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Category: Advertising

CRTC Crashes While Looking Through the Rearview Window

Published May 7, 2009

By Joy Boyson

“Hulu.ca”… Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

This particular post started out as a rant.  It evolved.  In the process I realized that, as a media consumer, I’m a temperamental 2-year old with ADD.  I have no patience.  I want my content the way I want it, and I want it now.

No hulu.com for Canadians

At Christmas I received some iTunes gift cards.  I figured I’d be an honest consumer and go buy some content. After surfing the Canadian Apple Store site, I felt discouraged… Where were the commercial-free “Prison Break” episodes that I’d gone looking for?  And why were they readily available on the American Apple Store site, where I couldn’t get them, alongside countless hours of other commercial-free entertainment.

A quick Google search brought up numerous ways to get those same episodes, but I was feeling lazy and wasn’t in the mood to forge my mailing address or buy a fresh US-based gift card on eBay. I simply wanted to redeem my existing Canadian-bought gift cards and be entertained.

Around the same time, I found that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) was surprisingly relevant in how it brings new content to market. On the Canadian Apple Store site, I could buy and download “Hockey Night in Canada” games and episodes of “MVP: The Secret Lives of Hockey Wives”.

I could also watch streaming episodes of the Canadian “Dragon’s Den” on CBC.ca for the price of watching one or two quick Rogers commercials.  Seemed fair. 

However, I didn’t want to pay to download any commercial-free CBC content since the publicly funded broadcaster already gets my tax dollars to send me its signal and its programs for ‘free’. 

Besides, where were my “Prison Break” episodes?  I had money (the gift cards); I wanted to buy.  Another quick Google search reveals how to shield your I.P. to watch those same episodes but I wanted to stay away from the grey-market of 21st century media consumption.  Why was it so hard? 

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The “Rights Stuff” Key to the Future of Online Ads

Published November 13, 2008

Ringtones
by Mark Sherman

While the interactive revolution is here, the effective use of iconic media content on the web remains in its adolescence.

Over the past decade, we’ve seen the type of content used in online ad campaigns rapidly evolve from mostly static copy with a few graphics or images, to include more dynamic media such as flash animation and most recently, pop music and video. But it’s all just the beginning.

Brands are increasingly looking for ways to break through a cluttered online environment and to figure out how to attract consumers to their message rather than the traditional model of simply pushing the message out to them. As brands focus on drawing people in, iconic content – most notably music and celebrity content – is playing a significant role.

Music in particular, is starting to make noise online.  Music has the power to move, inspire and excite, and thus advertisers are harnessing pop’s powerful potential more frequently than ever. While the commissioning of original jingles for ads is plummeting, licensing music from established and emerging artists is soaring.

‘Synchronisation’ licence income – that is, income from the use of music in advertisements, films and games – is a growing revenue stream for the recording industry.  For example, in the UK, the home of some major record labels, income from sync licensing has grown by 20.1% over the past year according to the BPI (previously the British Phonographic Industry) – and this is a figure that looks set to continue rising. 

In the digital era, this is the result of several factors, including the music industry seeking new revenue streams and the fact that broadband and better technologies make it easier than ever to add music to an online ad campaign.

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