not cannibalize the more profitable TV-watching audience.
That is a widespread concern among all the television networks and cable and satellite companies, and it is the reason Disney will not make cable shows like “Hannah Montana” available on Hulu. But Peter A. Chernin, president of News Corporation, said the answer was not to withhold material from sites like Hulu.
“The alternative of never making anything available on the Web is just silliness,” he said. “Then the pirates will just make it available for you. ”
Mr. Chernin said cable companies and Hulu were devising ways to identify the subscribers of cable and satellite services when they visit the site, so they can provide access to cable shows.
[the article was originally published at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/01/business/media/01hulu.html?_r=1&ref=media]
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Nielsen: Online Video Audience Bounces Back In March
After a fall-off in February, online video viewership last month bounced back in March, according to Nielsen Online's latest VideoCensus report. Total video streams increased almost 9% to 9.7 billion in March, while time per viewer rose 12.6% to 191 minutes. Unique viewers inched up 2% to 130 million.
YouTube accounted for nearly 5.5 billion streams, followed by Hulu, with 348.5 million and Yahoo, with 231.8 million. Fox Interactive Media surged ahead of Nickelodeon Kids and Family Network into fourth place, with 207.5 million streams -- up from 194.3 million in February.
Hulu -- now a solid if distant No. 2 to YouTube in online video -- continued its steady rise, increasing streams about 10% in March and adding about 600,000 unique viewers for a total of 9.5 million.
The March figures are a contrast to February, when total streams fell 15%, unique viewers declined 6%, and time per viewer dipped more than 5% to 169 minutes.
A seasonal surge in the online video audience tied to the NCAA Men's Basketball tournament likely helped boost overall viewership figures in March. CBS said unique visitors to its March Madness on Demand video service increased 60% over last year to 7.5 million, and total video and audio was up 75% to 8.6 million hours.
CBSSports.com alone generated 38.2 million streams last month and 3.3 unique video viewers -- up more than 1,200% and nearly 300%, respectively, from February. CBS also distributed its free March Madness offering across 200 sites including YouTube, Facebook and Yahoo.
Total video streams in March were up almost 40% from a year ago.
[credit : http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=104007]
YouTube accounted for nearly 5.5 billion streams, followed by Hulu, with 348.5 million and Yahoo, with 231.8 million. Fox Interactive Media surged ahead of Nickelodeon Kids and Family Network into fourth place, with 207.5 million streams -- up from 194.3 million in February.
Hulu -- now a solid if distant No. 2 to YouTube in online video -- continued its steady rise, increasing streams about 10% in March and adding about 600,000 unique viewers for a total of 9.5 million.
The March figures are a contrast to February, when total streams fell 15%, unique viewers declined 6%, and time per viewer dipped more than 5% to 169 minutes.
A seasonal surge in the online video audience tied to the NCAA Men's Basketball tournament likely helped boost overall viewership figures in March. CBS said unique visitors to its March Madness on Demand video service increased 60% over last year to 7.5 million, and total video and audio was up 75% to 8.6 million hours.
CBSSports.com alone generated 38.2 million streams last month and 3.3 unique video viewers -- up more than 1,200% and nearly 300%, respectively, from February. CBS also distributed its free March Madness offering across 200 sites including YouTube, Facebook and Yahoo.
Total video streams in March were up almost 40% from a year ago.
[credit : http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=104007]
Monday, December 1, 2008
Facebook Aims to Extend Its Reach Across the Web
Facebook Aims to Extend Its Reach Across the Web
PALO ALTO, Calif. — Facebook, the Internet’s largest social network, wants to let you take your friends with you as you travel the Web. But having been burned by privacy concerns in the last year, it plans to keep close tabs on those outings.
Facebook Connect, as the company’s new feature is called, allows its members to log onto other Web sites using their Facebook identification and see their friends’ activities on those sites. Like Beacon, the controversial advertising program that Facebook introduced and then withdrew last year after it raised a hullabaloo over privacy, Connect also gives members the opportunity to broadcast their actions on those sites to their friends on Facebook.
In the next few weeks, a number of prominent Web sites will weave this service into their pages, including those of the Discovery Channel and The San Francisco Chronicle, the social news site Digg, the genealogy network Geni and the online video hub Hulu.
