MGM this week threw in its hand with YouTube to try to leverage advertising dollars for its back catalog and prepared to show full length films on the site in return for an advertising share.
MGM is controlled by Sony, and owned by Sony and private equity groups, and as such is not involved in so many new initiatives as some of the leading Hollywood studios, but has a huge back catalog of films, many of them still current and of course TV series as well.
The American Gladiator series and classics like The Magnificent Seven are being lined up to play on YouTube for free. We imagine MGM never got an invite to join in with Hulu, the NBC and Fox owned YouTube/iTunes alike web site, which is picking up momentum as a web video route to market with advertising support ‘ effectively a studios controlled YouTube mimic.
In an unrelated story, but along the same lines MTV (part of Viacom) has cut a similar deal with MySpace, the Fox owned social networking service. MySpace now seems technically ready to sell ads against professional video and like YouTube has gone through an exhaustive (but slow) process of ridding itself of unwanted pirated video uploads on the site.
MySpace will use identification software from Auditude to identify whether video clips from users are owned by a television network or are user-generated content, effectively using a music fingerprint to identify video (what pirates can’t change the soundrack?)
Auditude will recognize the pirated upload, label the program and offer advertising against it, and MySpace will kick back revenues to MTV.
All of this is a bit of an about face for MTV, given that its parent Viacom, is still in the middle of a $1 billion legal action against YouTube.
Both of these initiatives however could pale into insignificance if Nokia comes out with a new planned service on the back of its Comes With Music campaign, which bundled unlimited music into the price of a device. It now wants to extend the system to video and games, in a further challenge to Apple iTunes and other would-be kings of the mobile web.
Numerous leaks indicate that Nokia is putting together an unlimited download platform for movies and its N-Gage games titles, with a view to launching this in the first half of 2009, along with some revamped smartphones with enhanced video capabilities and battery life.
Already, one potential partner, Disney ‘ which has been particularly aggressive in pursuing mobile channels for its content ‘ has commented that they would be very interested in partnering for a bundled subscription offer. Nokia’s largest gaming partner, Electronic Arts ‘ which has voiced many doubts about the current N-Gage deals ‘ also told Nokia watchers NokNok this week that they would be ‘supportive’ of an unlimited service, claiming it would raise the profile of the mobile games and push them to a wider audience.
Which would you rather have? Some advertising opportunities and revenue from two relatively new web sites which have yet to fully realize how to monetize their opportunities, or part of the purchase price of every Nokia phone built for video. I know which I’d choose.