CGM Sites Tempt Brands To Share Control Of Image

The rise in consumer-generated media has presented advertisers with a challenge: How do they effectively participate in social media without overcommercializing the environment or exposing themselves to unsavory situations?More advertisers are asking this question as they attempt to connect with a coveted younger demographic. According to a Pew Internet & American Life Study, more than half of teens are online content creators. MySpace has grown to 50 million members in a little over two years. Sites like MySpace, Facebook and PhotoBucket have between 50 and 90 percent more visitors aged 12 to 24 than the Web as a whole, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. "People want to know where the [youth demographic] is going," said Cory Treffiletti, svp and engagement architect at Carat Fusion, part of the Aegis Group. "This is where they're going."To date, most brand advertisers have treaded carefully in the Wild West of consumer-generated media (CGM) sites. The best-known, like MySpace, still carry the type of freewheeling, sometimes risqué fare that makes brand advertisers skittish, despite that site now being home to 10 percent of all ad space on the Internet, per Nielsen//NetRatings. Other CGM sites like video-sharing service YouTube and picture-sharing site PhotoBucket are among the fastest-growing destinations online. "Where at first it seemed scary, it's gotten too big to ignore," said Dan Buczaczer, director of Reverb, a word-of-mouth unit of Publicis' Starcom MediaVest. Now, a few advertisers are going beyond banner ads on CGM sites to run campaigns that tap into the unique aspects of these communities in the hopes they can spark viral buzz and create brand ambassadors by ceding some control to users. This month, YouTube, which claims it streams 9 million user-submitted videos per day, is running its first-ever advertiser promotion. Matador Records is running a contest on YouTube's homepage for users to create a video for one of its bands, Pretty Girls Make Graves. Users can download the group's MP3, then match it with their own video. Other YouTube users can then comment on the submissions.Kevin Donahue, vp of marketing at YouTube, said the site would move cautiously to introduce brand advertising, looking for innovative programs along the lines of the video-making contest that appeal to big brands."We have traffic that rivals the major portals out there," he said. "When you have that kind of audience and traffic, it makes perfect sense to reach out to the largest advertisers." Additional brands have dipped their toes into YouTube on their own: Nike, Jeep and others have uploaded videos for the YouTube community to watch and give feedback. One Nike video, featuring soccer tricks by Brazilian star Ronaldinho, was recently among the most-watched videos on YouTube; it has garnered nearly 140,000 views in two months. "We're going to create new models around the user experience," said Donahue, who is talking with brand advertisers like Warner Bros. and Virgin about how to highlight their uploaded video content for users. "There's an opportunity to do that because of the ways people interact with content on YouTube."One of the best ways for advertisers to engage audiences at these sites is to "arm them with tools to evangelize your brand," said Treffiletti. Teen social network Tagged.com, which just received $7 million in venture backing, is integrating brand advertisers with interactive features. It worked last month with Buena Vista Pictures to promote Annapolis by including the film's stars in its "Celebrity Look-a-likes" section, letting users upload digital photos, vote on who resembled the stars and send them to friends.While such deep engagement is attractive to some advertisers, CGM is not for everyone—at least, not yet, according to Eric Valk Peterson, vp of media services at Omnicom's Agency.com. The potential legal liability from users posting defamatory or illegal content makes programs burdensome, developing custom campaigns is time-consuming and giving up message control is a real concern, he said. "People are very aware of commercial exploitation in this space," he said. "It needs to be done well, or you better not do it at all." Reverb's Buczaczer warns the downsides of going the freewheeling route with a brand are real. "It could be so powerful if it works, but the scary part is you could be hung out to dry," he said.To guard against that, some brands are filtering consumer content by setting clear guidelines. In a push late last year, New York Web agency Deep Focus created a campaign for music video channel Fuse Networks that let indie bands upload their music videos. It screened the videos before they were posted, in order to make sure no objectionable videos appeared. Over 250 bands submitted videos, and 24,000 users have added Fuse as a "friend," meaning they have linked to the Fuse page from their space. "If you put some kind of parameters around what you're trying to get the audience to do, it can work for pretty much everyone," said Ian Schafer, CEO of Deep Focus. This notion is still a bit too radical for most advertisers, according to Valla Vakili, a creative director at Yahoo!, which bought several community sites in the last year, including Flickr, social bookmarking site Del.icio.us and group events calendar Upcoming.org. "We're all being pushed [by advertisers] to go beyond the banner, but the question is, 'What is the value?'" he said. "I think we're all struggling with that."

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CGM Sites Tempt Brands To Share Control Of Image

Brian Morrissey

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