Comcast Spotlight in VOD Deal with Monster

--Comcast Spotlight Trumpets Success of Real Estate On-Demand in Chicago

Comcast Spotlight, the advertising sales arm of the eponymous MSO, has signed a three-year deal with recruitment/job-hunting services provider, Monster, that sees a service called Monster On Demand being offered nationally on Comcast's free VOD platform. The deal designates Monster as the exclusive provider of job listings on Comcast Spotlight's advertising-on-demand service, Comcast Searchlight, and also designates it as the exclusive sales arm for Monster On Demand. Listings on the service take viewers to a co-branded Web site (www.monsterondemand.com), where they can submit resumes and further connect with featured companies. According to Comcast, the deal will also enable Monster to reach job seekers at a local level in more than 70 Designated Market Areas (DMA's), and will allow it to use Comcast Spotlight's on-demand publishing platform, which is billed as enabling listings to be easily and quickly converted into VOD assets. "Monster continues to seek new and innovative avenues to further connect job seekers and employers," Mark Stoever, EVP of corporate development and strategic alliances at Monster, said in a prepared statement. "Leveraging Comcast's video-on-demand platform will enable us to dramatically extend our reach to tens of millions of potential job seekers, and open a powerful new channel for employers to target job seekers on a highly localized basis. This is just the beginning of what we envision to be a highly interactive medium, and we look forward to our continued collaboration with Comcast to provide consumers with resources and solutions to improve their lives."

In other Comcast Spotlight news: The company says that its Real Estate On-Demand service is proving especially popular in the Chicago area, where it is being accessed by nearly 100,000 viewers a month. According to a study that Comcast commissioned from Hyperion/Everstream, viewership of the service in June was 59.3% higher than for the same month a year ago, and average monthly viewing rose 68.3% in the second quarter of 2008, compared to the year-ago period. The free service, which is accessed by entering "888" on the remote control and then selecting "Real Estate," lets viewers browse two-minute videos of local new and resale single family homes, townhomes, lofts and high-rise condominiums. Videos are organized into 10 geographic zones. The service also allows home sellers to go to www.onsearchlight.com and create their own video ads at what Comcast claims is a lower cost than the price of an average three-line newspaper ad.