The media agency Digitas is doing its part to ferry more money into the Web video business. It expects to book about 10 new advertising deals stemming from the “NewFront” Web video showcase it hosted along with its visit to the Cannes Lion International Advertising Festival, both in early June.
Buoyed by that success, the agency will now bring a smaller version of the NewFront to its regional offices and advertisers around the country starting this week. Joining Digitas in the mini road show will be DECA, EQAL, Next New Networks, blip.tv, CBS Interactive, Creative Artists Agency, Reveille and others, said John McCarus, VP and ground director for brand content at the Third Act, the branded entertainment arm of the media agency. Most of those companies were also presenters at the NewFront.
The road show kicks off July 14 in Chicago. For the next two weeks the agency plans to visit its offices and clients in Boston, Detroit, Atlanta and Stanford, Conn., McCarus said.
“The agency is very serious about the digital content space as a new vehicle for advertising,” he said. “We have made an investment in this and we are doing everything we can to connect the stars in the content creation community with clients that understand the space and have an appetite.”
Digitas has been one of the agencies leading the online video charge. It’s already inked deals for clients like Starburst, Kraft and Holiday Inn Express for content distributed through Web partners like MSN, BBE and Next New Networks.
The NewFront event is the agency’s nod to the television upfront buying season in the spring when TV networks present their new programming slates to Madison Avenue buyers.
The June NewFront was attended by about 550, including Digitas staffers, advertisers and Web video producers. Advertisers were in the areas of consumer packaged goods, health care, beverage, financial services and travel, McCarus said. Digitas brands speaking on panels at the event included IBM, Miller Coors and Kraft.
The deals coming out of the NewFront are also a sign that these sorts of well-planned and well-backed emerging media upfronts can indeed bring real dollars into online video. Digitas also attended the OnFrontNYC also in early June.
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Show us the money. This seems to be more grandstanding than anything else. Who is actually making money from web series?
In this case, I think we’ll find that the Web sites/distributors/content producers Digitas books these 10 deals for will be making money. It’s real money from real advertisers…
What’s good for one is good for all…I hope. Hopefully, the indie’s will eventually benefit from this, although we all know how great trickle down economics works. I imagine a lot of content producers will be contacting Digitas.
“It expects to book about 10 new advertising deals stemming from the “NewFront” Web video showcase it hosted along with its visit to the Cannes Lion International Advertising Festival, both in early June.”
How many have actually been booked?
Who exactly are “Real Mom Productions and Stun Creative”
These seem more like product placement infomercials than real shows. Perhaps you can give us some background on the production companies involved with your “inked deals.
So, let us take a closer look at views for the “momlifeshow”
http://i28.tinypic.com/25kklxf.png
Is it distributed anywhere else other than youtube? Can you honestly say that is commercially viable? Or, as i said are these basically paid infomercials and not really web series?
Now, lets look at the web site for “Stun Creative”
http://www.stuncreative.com
Hummmmmmmm…….. time for a closer look.
@modelmotion Re: Mom Life series, they put out a release saying they had over 40M impressions for the series, which I believe was through syndication on various sites. They don’t promote the YouTube vids apparently.
“Launched last November, ‘Jen and Barb’ features 43 episodes of four-to-five minute segments on ‘life in the trenches of motherhood.’ The show has two major sponsors for all 43 episodes, including Kraft, which put up a ‘television-sized’ budget, according to Matt Wasserlauf, founder and CEO of BBE.
Over the first 30 episodes, “Jen and Barb” garnered over 40 million impressions, and its average audience is over 1.3 million impressions per episode. Best of all, the show was profitable the day it went live.”
So Stun is “branded content”…… interesting….thats what it looks like. I think it is a stretch to call this stuff “web series” but I suppose that depends on your definition. It is certainly a long way from our original vision.
http://blog.digitalcontentprod.....d-content/
Well, it’s basically semantics. Brands partner with episodic web content all over the place.
I think what you’re hitting on is the difference between top-down and bottom-up web series. The indies like The Guild and LG15 grew up without any brands until they later integrated them in when the audience was there. That’s bottom-up.
These branded content/entertainment series come from the brand (or agency) down to the audience. Sure, they fire a bunch of duds amongst a few hits, but so do the indies.
I think when you use terms like “new web reality series” to describe what is essentially branded content it is a bit misleading. Clearly we all know where the money is today but this is not what most consider a web series.
I guess now we need to find a new word if you are going to use the term in this context.
