Lycos Offers Ads, Music and Movies Direct to Your Cubicle

Communications Today, June 12, 2002

Internet portal and search engine provider Terra Lycos [TRLY] has lined up partnerships with IFILM.com for video content and with Listen.com for online music -- all to be delivered via broadband.

Developed by Listen.com, Lycos Rhapsody is a subscription music service featuring content from BMG, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI and Warner Music Group. Rhapsody offers three tiers of service -- a free, ad-supported streaming radio service with 20 "stations" at "FM quality," a $4.95 a month version with no ads, "CD quality" sound and 50 channels, and a $9.95 tier with unlimited ondemand streams.

On the video side, the Lycos Entertainment portal will offer access to IFILM.com's library of 80,000 film clips. The selection includes film trailers and excerpts, complete shorts and so-called "viral videos" designed to be sent as e-mail attachments. The content is to be ad-supported using Lycos's INSTREAM broadband ads.

Lycos makes no bones about where it's aiming this content. Referring to the ad opportunities surrounding its video offering, Vice President of Entertainment Meredith Hanrahan noted that Lycos has found more than half of its users access its sites via broadband connections during the day. "That means advertisers can now easily target ads to this very lucrative at-work audience," she said.