Following the successful launch of South Park Studios, MTV is expanding their online video strategy of creating hubs for network content. The pull strategy MTV will engage in appears to be Viacom’s answer to NBC/Newscorp’s Hulu and runs counter to the push strategy employed by both Hulu and the CBS Interactive Audience Network.

The development slate includes more than 300 targeted microsites that are intended to “expand upon popular TV franchises, or are inspired by topics relevant to their respective audiences.”

Unlike CBS, these sites will require viewers to come to them rather than syndicating them to a wide variety of partners, but Mika Salmi, MTVN’s President of Global Digital Media promised that they will take an open approach, saying:

“Our viewers become producers, consumers and participants because we let them cast themselves online for our TV shows, upload content and videos, or actually become their favorite cast members through our virtual worlds.”

Whatever that means. The good news for users is that much of the content will be embeddable allowing them to syndicate and share it across the web in the places they choose. For MTV, it promises to concentrate targeted demographic groups in specific locations with the potential for higher advertising ROI.

By the end of 2007 we can expect to see more than 300 such sites, all serve niche interests of various sizes and promising to be far more specific content hubs than MTV.com, vh1.com and ComedyCentral.com could ever offer.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 7th, 2007 at 7:02 pm and is filed under News, User Generated, Video Portals, video syndication. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.