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on the glitz
Celebrities serve to build not just traffic but brand
By Ronna Abramson
Yahoo had Britney Spears but now she's moving over to AOL Time Warner. MSN has Janet Jackson and Terra Lycos has Anna Kournikova.
If the internet is beginning to look a bit like MTV, there's a reason.
Portals have long been the white bread of the internet, useful, if flavorless and indistinguishable, as places people wander through on their way to more interesting destinations.
Portals have struggled with how to change that, with an eye to keeping more of the traffic that passes through, and the latest effort at coolness is the celeb angle.
The reasoning is as simple as it is obvious. The more visitors who stay to play, the more ads are seen, which boosts revenues.
As celebs draw people to magazines, they are increasingly seen as ideal additions to attract and hold visitors to portals.
Through a variety of celeb deals, portals are offering exclusive interviews, chats, concert footage and other content to hold onto users longer.
"There's an effort to turn themselves into media properties, and in order to do that the portals can use the boost of a relationship with a known celebrity," says Aram Sinnreich, a senior analyst with Jupiter Media Metrix.
The key, of course, is to provide deep content, beyond just a teaser photo on the home page linking to uninspiring background information.
The celebrity connection also is a way to offer a more targeted audience to advertisers, who account for the bulk of revenues for the portal business.
For instance, if a Britney Spears fan logs onto a portal for information about her favorite blonde singer, she might join a fan club and provide information about herself such as where she lives, her age and her tastes.
"This is really valuable information for marketing partners," says Eric Scheirer, a senior analyst with Forrester Research.
In the early days, the portals were so busy building their sites that they barely batted an eye at celebrities.
Yahoo didn't announce a celebrity endorsement until 1996, the year of its initial public offering.
Then in 1997 the portal launched its celebrity promotion with Yahoo Web! Celeb of the Month, showcasing a different celebrity each month. Among the highlights: Andrew Shue from the TV series "Melrose Place" and Yasmine Bleeth from "Baywatch."
But in the very hot pre-dot.com bust days the real celebrity action was going on at the e-commerce sites, where celebrities like Whoopi Goldberg and William Shatner were given equity stakes to hawk their wares on television.
In these tougher times, struggling e-commerce sites can hardly afford to pay such big names, and deep-pocketed portals with industry connections are now taking over that role.
AOL Time Warner's marketing of Madonna is one example that takes advantage of such connections.
Earlier this year, AOL Time Warner gave its members first dibs on tickets to see Madonna, whose record label Maverick Records is distributed through Warner Music Group.
But AOL is working not just with celebrities represented by its own subsidiaries. AOL Time Warner spokeswoman Ann Burkart indicates that another promotion, with Britney Spears, who is represented by the independent label Zomba Records, will be even more extensive than the Madonna campaign and will last all of 2002.
MSN, meanwhile, sponsored Jackson's world tour during the summer in a deal that gave MSN exclusive video footage and interviews.
It also created co-branded portals with Janet Jackson and *NSync.
MSN touts the *NSync arrangement, in particular, as a way to target the younger internet audience and also bring its audience to *NSync.
In September that audience totaled 70 million unique visitors, according to Jupiter Media Metrix.
And Terra Lycos, the fourth most visited portal, in September launched the official site of tennis star Kournikova as part of Lycos Sports.
Yahoo takes a different tact, says David Goldberg, general manager of Yahoo Music and former CEO of Launch.com, the music site acquired by Yahoo earlier this year.
Goldberg says Launch and Yahoo do not pay for exclusive interviews and performances featured on the site. The Britney Spears sneak-preview Pepsi commercial was part of a larger marketing deal in which Pepsi paid Yahoo, he says.
But typically "we don't pay them [the musicians], they don't pay us," Goldberg says. "It's promotional in nature. We both get something out of it." Musicians give up some time, but they enjoy access to Yahoo's audience, numbering 65.6 million unique users in September, according to Jupiter Media Metrix.
Indeed, the growing number of celebrity sightings on portals is also a testament to the maturation of the portal market. Consolidation has meant deeper pockets for the top-tier portals, enabling them to shell out the cash for concert sponsorships.
"In a span of two years, 60 percent of user minutes went into the hands of 14 companies, from 110," Sinnreich says.
"That's a fantastic attrition. That speaks to corporatization of media online."
Such "corporatization" is only like to build, and with it a continued proliferation of online celebrity spots. AOL Time Warner is only going to get better at integrating its different properties, improving on the success of its Madonna campaign with other celebrities.
At Yahoo, CEO Terry Semel, former longtime co-chief of Warner Bros. movie studios, is likely to tap his numerous connections as he places greater emphasis on the portal's entertainment channel.
It all adds up to the web becoming increasingly similar to other entertainment media. The key will be distinguishing its ability to advertise to specific audiences--an ability that is still in its infancy.
November 15, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
-Ronna Abramson is a freelance writer in Oakland, Calif.
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