Meebo And Universal Partner For Videos, Chat

Universal Music Group and Meebo.com are partnering to add ad-supported videos to the site. The partnership launches with Kanye West, Ludacris and The Killers. UMG also will embed Meebo Rooms on official artist pages to enable real-time interactions via group chat and IM between fans.

The deal is similar to ad revenue sharing deals that many major labels have with YouTube and others. Until recently, most record labels viewed artist videos as promotional lost leaders. Some ad revenue is better than nothing and Meebo claims that recent artist features and ad campaigns have logged an average click-through rate of 1%.