Ad pundits seem pleased that Bud.tv has kicked the can. The site drew heavy criticism when it launched, and Adweek editor Brian Morrissey has perhaps the best analysis of how Bud.tv failed by trying to be a content portal in a world of disseminated internet entertainment.
We wrote a year ago that one major problem was the lead form, or more accurately the sign-up process. Bud.tv asked visitors to create accounts with a complex age-verification system that included your driver's license number. The site launched with a $30 million Super Bowl blitz and content by Kevin Spacey's Triggerstreet and Matt Damon's LivePlanet, but instead of reaching the goal of 2 million users per month, traffic hovered around 150,000 uniques, then slid. Anheuser-Busch tried to fix the site with help from guerrilla New Media Strategies. Bud.tv eventually was redesigned to give away some content previews. Alas, fail. At last check Alexa gave Bud.tv a traffic ranking of 1,296,883 among all web sites; by comparison, this niche blog's ranking is 958,442.
There is an important lesson -- web sites who hope to build audiences or sales need to give away something of value before asking too much of users in return. Anheuser-Busch was in a tough box, trying to promote beer and so being forced to verify the ages of its participants really before they got to the juicy content. (We hear there were wild girls-on-film parties inside, but never made it past the bouncer.) Registration processes or online lead forms that request too many data fields are a sure way to kill the buzz.
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