Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Quarterlife Less Than One Percent Life

We already knew that the underperforming Quarterlife didn't get a quarter of anything on NBC, but here's how poorly it performed online: of Myspace's 140 million members, there were only 140,000 views of the show, per creator Marshall Herskovitz, speaking yesterday at iHollywood Forum's Digital Media Summit in LA.

That number's only a tenth of 1% of the Myspace membership - and even that may be an overestimate of the number of viewers, since the 140,000 refers to viewings of the show, not viewers, if I understood Herskovitz properly. Since the show online was actually many segments, the number of of viewers is probably far smaller.

Maybe the show didn't get enough ad support to drive viewers? Nope. According to Herskovitz, the show was supported by a hefty one billion ad impressions.

Herskovitz opened the kimono on a few more details: The producers didn't make much from Myspace, not surprisingly. The biggest online advertiser was Toyota, which paid $500,000 for advertising. (Not clear to me if all that money went to the producers, or if Myspace got a piece.) Another significant source of revenue was a product integration deal with a music website that Pepsi had invested in.