MTV Archive

Back in November MTV partnered with Clearspring on widget distribution. Today MTV has announced a new partnership with Panache which will bring new, measurable online video ads to MTV shows. Panache provides a video advertising platform that allows for the creation and tracking of online video ad units. The ads will be streamed inside of the videos.

Some of the sites included in the partnership are CMT, MTV, Nick and VH1. Nada Stirratt, Executive Vice President, Digital Advertising, MTVN said, “Panache enables us to offer marketers additional tools to reach their consumers through unique and engaging video ad formats.”

It will be interesting to see how far online video ads and media companies are willing to go this year with the reports that overall online spend will be down.

MTV and Clearspring have announced a new distribution partnership today that will allow MTV to have their widgets shared via the Clearspring network. Today’s snnouncement comes a week after Clearspring refreshed their launchpad widget service. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

MTV will provide show- and media-related content in widget form and fans of the content can grab a widget and place it on their blog or social network page. MTV will also look to monetize the widgets as well.

By creating the set of widgets, MTV hopes to get tons of free advertising by getting users to distribute their ads for them.

NY-based Thumbplay has announced a partnership with MTV today to manage its mobile personalization offerings for several MTV properties including: MTV, MTV2, MTV Hits, MTV Jams and MTV Tr3s.

Thumbplay noted regarding the partnership, "(We) will power personalized content for MTV Mobile, including ringtones, applications, games, wallpapers and more. Fans will now enjoy the flexibility to purchase MTV-branded content a la carte or via subscription-based credits. In addition to expanded choice, MTV fans will also enjoy an online content locker that automatically backs-up purchased items to their account. MTV will promote the new service with marketing on-air, online and via MTV Mobile’s WAP sites. "

In our analysis of mobile monetization, we noted that Thumbplay has revenues in excess of $100 million a year. Earlier this year MTV partnered with Mzinga on mobile content distribution.

MTV, Nickelodeon and Family World have announced plans to build a variety of virtual worlds over the next year. The initial worlds will include SpongeBob SquarePants along with new worlds MonkeyWorld and World of Neopia. The company noted that the new worlds will be developed out of Nickelodeon Kids and Family Group’s Virtual World Studios with the goal of launching new worlds each year.

The World of Neopia will build on the Neopets brand and game. The Neopets brand will also launch an Adobe AIR desktop application called PetPetPet Habitats.

The Nickelodeon brand currently has more than 5,000 games in their portfolio and comScore reports more than 20 million monthly game players.

MTV has announced a partnership this morning with Mywaves to deliver content from the MTV networks on basically any mobile device. The site is ad supported and will initially feature content from VH1, Spike, and GameTrailers with more MTV networks adding content over time.

It looks like VH1′s "On This Day in Music" will be the first clip available on the mobile site. This gives marketers an even more broad ad buy with MTV. Financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed. Also not mentioned is whether users of this new service will also be hit with marketing messages for the main Mywaves service.

Check out our discussion of the long tail of video including more information on Mywaves.

MTV/Nickelodeon have announced that they are acquiring the Babunga.com network of parenting sites and will integrate them into the Nickelodeon ParentsConnect brand. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Mediaweek has some additional notes regarding the deal.

The deal includes a variety of sites including Babunga’s top sites: babynamesworld.com, 3dpregnancy.com and wikiparenting.com. comScore reports that Babynamesworld.com is one of the most popular pregnancy websites and is the world’s top baby-naming website, reaching 1.1 million unique visitors monthly.

Having been in the moms online marketing space for the majority of my career, it could very well be the best place to be outside of porn. Good ad rates, strong consumer brands with large budgets, users who click ads and interact with brands. What other categories can offer this?

As an aside, BurstMedia recently launched a moms ad network – will this deal affect their ability to close ad deals?

MTV Networks is announcing a new batch of online video distribution partners for its shows today. The full lineup of partners (bold are new today): Dailymotion, GoFish, imeem, MeeVee and Veoh, AOL, Bebo, Comcast’s Fancast, Joost and MSN.

"We believe in a targeted approach to online video syndication, which means working with select partners who value our content and have the ability to build deep and interactive experiences around it," said Greg Clayman, Executive Vice President, Digital Distribution and Business Development, MTVN.

All of MTVN’s partner sites will carry individual channels for each participating MTVN brand, streaming ad-supported video clips free to the consumer. Like MTVN’s own branded websites, the partner sites will enable global audiences to embed MTVN clips on their own blogs, social networking pages or websites. The key is in the embedding – this is the power of distribution for their advertising which can help the video clips go viral.

Today’s announcement comes a month after the announcement of the Digital Fusion advertising group within MTV Networks.

MTV Networks is a unit of Viacom (NYSE: VIA).