With ‘Tiny Entourage,’ Heavy.com hopes little people drive big Web traffic

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It’s tough to make an online video stand out these days. What could trump Matt Harding dancing all over the world, Kobe Bryant jumping over a sports car and Filipino inmates performing along with ‘Thriller’?

Little people acting out scenes from the HBO show ‘Entourage,’ of course. That’s the strategy of video site Heavy.com, which got Sparks, an orange-flavored malt beverage, to underwrite the production of ‘Tiny Entourage,’ a new Web show that features scenes from Entourage acted out by little people. It’s heavy on product placement, with characters holding cans of Sparks in the episodes.

“We live in a world that already has a tiny KISS band and a tiny Paris Hilton,” said John Lumpkin, senior vice president of sales strategy and partnerships at Heavy.com. “And people love new angles on ‘Entourage.’ ”

But will the inaugural videos, which depict characters sharing a hot tub with older women, hugging and hitting golf balls onto the roofs of mansions, be enough to bring the crowds? The online video market does seem a bit saturated. Last month, research firm EMarketer lowered its online video ad spending projections for 2008, saying advertisers would spend $505 million on these ads, rather than the $1.4 billion it had originally projected.

Heavy.com is no exception: According to Web traffic site Alexa, the site fell from being the 1,100th most-visited site on the Internet in March to the 3,000th in May. It now has a traffic rank of 2,242.

Lumpkin says the video will be one of Heavy’s most popular viral videos, especially for its core demo of 21- to 34-year-old males.

‘Other people may find this category challenging right now, but Heavy is the category leader,’ Lumpkin said. ‘Doing programs like these allows us to maintain this leadership position.’

-- Alana Semuels