Best Buy Has 11-Month Exclusive Deal To Sponsor New MSNBC.com Digital Life Section

The 11-month deal with Best Buy starting this May and running through April 2006 is “the single largest sponsorship of any feature in the history of MSNBC.com,” according to the news site’s announcement. Kyoo Kim, Vice President of Sales of MSNBC.com, calls it “proof once again, that advertisers understand the power of the Internet and are using online leaders like MSNBC.com to reach their key consumers.”
Actually, the new Digital Life section looks like it exists to be sponsored. It’s a collection of stories from across the site and the wires about how technology is used at home, unified by slick but slow-loading animated Flash 7 graphics that allow the user to click on a tech item in a room (only the living room works now) and see a story about it. For instance, hovering over an item tells the user to “read about satellite radio for your living room;” clicking on it brings up an MSNBC.com tech column from April.
While this is going on editorially, Best Buy’s branding is everywhere with a product locator on the front page and several modules on the story pages; only one of the three modules is labled as an ad. I’m still a little mystified about why the “related products” showing up with the sat radio story were digital cameras along with a digital camera q&a from Best Buy’s lab but the same thing happened for home theaters so it must not tied to content. Still looking into the actual value of the deal.

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