By Ken Liebeskind
HOUSTON --AlamoheightsSA, a Tex-Mex broadband cybernovela that debuted this week, is using product placement as a key advertising vehicle, with opportunities that are unique to the medium and different from TV.
“When you offer product placement in an online environment, you can give advertisers detailed metrics for viewership,” said Eric Weymueller, the show’s producer. “We can tell them how many times it’s seen with geographic IP information.”
Alamo Heights SA Holdings, Houston, TX, the company that produced the show in association with El Mundo Entertainment and zyntroPICS, secured a deal with YumDrop, Worcester, MA, to feature lingerie from Yumdrop.com in the series. Characters in the show wear the lingerie, with traditional ad elements like pre-rolls and post-rolls used to promote a discount code that can be used to purchase the lingerie. Viral videos are also being used at MySpace.com to show the lingerie and promote sales, with actors from the show promoting the lingerie to their fan bases at MySpace.
Another product placement deal was reached with Mad Croc Brands, Houston, TX, for Mad-Croc Energy Gum. Packages of the gum appear in the foreground element in a couple of scenes, Weymueller said. The gum also appears in the viral videos, with the lingerie models chewing it.
A third product placement deal involves La Playa Beverages, Houston, TX, with characters drinking its Deep Sea Vodka and Deep Sea Rum.
The metrics Weymueller refered to are being shared with Next Medium, the Los Angeles-based product placement brokerage firm, which is repping product placement deals for Alamo Heights. “We’ll be able to demonstate the metrics from the pilot episodes,” Weymueller said. The show is being targeted to females 18-30.
The first four episodes, from six to nine minutes long, can be viewed here. They will also be available at Internet TV and film networks Brightcove, Guba and VEOH, which will sell pre-roll, post-roll and mid-roll ads. Twelve episodes will be released by December 15, with 30 more planned for next year, Weymueller said.
Viewers can watch the episodes any time. “We’ll leave them up for six months and viewers can watch one episode or five at once,” Weymueller said. “It’s like how audiences interact with YouTube. We’re applying that logic to episodic and dramatic content.”
The cybernovela tells the story of two Hispanic families who run a lingerie business in San Antonio with a factory in Monterrey, Mexico. The program will be available in Spanish and English, which presents another opportunity for advertisers. “We can do interesting things, running different ads in English and Spanish,” said Jonathan Cobb, CEO of Kiptronic, the Podcast ad insertion firm. The episodes will run as Podcasts and on IPTV, Digital Cable and Mobile TV, as well as broadband.
Weymueller’s plan for product placement is to secure deals with “a handful of major brands, six per season,” he said. “The goal is to keep it minimal and make sure they work well with the content.”
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads — essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More