“Well, it’s basically semantics. Brands partner with episodic web content all over the place.”
- product placement is totally different from branded content. Katemodern was a web series with product placement. IT WAS NOT AN INFOMERICAL.
“These branded content/entertainment series”
- seems like a more accurate term for them.
Have you independently verified the BBE numbers?
http://www.bbe.com
I assume that they are one of the companies that “guarantees views” up front. Right?
Here is a bio for Matt Wasserlauf
http://www.imediaconnection.co.....spx?ID=122
What else do you know about BBE and do you know where and how they get their “views” for these shows.
I am having difficulty believing this show legitimately averaged 1.3 million “impressions” (is that the same as episode views?) per episode. In a later June 30 mediaweek article ( http://tinyurl.com/carlsaganmath ), they say the show has gotten 45 million views over 42 eps, so the avg dropped, but that’s still very big numbers.
Its difficult to find proof of such a large audience watching the show from the low number of comments on the show’s site, the show’s myspace (which uses youtube embeds, btw), and the lack of any commentary i can find from mommy bloggers.
Nevertheless, if they do have those views for this content, more power to them.
Digitas has also supported independent Web producers. Last year it booked deals for its client Starburst with video bloggers on YouTube including Rhett and Link, David Jr., Katers17, and David Choi. So the agency is booked both brand-led deals and supporting existing indies. http://www.tvweek.com/news/200.....hows_q.php
Also, Stun Creative produced the Web series The Writers Room, which ran on Crackle. So while Stun does branded content it ALSO creates original Web shows, like the Writers Room.
Is their any financial relationship between Tubefilter and Digitas. If so, I think that would be relevant to the objectivity of this article. Right?
“Stun does branded content it ALSO creates original Web show”
- so I take it that you agree there is a clear difference between branded content shows/series and web shows/series
- perhaps you should keep to that distinction in your articles and it would avoid confusion.
*I’m not sure I’m following some of this conversation. Seems any content that is released on a regular schedule can be considered a series. I agree it’s confusing. I think of terms of scripted vs unscripted. Is it being suggested that these deals are more for unscripted reality type programming?
*As for impressions/views/hits etc etc. I think that’s the reason why there is such a hunger for metrics. Although I personally feel these numbers fail to take into account the word of mouth advertising can generate, in the form of retweeting on Twitter, posting on forums, comments, et al. The numbers are needed to keep everyone honest more than anything else.
Daisy: While it’s admirable they made those deals a year ago, I’m not exactly what we can infer from that? Most of what was happening a year ago is not happening today. It certainly seems with this push their focus is on studio produced content.
Web video ad deals come in all shapes and sizes — some for branded content, some for already created content. The reality is for most Web video content, ad dollars of some sort — be they integration, post-roll, overlay, brought to you by — make the show possible because they pay the bills. Consumers watch branded content, indie shows, shows without advertising. And when advertisers spend money against Web video, it can be in a variety of deals.
Anthony:
Any content released regularly can be considered a series, that is correct.
Series can be drama, comedy, scripted, non-fiction, branded content, etc.
Re metrics: yes there is a hunger for them because they are reported in different ways by different sites. Most everyone in the business recognizes the need for better metrics.
Re: these deals — they were booked from the most recent New Front, just ONE month ago. Not one year ago. We will continue to track the specifics of the deals as they are made available.
I wonder if ad dollars for web tv are a lagging or leading indicator of the economy? Anyone know?
Daisy: Sorry I got confused, I was referring to the article you linked about Starburst that you said was from last year.
You used the term “web series” which has a very specific meaning. It is not normally used for infomercials……web or other wise. If you are going to continue to use the word “web series” in this context then it essentially becomes worthless and we will have to find a new word. Calling some stuff “branded content series”….. for this infomercial stuff would be more helpful.
It is not the word “series” that is in question her. It is the term “web series”. Do you call TV infomercials TV series…….NO….. you call them what they are…infomercials. It might not fit your neat little world of “spin” or “hype” but this blog is supposed to be journalism and not a platform for companies to simply dupe readers with their press releases.
Your points are very good, but just because a show may originate from a brand does not make it an infomercial. Crocs for instance created a Web show “Travels by Foot” about visiting different cities and the videos were about just that — visiting the cities. They weren’t infomercials about Crocs.
If it walks like a duck and it talks like a duck …….then it is a duck……..or in this case an infomercial. Don’t kid yourself…. we know it when we see it. Now if some company can produce an honest web series and do it right then all power too them and they have earned that title. But please, do not dress a wolf up in sheeps clothing because we are quite capable of seeing thru the fraud.
