Many of The Ad Council’s greatest public-service TV spots will be archived and
available on the Web through a new relationship with FasTV.com, a searchable video programming
service, as well as through The Ad Council’s ongoing partnership with
Advertising Age.
As part of this relationship, The Ad Council will provide FasTV.com
with video highlights of past, award-winning campaigns as well as PSAs of new
campaigns. In addition to the original video spots, FasTV.com will include
creative and agency credits and links to nonprofit organizations that can
supply additional information about the issue or topic discussed.
“Using FasTV.com, consumers, educators, and members of the advertising and
creative community can revisit classic and beloved campaigns and many
characters that have become social icons in this century,” said Barry Layne,
vice president of programming and production at FasTV.
“It is likely that in the history of the television medium, the greatest
consistent work has been done on behalf of The Ad Council. With our role as
the leader in the emerging video-on-the-Internet marketplace, FasTV believes
it is our duty to make a commitment to the heritage of the industry in order
to help play a role in its future,” he said.
FasTV.com has also agreed to run Ad Council commercials within its service as
part of its regular on-site advertising rotation. The partnership between
FasTV and the Ad Council was empowered in large measure by Advertising Age
magazine and Stein Rogan + Partners, FasTV’s New York City-based advertising
agency.
As part of the program, Advertising Age’s Web site, AdAge.com, will promote the co-branded Ad
Council-FasTV archive on an ongoing basis.
The FasTV.com, Ad Council and Advertising Age partnership officially
kicked
off March 29, as part of Advertising Age‘s first Millennium-series
issue, “The
Advertising Century.” Advertising Age is supporting the initiative
through
links and tile placements on AdAge.com, as well as through print advertising
in Advertising Age.
Advertising Age is also the exclusive advertising-trade press partner of the
Ad Council’s branding initiative, and will donate space in the six-figure
range to its campaign.
In addition, Advertising Age will contribute a portion of the
proceeds from ad
sales of its special millennium-themed issues to the Ad Council Children’s
initiative. This will include the funding of a yearly internship program,
named after Ad Age’s founder, G.D. Crain Jr., for two students who will work
out of The Ad Council’s New York office.
The Ad Council is a private, nonprofit organization that has been the leading
producer of public-service-communications programs since 1942.
FasTV.com, now in beta testing and preparing for a spring 1999 consumer
launch, has signed agreements with more than 20 content partners, including
CNN, CNNfn, C-SPAN, The Weather Channel and others. Use of FasTV.com’s
Internet programming service is free to viewers. By employing proprietary
technology, FasTV converts broadcast, cable-TV and other video sources into
online, searchable files giving viewers the power to easily and quickly find
only the clips they most want to see.
