While Hollywood seems to have no effective weapon against online piracy, one mainland online advertising agency has introduced a new sponsorship model that allows free legal downloads of movies. However, users are forced to watch the sponsor’s advertising message before they can view a movie.
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Movie Downloads Free if You Watch an Ad First
Frederick Yeung
8 October 2008
While Hollywood seems to have no effective weapon against online piracy, one mainland online advertising agency has introduced a new sponsorship model that allows free legal downloads of movies. However, users are forced to watch the sponsor’s advertising message before they can view a movie.
Click To See Media, a mainland-based online video ad agency and content provider, has rolled out a successful business model for online video downloads, generating revenue through sponsorship deals.
“We received the exclusive online copyright to the Chinese blockbuster Red Cliff earlier this year, and then we sealed a deal that allowed advertisers to insert their video clips into the download file,” Click To See’s chief commercial officer, Stewart Li, told Media Eye.
Mr Li said Click To See had a system called interactive visual media, using technology that could detect viewers’ habits, such as the frequency of watching, and the location of the viewers.
“As the users download the file from the internet, we can update the advertising message on the file to bring the latest promotional message of our clients to viewers,” he said.
Viewers cannot fast-forward or skip the video advertisements already inserted into the file.
Click To See has distributed the legal online file of Red Cliff to several portals, such as verycd.com and Xunlei.com. The official online version of Red Cliff recorded more than two million downloads in the first month.
Click To See is backed by venture capitalists including Hollywood studio Walt Disney’s Steamboat Venture.
The fight against illegal downloads of its copyright movies is at the top of the company’s agenda, and it has lined up a team of lawyers to monitor online activities.
“We monitor the sources or the origin of illegal files being put on the internet. Once we find the online copies are not provided by us, we will call the police or telecoms firms to cut the internet account immediately,” Mr Li said.
He told Media Eye that the firm’s anti-piracy action was successful when compared with the fate of other Hollywood blockbusters on the mainland. For example, a search for the movie Kung Fu Panda generated several illegitimate versions, while for Red Cliff only legal versions were found.
The company had already ordered at least seven mainland video-sharing sites to remove illegal files of Red Cliff.
Ad spending drying up
The global financial turmoil is expected to set back the local advertising industry as companies start to tighten their budgets this quarter.
According to admanGo, an advertising monitoring firm, advertising spending before the Olympics achieved 11 per cent growth when compared with the same period last year. However, industry watchers now believe that full-year advertising spending will remain flat, with the fourth quarter under particular pressure.
“Some of our clients have cut spending in this quarter, and some have no campaigns,” said Tsang Kam-keung, the chief executive of Group M Hong Kong, a media agent.
Mr Tsang said the fourth quarter used to be the peak season of the year, with advertisers pouring money into marketing to boost sales before Christmas.
But this year could be a nasty one, as clients from banking and finance to the food and beverage sectors cut spending owing to the weak market sentiment and the negative impact from the melamine food contamination crisis.
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