As Napster rolls out it free listening, advertising-supported web site, it is beefing up its ad sales team. It recently hired Evan Cowitt as vice president of advertising sales, western United States, and Mike Owen as director of advertising sales, eastern United States. Both will report directly to Brad Duea, president of Napster.
Napster is working with potential advertisers to tailor campaigns through sponsored features, including custom playlists, co-branded music players, and Flash-in-Flash video. Napster also will provide advertisers with RSS feeds and an embedded music player that can be placed on advertisers’ web sites.
Since its May launch, Napster.com has been receiving approximately 3 million unique visitors per month and averaging over 60 million page views. Users spend 20 minutes on the site per visit and stream over half a million songs per day. Already Napster has attracted such advertisers as The Walt Disney Studios, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, MSN Rockstar, Toshiba, Maxell and the U.S. Navy.
Cowitt comes to Napster from the Fox Interactive subsidiary IGN Entertainment Inc. where he oversaw entertainment advertising sales. Owen joins Napster from Entertainment Weekly, where he was director of eastern ad sales for EW.com.
Back...