Now don’t get me wrong. If a branded series can be done well thats fine. Or if an honest web series can make money…….. and I believe they can then that is fine. But when it comes to this type of journalism you do the industry a disservice by trying to pull the blanket over our optical receptors. We do know the difference.
Typically ad dollars are one of the first things to get cut during a recession and won’t return until signs of a recovery are in place.
i don’t have a problem with branded webseries as a concept. most of them have been terrible (what was that one in 07 with the feminine product emblem on EVERYTHING?, or the one clorox did?) but they are still “web series” in the broad sense of that ill-defined term.
Just wanted to say thanks for all the comments! Maybe next we should do a piece that defines all the different types of Web series…
I think the term “branded series” does help differentiate the product from what we have come to know as a “web series”. However, again, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck…….we know exactly what it is. This article mixes up the two genres in what appears to be an attempt to create hype for the industry. Infomercials might be doing well and there might be some new web series on the horizon but lets be clear about what we are talking about here.
To be clear, the Digitas deals aren’t all for branded series. We will track and report the specific ones as we learn more. But the ad deals will likely be for a mix of content.
here’s a link to a review of the show i was thinking of earlier, Coastal Dreams:
http://blog.rapidsea.com/2007/.....actual-tv/
“Today a new word has joined us here on earth: “padvertisement” (with the British pronunciation of course). It means “an advertisement for a product using video as the medium along with a badly disguised aura of entertainment.” NBC and Stayfree maxipads helped spawn this one with their new online-only show “Coastal Dreams.” “
“To be clear, the Digitas deals aren’t all for branded series. We will track and report the specific ones as we learn more. But the ad deals will likely be for a mix of content.”
To be clear, can you clarify the article by saying how many are for branded products and how many are for genuine web series.
If you look at the early history of broadcast television, ‘branded entertainment’ was the rule, not the exception. Then as now, I wouldn’t suggest that ‘The Colgate Comedy Hour’, or Ikea’s ‘Easy to Assemble’, not be classified as television shows simply because they were financed entirely by one advertiser.
Broadcast television shows like ‘Burn Notice’ and ‘Heros’ are brand vehicles as much as a web series like ‘Mom Life,’ or ‘Coastal Dreams.’ If you’ve ever been in a writer’s room on a broadcast television show, you would know that the writers are tasked with inserting product and brands directly into a show’s narrative each week.
The difference is that broadcast television has had over 60 years of practice to perfect the integration of advertising into the television watching experience.
I’m very pleased that a major agency has embraced the medium and is helping to bring brands into the fold. It will take time for the relationship between advertisers and creators to mature, but we have to start somewhere.
And just in case what I said was confusing — we definitely don’t need a separate word for shows that are sponsored by brands.
Brady, I think you hit on an important issue here. Branding is everything in a consumer culture. When I look around, I see people shop at big business brands while the same time complaining about big business. “Branding” roots into the culture. However, I think there’s lots of creative ways you can incorporate a sponsor’s brand into a dramatic show. Everything depends on how much ‘incorporation’ is required to secure enough funding to produce the show. And without a lot of money, it’s hard to sharpen the edges on your show to meet the demands for higher quality content. I’m willing to bet we’ll start seeing many new talented faces emerging through this new medium as it matures and expands.
I’m not surprised by Digitas the news behind this tour. They’re not reading tea leaves. The Upfronts this year are still in limbo, I believe. There were stories around the networks reluctance to reveal anything about their new line-ups. It has them wondering. If it’s disappointing, Digitas will be in the right position. Either way, it’s still a risk. Make a show you love and believe in, and you’ll probably come out a winner.
Here’s a good link about the upfronts.
http://www.medialifemagazine.c.....uzzler.asp
If you look at the early history of broadcast television, ‘branded entertainment’ was the rule, not the exception.
— we are not talking about web series sponsored by brands…..we are talking about infomercials being called “web series”. The first soaps were sponsored by brands but they WERE shows….not infomercials. There is a big difference. Once again if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck ….then most likely it is a duck.
So let us not contaminate the word “web series” We all know what it should mean and if it does not fit your neat little model to hype financing of fully branded infomercials then that is just too bad.
You are journalists….. not hired guns for Digitas. Or am I wrong about that too?
That’s why we have great shows like Venus Spa!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIQwtDISbs0
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