MTV Hopes To Make Up For Its Digital Deficiencies in Volume

from the too-many-sites dept

Wed, Mar 7th 2007 9:50pm — Joseph Weisenthal

Back in January, Yahoo announced a new initiative dubbed Brand Universe whereby the company would create 100 separate sites, each one focusing on a different popular brand, such as the Wii or the TV show Lost. We noted, at the time, that the thinking behind this move wasn't all that different from the thinking behind splogs. Basically, it seemed, Yahoo was just looking at a way to build out more pages on which it could run advertising, without creating any new or compelling content. But it seems that this idea may be taking hold elsewhere. MTV's struggles online have been well documented, and now the network looks like it's taking a page out of Yahoo's playbook. It plans to put out thousands of sites based on its television programming, giving viewers many chances to come across its content. In some ways, MTV seems to be going a step further than Yahoo, as it's talking about letting users do things like re-edit its shows. Still, it's not clear what the appeal is behind this volume approach to putting content online. Why does any network need thousands or even hundreds of individual sites? Perhaps the companies are looking jealously at sites like YouTube and MySpace, and the millions of advertising pages that they have. But all that breadth was created by users, and it's all based around a basic core. There's no way to replicate this in a centralized manner, and such a strategy seems bound to result in a big, confusing mess.

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7 Comments

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Jon Henshaw, 7 Mar 2007 @ 10:27pm

Long-Tail Fishing
The technique really is a combination of long-tail searching and fishing with many different fishing poles and lures. If they can present each site as unique and worthwhile, all while being highly targeted, it may be a great success. Even more, MTV may decide to bring all of those sites under one roof one day (under mtv.com), which will -- in theory -- boost their site's performance in organic search engine results.
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kuronoir, 8 Mar 2007 @ 3:23am

any one can
what your talking about anyone can do. content delivery from one source to multiple sites is an easy thing. many tools (we use geodocs.com) can do that and keep multiple sites 'fresh and targeted'. after yo realize it one system doing the work (not hundreds of html monkeys) 5, 20 or 1000 sites are easy, so why not?
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thecaptain, 8 Mar 2007 @ 4:54am

Its web spam really...
Like kuronoir said, 5,20 or 1000 sites are relatively easy to put up when you have the resources (its all a matter of storage at first, and that comes cheap...bandwith can be adjusted once you know which of the 1000 sites end up profitable so that's not a huge issue for a large corporation).

Its a shotgun approach. They put out a ton of sites for whatever, and if even 1 hits and becomes big (and rakes in advertiser dough) then it pays off the rest of the system, its the same principle (almost) as spam with the exception that its not an intrusion because its a site people would go TO rather than a flood of email they have to fight off.

Personally, I think its better than some marketing schemes I've seen, more power to 'em.
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Trouble Maker, 8 Mar 2007 @ 5:19am

two cents worth
MTV? I thought that went down the tubes in the early '90s.

Is the "Public" (slack jawed, glazed eyed, mindless masses) still watching that crap?
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Sanguine Dream, 8 Mar 2007 @ 5:52am

A pot of boiling pasta...
Just throw it against the wall til something sticks. It's not some new clever marketing strategy. MTV is just going to create several sites (that I bet won't mention they are owned by MTV in any other place than the disclaimer) and hope people start using them. i just hope they don't try to add social networking to it somehow.
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Overcast, 8 Mar 2007 @ 7:07am

Maybe if MTV tried playing... umm, Music Videos - instead of stupid game shows, people might watch, lol.

In the 80's I was a MTV addict - they changed too much for my tastes. It just got stupid.

So really wasn't much thought of ever really using their website, either.
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jafar, 24 Mar 2007 @ 9:26am

jafar20
jafar20
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