Paramount Recognizes That Clips Of Movies Act As Advertising For The Movie Itself

from the what-a-concept dept

It really is amazing how little entertainment industries recognize how clips of their content online promotes the rest of their content. When people talk about scenes in TV shows or movies, it's become quite natural to search for video of those clips to show. Such clips don't take away from the commercial value of the movie or television show, they enhance it -- giving people additional reasons to watch the full version. Yet, rather than recognizing that, you have entertainment firms like Viacom suing YouTube for $1 billion for facilitating such a free marketing tool. However, it appears that not everyone at Viacom is thinking so narrowly. Paramount Pictures, which is owned by Viacom, has now started releasing snippets from its various movies for fans to make use of within Facebook. It's a little silly that it's only on Facebook, but given the lawsuit against YouTube, Paramount execs probably recognized they had to stay away from YouTube. This definitely seems like a good idea, though it's a bit amusing to have a Paramount exec say that this project could become "ad supported" at some point. Does he not realize that the clips are ads themselves?

Also, the article points out that just getting permission to get these clips online is quite difficult, and other studios probably won't follow. A big part of the problem? All the different people who have to give their permission, thanks to ridiculous royalty policies, like the one the TV/movie writer's guild fought for. In other words, just as we predicted, the agreement cutting the writers in on online royalties is making it more difficult for the studios to adapt to the web. When everyone has to give approval and get a cut, you get innovation by committee -- and that rarely works. You almost always get someone who will veto the effort. In fact, it's rather impressive that Paramount was able to get any movie clips up at all.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: advertising, movies, promotions. clips, youtube
Companies: paramount, viacom


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 11 Mar 2008 @ 10:00am

    About Time.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Iron Chef, 11 Mar 2008 @ 10:01am

    Cooking up some inital thoughts

    I came across the VooZoo site late last week and found it interesting and encouraging!

    However, I imagine that it must cost at least 10x more to make-build that VooZoo site than it would be to just settle and get cozy with Larry, Serge, and Eric. Oh well.

    If you keep this up, you may get a Technical Emmy Award. :-)

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    SomeGuy, 11 Mar 2008 @ 10:17am

    "Does he not realize that the clips are ads themselves?"

    That seems to be the fundamental problem in all of this -- movies, music, books. Those are and ever have been products; that's the stuff you sell. Getting them out of that mindset is no simple task.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Tom (profile), 11 Mar 2008 @ 10:37am

    Releasing Snippets

    Gosh and a long time ago I thought they started calling them trailers and showing them on TV to get people interested in going to see the movies!! How silly am I???

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Steven, 11 Mar 2008 @ 11:51am

    I'm confused.

    So short clips of movies on you tube are bad, but when their on a DVD it's so important that I see them they disable the skip button...

    Idiots.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Rekrul, 11 Mar 2008 @ 1:54pm

    Studios pay ridiculous amounts of money to get movies advertised on TV, but take those same ads and distribute them and the same studios will sue to stop it. How messed up is that.

    Advertising should be free from the normal copyright constraints as long as no money is being made and the ad itself isn't changed.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      SomeGuy, 12 Mar 2008 @ 4:57am

      Re:

      Well, you answer your own question right there, I think: as long as no money is being made. That's kind of a dumb qualification to add, I think. Someone somewhere is making money somehow, even if it's just from adviews. Even if it's the trailers that are bringing traffic to your site, should you still have to pay for giving free advertyising to the movies?

      When there's money on the table, everyone will try to find a reason why they should get some of it.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    PaulT (profile), 11 Mar 2008 @ 2:04pm

    Same old, same old...

    I forget the name, but there was a site back in the 90s that consisted of trailers. People would submit the movie trailers, others would rate them and anyone could watch them. Guess what the studios did? Yep, they shut them down.

    Trailers are just collections of movie footage assembled in a way that the marketing men think will entice people into paying for the full product. Yet, somehow, a 3rd party putting this same footage online was "stealing".

    10 years later, the mindset's still there. I could understand to a degree if the full movies were being streamed. But they're not, just the adverts. If somebody from one of the studios could explain to me how a set of footage distributed by a studio is advertising, but another set of footage distributed by a 3rd party is causing a loss, I'd like to hear it.

    Unfortunately, this is just an example of the movie studios following their music industry partners into an early grave. Hopefully they'll realise this before it's too late.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 12 Mar 2008 @ 3:39am

      Re: Same old, same old...

      "If somebody from one of the studios could explain to me how a set of footage distributed by a studio is advertising, but another set of footage distributed by a 3rd party is causing a loss, I'd like to hear it."

      It's quite simple, it's called extreme greed. The studio wants the 3rd party advertisers to ** PAY ** the studio for the privilege of offering them free advertising.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Clare Bolton, 12 Mar 2008 @ 11:39am

    blinkBox offers clips from Paramount - but Warner,

    Hi, in response to Mike Masnick's article on VooZoo, I thought it worth bringing blinkBox to your attention.

    blinkBox has successfully formed studio partnerships with Warner Brothers, Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Aardman Animations and Discovery Networks UK among others. Additional recent content partnerships include those with Raindance and X-Treme Video.

    The Internet is completely changing the way films can be marketed as it provides a unique opportunity to create real time dialogue between the producers of the film, the audience and amongst the audience themselves. By empowering people to participate and evolve the brand of the film, the net result is a far stronger franchise. Active encouragement and reward of contribution gives people a tangible stake in the success of a movie and significantly enhances advocacy to build buzz and awareness.

    blinkBox is an internet service that combines social networking and retailing in one hit. blinkBox offers a range of features which allows interaction with film and TV content. Consumers can play with the content by clipping a scene, adding a message and sending it to a friend’s mobile or PC as a “blink”, and also buy, rent and watch film and TV shows. Blinks are proving to be a popular form of communication and users can create blinks from a catalogue of over 1,000 film and TV programmes from the likes of Scarface, Harry Potter and The Big Lebowski.

    If you'd like more information, please let me know.

    Thanks

    Clare

    link to this | view in chronology ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.