UtahSaint

Dubbed the “fight of the century”, the Floyd Mayweather vs. Ricky Hatton fight no doubt drummed up millions of dollars on HBO and all the other PPV channels around the world. At $49.95 to watch the fight, I skipped it, even though it had my hometown hero The Hitman as the star attraction. Reason why I skipped: YouTube Yet again, YouTube proves it’s almost impossible to police video content from users. A simple search for Mayweather v Hatton followed by sorting by date gives any visitor the chance to watch either the full fight, the last round or just the part where Mayweather is consoling Hatton. I’m pretty sure HBO and the promoters will be all over the videos and demand they are taken down, but at 8am on the day after the fight, I’m pretty sure many boxing fans, who for so long have seen the sport placed in the same conversation as WWE, will be quite happy!

Surprising to see the BBC are now displaying online ads on their website starting today. The ads, using IAB standard skyscrapers (and I suspect leaderboards) are showing up inside the navigation bar on the left hand side (see image after the Jump) and are being handled by DoubleClick. Whilst the BBC have talked about it for quite some time, I’m sure they’ll receive plenty of feed-back, both positive and negative from users. I’ll be very interested to hear what their rates are, and more importantly, as one of the longest running and most respected websites, I’d love to see what kind of CTR performance they generate.

NBC and Fox are not rolling over to Google/YouTube and are launching Hulu, an advertising-supported video site with content from Fox, NBC, MGM and Sony in a bid to stop the tidal wave of people from watching stuff on Youtube. Taking another leaf from Google, a test version of the site is now live with plans to premiere a final version in a few months.

Whilst visiting the LA Times website this morning I was pretty annoyed by several skyscraper ads that appeared for the upcoming Saw Movie. I really don’t think the ads are appropriate for all viewers, and that visitor discretion should be advised. Movies, music and video games are all rated before they are released, and I wonder if ads should go through a similar rating system if they are promoting products that could be considered offensive?

If you’re a fan of the Colorado Rockies and tried to purchase tickets today you’ll be pretty mad. But here’s some good news: Rockies spokesperson Jay Alves announced World Series ticket sales have been suspended Monday. Alves says virtually all the tickets are still available, due to a computer system malfunction. He says only several hundred tickets were sold.