.gif)
Guvera To Save The Music and Content Industry
By Anna Johnson on January 25th, 2010Gold Coast, Australia based Guvera has received $20 million in venture funding from AMMA Private Investment – an Australia group of private angel investors – as it seeks to ‘save’ the music and content industry. The company, which began in 2008, had previously raised $10 million in venture capital.
While ‘save’ may sound like hyperbole, Guvera’s service does seem to have found an unusually happy medium between the interests of music companies, consumers and advertisers.
Armed with licensing deals with Universal Music Group, the Independent Online Distribution Alliance (IODA), EMI and other major music labels, Guvera lets advertisers set up custom branded entertainment and promotion channels where consumers can enjoy free, unrestricted content – music now, movies and TV shows later. Right now, Guvera counts McDonalds, Johnson & Johnson, and Harley Davidson as clients.
How does Guvera work? Essentially, advertisers choose content that matches their brand values, and then set up channels offering such content to their targeted audiences. The advertisers can then run campaigns within those channels based on such factors as demographics, location, and so on.
Advertisers can also set a maximum fee they are willing to pay per person per download or stream (above a set minimum), with the revenues split between Guvera and the music or content rights owners.
To date, Guvera has been beta testing its service in Australia, but plans to expand to more beta testers by March 2010. It will then seek to generate users virally, as the brands attract customers to their particular channels via loyalty programs.
Guvera is currently negotiating with more content providers – including the movie studios – in order to let advertisers offer more content to consumers.
What I particularly like about Guvera’s concept is that it’s based on a win-win-win premise.
The music and content providers win because they get paid for their content.
The advertisers win because they get to target and tailor their marketing communications directly to specific consumer segments. Far from having to adapt their advertising to the content; they get to choose the content that best supports their own brand values and those of their target markets.
And, finally, consumers win because they get to consume the music and content they want. Presumably in a way where the presence of a sponsor (i.e. the brand behind the particular channel) complements, rather than clashes with, their interests (as so much conventional advertising seems to do).
In other words, because the advertiser operating a given channel has effectively ‘chosen’ a group of consumers based on specific values and interests… those consumers who choose the advertiser’s channel should logically feel happy to hear what the advertiser has to say.
Well, that’s the theory anyway. No doubt, to attract and retain audiences, advertisers will need to avoid creating channels that are too ad-heavy or seem like ‘advertorials’. Guvera will also need to ensure that the payment structure works for the content providers and Guvera itself, as well as advertisers.
Whether or not Guvera, the content providers and the advertisers can pull this off and ‘save’ the music and content industry remains to be seen. But it’s this kind of spin on the traditional advertiser-publisher-consumer relationship that is likely to be necessary for the music and content industry to achieve a sustainable future in the Internet age.
