March Madness for Web Publishers
Michael Arrington’s Tech Crunch has a timely post today on an Ajax-laden March Madness game available on PicksPal. For those not in the know, ‘March Madness’ is the annual rite of spring where the NCAA men’s and women’s collegiate basketball worlds have tournaments to decide the eventual national champions.
And, every year, advertisers focus on this unique event for its compelling demographics (18-34s love it!) and the sheer scope.. the tournament lasts for three weeks and likely sucks in 100+million people through TV, online and print.
As for the PicksPal March Madness game, the architecture is ‘2.0′ in the way it allows users to build virtual communities centered around their picks by allowing people to participate in not only public, but private ‘bracketology,’ effectively allowing sharing and customization - central ‘Web 2.0′ themes.
(The science of ‘picking’ can be a bit over the top if this economist’s story is any indication.)
I particularly like how the bracket is so easy to use. I feel like I’m shooting through my picks rather than the rusty old days of using dropdowns. The revenue model for the bracket game appears to be simply lead generation for the site’s other features. Everything is free - hence, the price is right. Check it out.
Other popular sports websites, such as ESPN and CBS Sportsline, offer NCAA tournament bracket tools and are all advertiser supported (it’s free!) by brand names such as Pontiac, State Farm, Cingular and DiGiorno. At ContextWeb, we enable advertisers to enjoy the Madness by offering our new Custom ContextCategories to target basketball terms, teams, leagues -even basketball player names- at the page level for any of their online ad network campaigns.
Once again, the NCAA Basketball Tournament has taken the web by storm.
-- John Ebbert
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