Kangaroo prepares for August launch

Yesterday (Monday), the joint venture of BBC Worldwide, Channel 4 and ITV announced the appointment of BBC online chief Ashley Highfield as Kangaroo's chief executive.

The commercial director will be responsible for negotiating third-party content deals and overseeing commercial development of the platform, including all advertising on the site's landing page.

While each of the initiative's three backers will host individually branded areas on Kangaroo when it launches, the homepage will offer users a central access point where they can select content by genre.

It is on this landing page that Kangaroo will sell space - either through an in-house team or a sales house.

Richard Oliver, Universal McCann managing partner, said: "If Kangaroo is successful and the homepage ends up receiving a lot of use as the default start point for the service, the landing page will get a lot of traffic and generate a lot of revenue."

In March, Media Week revealed that Kangaroo aims to offer advertising that will target users by location, age, demographic profile and their preferences for types of content. Neither Lush, nor Channel 4 were available for comment at the time of going to press.

ITV and C4 will handle ad sales around content on their own hosted areas, while BBC Worldwide is looking for a third-party sales house, with ITV and C4 among the bidders.

Kangaroo is designed to complement existing online TV services provided by the iPlayer, C4's 4oD service and ITV.com, and will archive more than 10,000 hours of free and paid-for programming.

Highfield, who takes up the Kangaroo reins from interim chief executive Leslie MacKenzie, was director of future media and technology at the BBC.