Masa, a new joint marketing venture by portal Nana10, MSN Israel, presented, at an advertisers conference it arranged, a parody video clip from the movie "Downfall". The parody showed a scene in which Adolf Hitler ranted at his senior Wehrmacht officers, and there was a voiceover which had Hitler irate and taking the officers to task over reports of the very low number of clicks on the banners of portals Walla! and ynet.
Other parodies of the scene from "Downfall" went viral across the Internet, before YouTube deleted them from its files for copyright violations. The video clip parodies showed a number of impossible situations, in which Hitler appears to be enraged about various matters, from trying to find a parking place in Tel Aviv, to warnings by an anti-terrorist agency, and to the possibility that Ayala Reshef might win Israel's version of reality show "Big Brother".
Masa's video clip, which lasts 1:55 minutes, apparently violates the same copyrights as the other parodies did, which spurred the distributors of the movie, German producer Constantin Film AG, to pursue their removal from YouTube.
However, regardless of the copyright issues, Walla! and ynet are mainly furious over the use of the tyrant responsible for the Holocaust in a media clip aimed at the Israeli Internet arena. Masa's video clip shows Hitler screaming, and presents figures claiming that the clickthrough rate on the banners of Walla! and ynet, Israel two largest portals, amount to just 0.02%. Sources at Walla! say that the figure is completely false.
Walla! CEO Ilan Yeshua said, "I think that this was tasteless and showed a lack of judgment between good and evil. Beyond the issue of style, the content is forged, so the combination taken together is completely unnecessary.
"The advantages of campaigns on Walla!, as well as ynet, even though I don’t represent them, have been clearly demonstrated over time. The opposite is the case for campaigns by Nana10 and MSN, which are quite dead sites that do not bring advantages to advertisers. That's why they need to use such radical video clips. I would never imagine doing such a thing. It shows a lack of judgment and that anything goes."
Yeshua says that Nana10 chose to present erroneous and partial figures that do not show the whole picture. "Figures from Comscore clearly show that, among all age groups, Walla! equals or exceeds their proportion of the population. It's impossible to compare the traffic of technological tools with the power and visibility of Walla's homepage. Advertisers aren't stupid."
At an advertisers conference in Tel Aviv yesterday, Guy Eliav said, "The Israeli Internet media is a national disgrace. The time has come for advertisers to tell Walla! and ynet that we won't buy space, and we don’t want them to tell us when and how to air a campaign. The time has come to stop buying this luxury, and Masa allows to do this. The banners on these two websites are like billboards, not Internet advertising. The Internet is stuck in the year 2000."
Masa will begin offering advertising space using Microsoft Corporation (Nasdaq: MSFT) technology assets, such as Hotmail and Messenger, alongside Nana10 content, such as material from Channel 10 and Israblog, as well as advertising space on Facebook. They claim that Masa will offer a segmented media, in contrast to the rest of the market.
Israel's advertisers are still skeptical about Masa's ability to offer a real alternative to Walla! and ynet, and they feel that large campaigns will always on these two large banners. It is also clear that the burden of proof falls on Masa, which has just gotten going. It won't be easy.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on April 26, 2010
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