Boing Boing Does Video, IBM is Launch Sponsor

With IBM signing on as the first lead sponsor thanks to Federated Media Publishing, the popular Boing Boing technology blog is going video.

The new Boing Boing TV, at tv.boingboing.net, will share the same quirky attitude and subject matter as the blog, said its developers. The ad-supported site will feature three to five minute video reports focusing on “Internet culture, DIY technology, geeky curiosities” and other topics befitting Boing Boing’s “curious and irreverent exploration of the world,” according to a launch announcement.

The deal FM worked out with IBM is a three-month sponsorship that will include in-stream video ads, pre-show sponsorship announcements by the Boing Boing hosts and ad impressions on BoingBoing.net. Additional sponsors are being courted, said Neil Chase, Federated Media’s vice president for author services.

“It’s out there to a number of potential advertisers,” he said. “The one that is committed, as soon as the creative gets up in next couple days, is IBM. We were especially impressed with this in that IBM is both an old media and a new media company.”

Chase said the site is going to draw “two types” of advertisers. “One is the kind of company that thinks they’d like to be adjacent to Boing Boing content and the other is the kind that wants to be there because they want you to do something specific with the video or print the story once you read it.”

Federated is staying away from extended pre-roll ads and is instead opting for a “quick, pre-video billboard.” Chase noted “there’s been a sense that viewers are not crazy about any significant pre-rolls.”

While Boing Boing TV will also run banners, leaderboards and skyscraper ads, the “premier” advertising unit will be a short video that will play in the middle of the Boing Boing show, said Chase. He expects to sell rotating sponsorships for the site and sponsors are unlikely to have 100 percent share of voice.

Supporting Boing Boing’s expansion into video-blogging is DECA, a new digital entertainment studio launched by Sony Pictures executives Michael Wayne, Chris Kimbell and others. DECA will handle financing, distribution and marketing of the Boing Boing TV content, with Federated Media serving as the ad network and the Boing Boing editors creating the content. “There’s “sort of a trio of parties involved,” said DECA spokeswoman Kathy Johnson.

DECA said it’s pursuing distribution relationships for the new content “across multiple platforms.” Johnson said a deal for one of those alternative platforms will be announced soon, but declined to elaborate. “It could be, let’s say, where there’s an airline that’s looking at digital entertainment in its airplanes,” said Johnson. “It could be mobile. It could be social communities.”