Facebook Connect is representative of some surprising new thinking in Silicon Valley. Instead of trying to hoard information about their users, the Internet giants have all announced plans to share at least some of that data so people do not have to enter the same identifying information again and again on different sites.
Supporters of this idea say such programs will help with the emergence of a new “social Web,” because chatter among friends will infiltrate even sites that have been entirely unsociable thus far.
For example, a person might alert his Facebook friends to the fact that he is watching a video on CBS.com and invite them to join him there to watch together and discuss the video as it plays.
“Everyone is looking for ways to make their Web sites more social,” said Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer. “They can build their own social capabilities, but what will be more useful for them is building on top of a social system that people are already wedded to.”
MySpace, Yahoo and Google have all announced similar programs this year, using common standards that will allow other Web sites to reduce the work needed to embrace each identity system. Facebook, which is using its own data-sharing technology, is slightly ahead of its rivals.
Facebook, with 120 million members worldwide, has also been under extra pressure to get its revenue to match its media hype and membership growth. Responding to reports that Facebook was looking for more capital after raising $235 million last year, Ms. Sandberg said she would not rule that out. “There is a lot of interest in investing in us and we are always open to the right financing at the right price,” she said.
The most immediate challenge confronting Facebook is to create an enduring stream of advertising revenue.
A survey last week from the research firm IDC suggested that social networks were a miserable place for advertisers: just 57 percent of all users of social networks clicked on an ad in the last year, and only 11 percent of those clicks led to a purchase, IDC said. And it turns out that marketers are not so interested in advertising on pages filled with personal trivia and relationship updates.
This is where Facebook Connect could help. No money changes hands between Facebook and the sites using Connect, and executives are wary of discussing how it could bring in revenue. But there are some obvious possibilities.
Facebook has detailed information about its users: their real identities, what they like and dislike and whom they associate with. With a member’s permission, it could use that data to help other Web sites deliver more personalized ads. Similarly, those sites could tell Facebook what its users are doing elsewhere, helping to make its own ads more targeted.
“It’s becoming very clear that advertisers don’t know how to advertise on Facebook,” said Charlene Li, an independent consultant and social media analyst. “But if you take a group of Facebook friends and put them on a travel site where they are spending more time and generating more ad dollars in a focused area like travel, that is an opportunity ripe for getting revenues back and sharing it.”
Facebook executives argue that Connect will naturally increase traffic on the site and increase ad revenue as a result.
That reluctance is partly born of experience. Last year, Facebook was lambasted for its Beacon advertising program, which some thought failed to properly warn users that their actions on other sites were being shared on Facebook. Some users’ purchases on e-commerce sites, for example, were broadcast to their friends, in some cases spoiling gift plans.
As a result, Facebook executives have been exceedingly circumspect with Connect, introducing it slowly and pitching it as a privacy tool. They argue that it allows users to set their privacy settings once on Facebook and then apply them on other sites.
Facebook has also taken other precautions. According to staff members at the political advocacy group MoveOn.org, which led the charge against Beacon, Facebook executives gave them an early briefing this summer about Connect.
For now, Facebook is also carefully authorizing each partner in the Connect program and reviewing how it will use data on Facebook members and discuss the feature publicly. It plans to allow Web sites to register themselves for Connect, without having to seek approval, in the next few weeks.
When asked about the potential promises and pitfalls of Connect, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, said: “We want to make the experience as lightweight and easy to use as possible. But we also have to make sure that people understand what’s going on and have control over it.”
Executives at the social network MySpace, which has similar goals, are more outspoken in discussing their identification system.
“There are so many important issues to get right,” said Jason Oberfest, a vice president at MySpace. “Consumers need to understand where their data is going and how it’s being used.”
“Then, if we can get the privacy issues right, if it’s totally clear to the user what is happening, there is potential for advertising,” Mr. Oberfest added. “But certainly not without a lot of testing and consideration.”
PALO ALTO, Calif. — Facebook, the Internet’s largest social network, wants to let you take your friends with you as you travel the Web. But having been burned by privacy concerns in the last year, it plans to keep close tabs on those outings.
Facebook Connect, as the company’s new feature is called, allows its members to log onto other Web sites using their Facebook identification and see their friends’ activities on those sites. Like Beacon, the controversial advertising program that Facebook introduced and then withdrew last year after it raised a hullabaloo over privacy, Connect also gives members the opportunity to broadcast their actions on those sites to their friends on Facebook.
