First Look: Bud.TV Not Quite Ready For Prime Time
By Staci D. Kramer - Mon 05 Feb 2007 05:12 PM PST
Anheuser-Busch scored with its Super Bowl ads last night but it will take more than ads available all over the net to make its expensive Bud.TV a success. Granted, I’m the wrong gender and age to be the target market but I’m not talking about whether the humor works for 25-year-old men. The issues start with the registration process, which not only asks you for a birthdate and a check-box agreement that you’re of legal age to enter the site—it actually appears to be matching names and birth dates against a driver’s license database. (Note: A-B is using a public records database called Aristotle’s Integrity.) When I put in the right year and month with a different day, the site said it didn’t match my name and zip code. Each time the form needed adjustment, some of the info was wiped out and had to be re-entered. (A-B is also asking for mobile phone numbers but that’s up to the user.)
Once inside, the video player is small and doesn’t zoom in high quality. Desktop and enahanced Bud-TV are “coming soon.” I tested a few clips—the “Hardly News” quiz show is just a promo for now, “Puppet News” was worth a grin, ditto for the Billy Lama. The Super Bowls were easier to watch elsewhere without registration. One interesting item: a trailer for FX’s The Shield and the promise that a preview episode would be available through Bud.TV.
One more thing about the registration: When I went back to check on something, my login was rejected ("the credentials you provided could not be validated") even though I’d followed the confirmation links in the email. Maybe the idea is to drive you to drink.
Update: Steve Safran ran into registration issues, too. Something I meant to mention earlier—sharing a link means emailing to someone who also has to be registered. No embedding, etc. Steve: ‘I still think bud.TV is a model of what’s to come - but so far the thing’s skunked.”
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Tags: bud.tv, anheuser-busch,
