AOL courts TV advertisers

In the latest sign that Internet companies are stepping up their pursuit of traditional TV advertisers, AOL on Tuesday jumped ahead of network prime-time’s annual “upfront” advertising sales season by previewing its own “fall” lineup of programs.

The five new online shows unveiled to advertisers and media buyers -- and simulcast on the Web -- include a spinoff of TV’s “The Ellen DeGeneres Show”; a sequel to the Mark Burnett-produced AOL game show “Gold Rush”; a series of games built around the animated movie “Shrek”; and a show that allows Web surfers to help determine the outcome of a live-action competition on a tropical island.

AOL, Yahoo Inc. and other Internet companies previously used “road shows” to demonstrate their capabilities to advertisers. But after NBC veteran Randy Falco joined Time Warner Inc.’s AOL in November as chairman and chief executive, he pushed to make a bigger splash this year, insiders say.

The timing of AOL’s presentation, coming just ahead of the upfront season for cable and broadcast TV, is no accident, said Mike Kelly, president of AOL Media Networks.

“Advertisers are thinking about spending $9 billion, so it makes sense for us to try to get their attention,” Kelly said, referring to the expected volume of ad sales during TV’s upfront presentations in May, when broadcasters unveil their fall prime-time lineups to Madison Avenue.

By comparison, Internet advertising totaled $17 billion last year, but only a tiny fraction of that was part of video programming on the Web -- a category AOL hopes to bolster with its upfront.

The company is working to regain momentum after a strategic shift last year. AOL now relies on advertising rather than subscriptions for its revenue and gives away for free its e-mail services and programming.

AOL took in $2 billion in ad revenue in 2006, making it third among Internet platforms, after Google Inc. and Yahoo.

With online revenue and time spent on the Web on the rise, “marketers can and should be doing more,” Falco told the crowd.

About 500 advertisers and media buyers attended the sometimes-glitzy 90-minute presentation in the Jazz at Lincoln Center auditorium at Time Warner Center, overlooking Columbus Circle and Central Park.

In between a rainstorm of fake dollar bills, a clip from the upcoming “Shrek” movie and an appearance by letter-carrying blond models in tight, gold dresses, AOL executives took the stage to drum home the message that advertisers can enhance their broadcast campaigns by extending them onto the Web.

In a gentle jibe at the Web’s casual culture, Time Warner President and Chief Operating Officer Jeffrey L. Bewkes joked that with AOL, advertisers would be buying “from people you trust, because they’re wearing neckties.”

One media buyer at the meeting, Alec Gerster, chief executive of Initiative Worldwide, said the pitch was appealing because it came at a time when advertisers were trying to figure out how to effectively integrate their campaigns across all kinds of media.

The first of the AOL programs, “Ye Olde Shrek the Third Royal Tournament,” will begin April 26. A partnership between DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. and Mark Burnett Productions, the program is a run-up to the mid-May opening of “Shrek the Third.” The online program is a series of 25 interactive games to be launched over a six-week period.

DreamWorks Chief Executive Jeffrey Katzenberg said in an interview Tuesday that the studio was encouraged enough by the success of a similar AOL tie-in last year involving the movie “Flushed Away” to try it again, but more elaborately, with Shrek. He said he expected the online program, with a budget of “several million dollars,” to be profitable in its own right.

The Ellen DeGeneres tie-in, premiering in the fourth quarter, “lets people share heart-warming, hilarious and absurd hometown tales” with the daytime-TV comedienne, AOL said in a statement.

In “iLand,” the competition begins online to determine finalists who will travel to a remote island where they will be filmed vying to “build a civilization,” AOL said. The grand prize is a tropical island. The online audience participates by helping or hindering the contestants. The show, set to launch in the spring of 2008, is being produced with Endemol USA, which is behind “Deal or No Deal,” “Fear Factor” and “Big Brother.”

Another Mark Burnett co-production is “Gold Rush Goes Hollywood,” a pop-culture trivia game that culminates in a hunt in Hollywood for $1 million in gold. The show, to debut in September, is a successor to the original “Gold Rush,” launched on AOL last year as Burnett’s first program produced exclusively for the Internet. AOL said the program attracted 11 million viewers who registered to watch the show over a seven-week run.

Another premiere, launching early in 2008, is “Million Dollar Bill,” in which contestants play daily online games to reveal serial numbers of U.S. dollar bills in active circulation.

thomas.mulligan@latimes.com