NEW YORK (Reuters) - MTV Networks will track second-by-second viewing of Web commercials and videos, and link viewer online communities built around its TV programs, the network's digital chief said in an interview focused on the company's new advertising strategy.
Viacom Inc's 26-year old cable TV network is striving to remain relevant in a digital age by learning more about fans of some of its top shows like "The Hills" or "Real World" through the shows' websites, said Mika Salmi, MTV president of global digital media in an interview with Reuters.
MTV will provide advertiser partners second-by-second data on how the videos and ads on its site are watched by users online. On Monday, MTV said it had signed an agreement with Visible Measures, an independent third-party measurement firm to provide the data.
"We want the advertisers to know exactly what's happening on our websites and how big we really are in online video, said Salmi. "Internally, we want to understand user behavior so we can tweak the videos to give a better experience," he added.
The move mirrors a similar push for second-by-second data by the TV industry's audience measurement sector led by Nielsen and TiVo Inc.
The new service will also be able to measure video usage of MTV-owned videos that have been shared or embedded on other social networks like News Corp's MySpace or blogs.
In the last few years MTV has been working on transforming itself for the 21st Century by building or buying a collection of digital brands across music, programing, virtual worlds and gaming. Salmi's company Atom Films, was bought in 2006.
The cable TV network is striving to remain relevant as more of its core audience of 12-to-34-year-olds spend an increasing amount of their time surfing the Web than they do watching TV.
Bernstein Research said advertising on MTV-branded networks grew slower than the overall cable industry from 2004 to 2007.
COMMUNITY WORK
MTV is building communities across its hundreds of websites like VH-1, Pimp My Ride and Jackass through a service called Flux. Once a user is logged on the Flux network they can move on to other MTV sites without having to log in again.
Like other popular social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, users on MTV's Flux, built with Social Project, can share videos, personal photos and blogs. MTV bought social networking company Social Project earlier this month for an undisclosed sum..
But it remains to be seen whether social networking in itself can make money from advertising in the long term. MTV is betting its long running relationships with advertisers on cable television and the popularity of its shows will put it in a unique position to develop in-depth relationships with fans across its hundreds of websites.
"If we wanted to have any kind of 'network effect' or cross-traffic sharing, the sites have to connect together so we had to get them on similar platforms," said Salmi.
The so called 'network effect' could help users discover more programing by seeing what other community friends have watched on MTV's various sites thereby driving more advertising traffic.
Salmi said since members of social networks on its websites have provided basic personal data, that will help advertising partners more easily track users anonymously and target appropriate advertising campaigns at such users.
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