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MTV digital strategy includes web ‘assembly line’

Posted by Cory Bergman on February 13, 2008

Over the last year, MTV Networks has created 32 websites, most of which are connected to on-air programming such as Indecision 2008 and Jackass World. The idea is to create a type of assembly line for Web sites, according to MTV’s Jeff Yapp. Explains News.com, “Those sites that find an audience will continue to be nurtured and those that don’t will be stripped down and ‘reskinned,’ or refitted for the next experiment. The company also doesn’t plan to spend wildly in promoting the sites. It has confidence in their content and the viral ability of the Web to spread the word.”

Adds Rick Ellis in comments: “Iâ€™ve long advocated that local news sites should consider this strategy. Not launching 30 vertical sites, but perhaps launching standalones for high school or semi-pro sports, local politics or anything else that someone at your station has the passion and/or expertise to pull off. It makes sense for both strategic reasons and for SEO reasons. And it certainly makes sense from an advertising standpoint.”

http://www.allyourtv.com Rick Ellis

I’ve long advocated that local news sites should consider this strategy. Not launching 30 vertical sites, but perhaps launching standalones for high school or semi-pro sports, local politics or anything else that someone at your station has the passion and/or expertise to pull off.

It makes sense for both strategic reasons and for SEO reasons. And it certainly makes sense from an advertising standpoint.

As for MTV, if you look at their efforts so far, it’s a bit hit-and-miss. Which is always the problem with this strategy. It’s relatively easy to launch sites, but it’s a lot tougher to integrate them together and figure out ways for the audience to find them.

Yahoo launched a number of standalone sites, but they only managed to keep an audience when they were linked from Yahoo’s main page.
http://blog.shopwiki.com Renee

Even the hit and miss efforts are worth it in the long run. Users expect this kind of ever changing content on the web, especially from a network like MTV.

I’m sure we’ll be seeing this assembly line strategy from tons of others networks.
j.ray

It’s a good strategy in that it eliminates redundancy from consumer messaging by pointing to specific content, rather than a single company domain. Re-skinning is another efficient strategy. But if the underlying infrastructure is lacking in stability of performance, feature sets, and portability, then the user experience will be diminished along with monetization. MTV and other companies that decide to employ this assembly line strategy should build Hummers, rather than Yugos. Either can be painted different colors.