Marketing Factoids

  • Of those people that recently made consumer electronics purchases in a store, 80 percent visited the store's website first. - Nielsen Online survey source ›
  • V users watch more TV than before (127 hrs, 15 min per month) and also spend 9 percent more time using the internet (26 hrs, 26 min per month) than they did last year source ›
  • Unaided ad awareness for podcasts was an impressive 68% on average (compared with industry benchmarks of 21% for streaming video and 10% for television) source ›
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FEB 28

Video's New Friends†

Social-Networking Sites Ramp Up Original Online Series To Lure Users, Advertisers and Compete With YouTube

Wall Street Journal, February 28, 2008 — College student Zoey Colson joined social-networking Web site Bebo.com last summer for one reason — to watch Bebo's hit video series "KateModern," a mystery show about an art student.

To promote the show, whose first season drew an average of 1.5 million video views per week, Bebo relies on the interaction among the Web site's users. It sends alerts to members to tell them when new episodes are posted. And it allows members to send messages to characters, like the one the 20-year-old Ms. Colson wrote telling Kate's roommate to cheer up when a plot twist didn't go her way.

"You feel like you are part of their world," says Ms. Colson.

Bebo and other social-networking sites like News Corp.'s MySpace are taking the plunge into original Web series at a time when the popularity of online video is surging. The social sites hope to use the shows to attract advertising revenue. More importantly, they are banking on the original content to keep users from fleeing to popular Web sites such as Google Inc.'s YouTube that focus almost exclusively on video.

Category: New Media Marketing
Tags: Bebo, social media, Video

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