The Warner Music Group has signed on with FreeWheel to manage and monetize its online advertising strategy. Under the agreement, WMG will use FreeWheel's Monetization Rights Management (MRM) platform to place, monitor and track ad usage and effectiveness both on its artist sites and outside digital media.
The goal of WMG's ad strategy is monetize video content. As part of this approach, the major label group is building an online video ad platform that will feature artist-branded channels. Advertising embedded in the videos, approved sponsorships and direct-to-consumer sales are all seen as possible revenue sources across both their own sites and outside media like YouTube.
From the press release:
“Working with FreeWheel’s powerful technology platform allows us to enhance our online advertising strategy and, along with the brand targeting effort we recently established with Outrigger Media, offers the kind of critical management tools we need to maximize the value of that strategy for our artists,” said Mike Jbara, President and CEO, WEA Corp, WMG’s U.S. sales and retail marketing company. “Our goal is to turn our artists’ digital footprint into reliable revenue streams for them, and these tools enable us to do that quickly and precisely, while also enabling us to scale our effort across a wide range of genres and sites.”
“We’re obviously very excited to be working with Warner Music Group, and regard their artists’ videos as exactly the kind of premium content that our technology was made for,” said Doug Knopper, Co-CEO of FreeWheel. “By working with our technology and services, Warner Music Group can seamlessly control the advertising around their content across multiple outlets while managing it all from the same advertising inventory platform.”
