New advertising delivery platform launched by We7

Apr 29, 2007

Rock legend Peter Gabriel has teamed up with technology entrepreneur Steve Purdham and financial investor John Taysom to bring advertisers a new ad delivery mechanism. The platform, We7, uses free music downloads as a vehicle to communicate personalised advertising messages, allowing brands to intimately connect with consumers on- and offline.

The We7 service works by dynamically 'grafting' ads onto the front of music tracks and albums based on a consumer's demographics such as location, age, gender and could even be extended to preferences. This allows advertisers to intimately engage with consumers ‘off web’ as they listen to the ad-embedded downloads.

All We7 music is DRM free so consumers can legally share and play tracks on any MP3 player, expanding the potential for advertisers to reach even more people as they share content. The ‘grafted’ ads change on sharing to match the consumer.

The revenue generated via advertising ensures artists receive royalties for making their songs available, whilst consumer will receive and share DRM-free music legitimately making it an attractive proposition for advertisers, artists and music fans alike.

Talk directly to your customers

Unlike some more traditional advertising mediums, WE7 offers advertisers the opportunity to talk directly to their customers in a precisely targeted way:

• Innovative and engaging broadcast platform that gets brands directly into the eyes and ears of consumers, ensuring greater cut through of messaging
• Access to the Web 2.0 generation - a notoriously difficult audience to reach - via the music download culture
• Customer profile and advert are matched together to ensure the ad is relevant and engaging for the listener
• Adverts are 'grafted' to a track or video using MediaGraft's 'pat.pending' technology and remain 'glued' to tracks for up to 4 weeks so they're listened to again and again

The WE7 site has been designed to appeal to a wide range of audience demographics (ages 14-65) and can be used to re-enforce messaging through multiple delivery methods including B2C, B2B and community delivery.

Steve Purdham, CEO, We7 says: "We7 offers a platform to entertain and engage, benefiting both the consumer and the advertiser. Our advertising model creates an entirely new category of highly targeted, high value, advertising inventory, combining all the benefits of an engaging broadcast campaign with the speed and effectiveness of digital."

Peter Gabriel, Musician and Founder Investor We7, comments: "We7 provides artists - even across the more experimental or minority genres - with the opportunity to build a new source of income from their music. Ad funded downloads are the way to provide free music to the consumer without depriving musicians of their livelihood."

Gabriel has a proven track record with music technology projects, after funding and launching OD2, the digital service provider, in 1999 OD2 was sold to Loudeye which in turn was sold to Nokia last year.

Purdham founded and built global technology companies, such as SurfControl plc which was worth £1bn at its peak valuation.

Taysom founded the Reuters Greenhouse Fund in California and his investment track record also includes a number of successful technology ventures including Yahoo! Verisign, and Advertising.com.