Motion.TV's founder discusses creative ways to integrate brands into the entertainment experience, and shares his work on an immersive promotion for USA Network's hit debut series, "Psych."
In 1995 Justin Woo founded interactive advertising agency Apollo Interactive. He built the agency on the vision that online marketing would become the most efficient, measurable and meaningful form of communication between businesses and consumers. Under Justin's leadership, Apollo evolved and experienced phenomenal growth while never accepting outside financing. Today, Justin focuses on innovation, analyzing and implementing new strategies and technologies of value to Apollo's clients. In 2005 this focus led Justin to create Motion.TV, an online video community that shares advertising revenue with its users. Justin took some time to chat with iMedia about his company's recent video-based promotion for the USA Network series, "Psych."
Entertainment Spot: Motion.TV is among the new breed of video sites that offer incentives for users to post their videos. Tell us a bit about the Motion.TV service itself. How do users benefit from the service? What distinguishes Motion.TV from other video sharing sites?
Justin Woo: The technology is similar to others in the video space. The main difference is Motion.TV users share in our financial success. Motion.TV shares advertising revenue with its users on a pay for performance model. The better the content -- the more views -- the more money made. We also like to think we have some of the best original content on the web. Motion.TV's model encourages people to create high quality content and also to promote it. Motion.TV also uses referral commissions to encourage users to refer other content creators. A syndication revenue sharing model is also in the works.
Entertainment Spot: User-generated content is starting to experience some backlash, due to its unpredictable nature and the potential for offensive content to be displayed. Where do you stand on these critical issues? Do you monitor the content on your site?
Woo: Backlash? We haven't experienced a backlash yet. In fact, more and more advertisers are looking to explore the space. I think some very high-profile MySpace/YouTube stories have caused the stir you are referring to. We monitor our site daily and remove anything that is offensive or infringes on the IP rights of others. Our users focus on original content instead of uploading music videos, commercials or other copyrighted content.
Entertainment Spot: How do you think marketers can minimize their risk when using this channel in their promotions?
Woo: They need to trust the community site they are partnering with. This channel is never going to be perfect, by its nature, but it can be monitored and moderated. This has been a problem since the internet started… back then, user-generated content was on forums and posting boards… now it is just appears in the form of pictures and videos.
Entertainment Spot: How do you see marketing campaigns that involve user-generated content changing in the near future as a result of some of the high-profile struggles that have occurred?
Woo: User-generated content is not the issue. The smart marketers who want to embrace this phenomenon will find creative ways to integrate their brands into the experience. For example, they may ask users to submit content themed around a product or service and screen out submissions that are offensive, et cetera. You must tow the fine line of moderating too much or too little. You also need to be careful to not make the "content request" too difficult-- an example of this is asking users to make a commercial for your brand rather than asking them to submit content of something they already have… for example, making an iPod commercial versus showing us what you do with your iPod.
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