Big Music Companies in Negotiations to Form Hulu-Like Site

Big Music Companies in Negotiations to Form Hulu-Like Site

The Music Companies versus YouTube debacle continues to unravel one bit at at time. Now, Silicon Alley Insider is reporting that Warner, Universal, Sony and others are in talks to create their own Hulu-like site for music videos.

The music labels are “only” making a max of $25,000 per month off of ad revenues from YouTube. But that’s only half the story. The real money is made from a pay-per-play licensing deal.

To be making this kind of direct money off of music videos, which have only been used as a marketing tool up to this point, is a big shift in the music industry.

Universal makes tens of millions on YouTube and they expect to make even more next year. Overall, they expect to make $100 million next year from all of their agreements with various sites.

Since Hulu keeps NBC content on just two sites - Hulu and NBC.com, why would Universal want to restrict their offering to just one site?

Pulling from the world’s largest online video site means less exposure to millions of people. YouTube had 100 million unique visitors in October. Those visitors are concert-goers and merchandise-buyers.

Another factor is how YouTube is no longer just a video streaming site, but a bonafied search engine. YouTube is starting to pass Yahoo in searches conducted. On an anecdotal note, my son conducts searches via YouTube frequently. He hates reading; watching video is a much easier way for him to learn.

Bailing on YouTube would be pulling an entire, effective marketing channel. So, here’s my final warning to the music companies. The numbers speak for themselves.

AOL.com Homepage Ad, Traffic, and Time Spent on Site Stats Up Since Relaunch

AOL.com Homepage Ad, Traffic, and Time Spent on Site Stats Up Since Relaunch

AOL has some good news regarding their homepage since they relaunched in late October.

The click-through rate for the primary 300×250 ad banner increased 30% in November. Unique visitors and daily visitors grew by 13% and the minutes spent on the page increased by 29%.

“This week, the new homepage was rolled out to all AOL.com users, so we anticipate that our consumer usage numbers will continue to grow in the coming year,” said Lynda Clarizio, President of Platform-A. “Even in a tough economy, advertisers are finding ways to maximize their returns on investment, and our AOL.com homepage ad units have proven that consumers will respond positively to brand messaging within a new, highly customized consumer environment.”

Preparing for the Worst: Bad Online Economic Data Just in Time for Black Friday

Preparing for the Worst: Bad Online Economic Data Just in Time for Black Friday

It’s the day before Thanksgiving, where you show up at the office, but you’re really thinking about tomorrow’s good meal. You’ve worked hard to set up those search marketing campaigns to run strong on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

So, I really hate to bring you the bad news, but keeping it from you would be a disservice.

Let’s just rip off the bandaid.

First up, eMarketer has lowered its projections for online advertising spending for 2009. The new growth number is 8.9%, down from 14.5% projected in August. They’re also expecting a long recovery, projecting 2010 growth to be just 10.9%. In five years, things will still be slower on the uptake (than in recent years). Projections for 2013 growth are at 13.5%. Silver lining: some of the tapering off is likely due to market saturation and not just the economy.

Next, eBay’s traffic is declining. In January of 2007, eBay saw 62 million unique visitors. Last month, they saw just 49 million. Sure, not all of that was due to the economy, but dipping below 50 million can’t be good for eBay.

I saved the worst for last. comScore has released data showing that online consumer spending for the first 23 days of November was down 4% from last year. That’s not a slow down in growth people, that’s flat out shrinkage.

But I’m not a total Scrooge. Unemployment numbers were better than expected this week. And at least one Slate columnist explains why fears of another Great Depression could be overblown (let’s hope he’s right!).

As we overdose on turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie, let us not forget the ultimate strategy for marketing, business and life in general: Hope for the best but prepare for the worst.

Related Reading:
Selling SEO During an Economic Downturn
E-commerce Growth Slows to Just 1% in October 2008
Online Advertising Networks Struggle As Industry Growth Slows

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