In the next few weeks, a number of prominent Web sites will weave this service into their pages, including those of the Discovery Channel and The San Francisco Chronicle, the social news site Digg, the genealogy network Geni and the online video hub Hulu.
Facebook Connect is representative of some surprising new thinking in Silicon Valley. Instead of trying to hoard information about their users, the Internet giants have all announced plans to share at least some of that data so people do not have to enter the same identifying information again and again on different sites.
Supporters of this idea say such programs will help with the emergence of a new “social Web,” because chatter among friends will infiltrate even sites that have been entirely unsociable thus far.
For example, a person might alert his Facebook friends to the fact that he is watching a video on CBS.com and invite them to join him there to watch together and discuss the video as it plays.
“Everyone is looking for ways to make their Web sites more social,” said Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer. “They can build their own social capabilities, but what will be more useful for them is building on top of a social system that people are already wedded to.”
MySpace, Yahoo and Google have all announced similar programs this year, using common standards that will allow other Web sites to reduce the work needed to embrace each identity system. Facebook, which is using its own data-sharing technology, is slightly ahead of its rivals.
Facebook, with 120 million members worldwide, has also been under extra pressure to get its revenue to match its media hype and membership growth. Responding to reports that Facebook was looking for more capital after raising $235 million last year, Ms. Sandberg said she would not rule that out. “There is a lot of interest in investing in us and we are always open to the right financing at the right price,” she said.
The most immediate challenge confronting Facebook is to create an enduring stream of advertising revenue.
A survey last week from the research firm IDC suggested that social networks were a miserable place for advertisers: just 57 percent of all users of social networks clicked on an ad in the last year, and only 11 percent of those clicks led to a purchase, IDC said. And it turns out that marketers are not so interested in advertising on pages filled with personal trivia and relationship updates.
This is where Facebook Connect could help. No money changes hands between Facebook and the sites using Connect, and executives are wary of discussing how it could bring in revenue. But there are some obvious possibilities.
Facebook has detailed information about its users: their real identities, what they like and dislike and whom they associate with. With a member’s permission, it could use that data to help other Web sites deliver more personalized ads. Similarly, those sites could tell Facebook what its users are doing elsewhere, helping to make its own ads more targeted.
“It’s becoming very clear that advertisers don’t know how to advertise on Facebook,” said Charlene Li, an independent consultant and social media analyst. “But if you take a group of Facebook friends and put them on a travel site where they are spending more time and generating more ad dollars in a focused area like travel, that is an opportunity ripe for getting revenues back and sharing it.”
Facebook executives argue that Connect will naturally increase traffic on the site and increase ad revenue as a result.
That reluctance is partly born of experience. Last year, Facebook was lambasted for its Beacon advertising program, which some thought failed to properly warn users that their actions on other sites were being shared on Facebook. Some users’ purchases on e-commerce sites, for example, were broadcast to their friends, in some cases spoiling gift plans.
As a result, Facebook executives have been exceedingly circumspect with Connect, introducing it slowly and pitching it as a privacy tool. They argue that it allows users to set their privacy settings once on Facebook and then apply them on other sites.
Facebook has also taken other precautions. According to staff members at the political advocacy group MoveOn.org, which led the charge against Beacon, Facebook executives gave them an early briefing this summer about Connect.
For now, Facebook is also carefully authorizing each partner in the Connect program and reviewing how it will use data on Facebook members and discuss the feature publicly. It plans to allow Web sites to register themselves for Connect, without having to seek approval, in the next few weeks.
When asked about the potential promises and pitfalls of Connect, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, said: “We want to make the experience as lightweight and easy to use as possible. But we also have to make sure that people understand what’s going on and have control over it.”
Executives at the social network MySpace, which has similar goals, are more outspoken in discussing their identification system.
“There are so many important issues to get right,” said Jason Oberfest, a vice president at MySpace. “Consumers need to understand where their data is going and how it’s being used.”
“Then, if we can get the privacy issues right, if it’s totally clear to the user what is happening, there is potential for advertising,” Mr. Oberfest added. “But certainly not without a lot of testing and consideration.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
