Sign up for afaqs! Newsletters
The portal plans to monetise its movies' inventory through advertising.
Horizontal portal Yahoo.com has started offering full-length Bollywood movies on its site in India. The internet company has created a special destination called Movies.yahoo.in/movieplex for this purpose, where it will showcase its collection of movies. The company has already uploaded eight movies (such as Dil Toh Baccha Hai Ji, Rock On, Crook and Lamhaa) on the site. With time, more movies will be added every 15 days.
"We have already tied up with Shemaroo Entertainment for 'Movieplex', and are in talks with other production houses, as well. We will also make available regional language movies in the future. However, Bollywood movies will form the major chunk of our movie content (video) on the Yahoo! India site," he says.
Mathur further clarifies that movies sourced from Shemaroo Entertainment are not exclusive, and Shemaroo Entertainment is free to offer its movies to other video sites, as well.
According to Mathur, the objective behind the launch of the full-length movie destination is to tap the rising demand of video and entertainment-based content on the internet. The company claims that the Indian internet audience is currently spending over 9.1 billion minutes (comScore, March 2011) watching online videos each month, with entertainment as the leading category in online video content consumption, ahead of news and sports content. "Apart from movies, we will also beef up availability of video content across news and lifestyle genres," he says.
Yahoo! India plans to monetise its movie inventory through advertising. Banner, skin branding and per-roll advertising options will be made available to marketers. The company has already roped in Maruti and LG as advertisers.