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Playstation Portable offers new venue for advertisers

A clip from heavy.com is played on the PlayStation Portable media player in this undated company photo. The company hopes advertisers will support free content by paying for quick commercials before or after the downloads. PHOTO: NY TIMES

As advertisers struggle to reach increasingly distracted and jaded US consumers, they have sought nontraditional vehicles for their ads, from elevators to cellphone screens.

Now Sony has given advertisers another venue to try: its PlayStation Portable, or PSP, a sleek, handheld game system that also plays movies and music.

Heavy.com, a large Web host of short films and animation, has started making many of its clips available as free content specially formatted for the game system. The company hopes advertisers will support the free content by paying for quick commercials before or after the downloads, or by providing content in the form of branded entertainment. Whether audiences of sufficient mass will watch videos and ads on the devices, however, is far from clear.

Trials underway

Unilever, the first advertiser to take Heavy up on its offer, will test the potential with a series of branded shorts about two guys roaming the country and filming their efforts to meet women, all to promote Axe body spray.

People can watch them at www.evanandgareth.com, on Heavy.com -- or on PSPs after a download from Heavy.

The typical Axe customer, a man between 18 and 24 years old, has such fractured media habits that 30-second commercials and magazine ads are not enough, said David Rubin, development manager for Axe at Unilver.

"He is still watching television, but even when he's doing that, he's online or might have his PSP on in front of him," Rubin said. "The more pieces you can reach, the better."

Web advertising also allows more interactivity and measurement than traditional ads, he said.

"If you were to just do television or print, which do play a very important role, you miss the opportunities that other media allow," he said.

Other companies are exploring the marketing potential of the PSP and other new handhelds. ABC News has converted reports on topics like cybersecurity and hybrid cars for the PSP. Sony Pictures has made previews for movies like Lords of Dogtown, about surfing and skateboarding during the 1970s, available as well.

Even with Sony claiming sales of 500,000 PlayStation Portables during its first two days on sale in North America, the potential for advertisers may depend heavily on how much people like watching the clips. Even the appeal of full-length Hollywood movies has not been proven. Brian Crecente, editor of the Kotaku gaming site, has shown some ambivalence about movies in the portable format.

Crecente wrote on Kotaku one Monday in April about buying the movie House of Flying Daggers in the PSP format over the weekend.

Full-length movies?

"I haven't watched it yet," he wrote, "because I would feel weird sitting in my house, which has DVD players, VCRs and countless TVs, watching a movie on my PSP. I was going to go out in the hammock and watch, but it's too bright."

Crecente said Monday that he still had not watched the movie but was hoping to find an excuse.

"If I'm in a car on a road trip I can pull it out and watch," he said, "or if I'm stuck at an airport."

Short clips from Heavy.com, which can be watched online anyway, do not necessarily make more sense, Crecente said.

"Why take the extra step of downloading it and taking it somewhere?" he said. "You're going to download it, put it on the PSP and step outside?"
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