A Get Smart website
with Time Life offer

Time Life is kicking off a broad online promotional effort to support its DVD collections, hoping to widely distribute online clips to drive sales.

Time Life has linked up with video platform company Brightcove to promote the release of the Get Smart collection on fan sites and blogs, reports AdWeek. Any size site, blog or even a MySpace user can embed a Get Smart-branded video player that shows two-minute clips of famous scenes, outtakes and extra content.

Time Life is banking on the lure of free content to draw in the long tail of niche sites to build consumer demand for the 128-episode series. The video players include a banner ad promoting the $200 DVD set on timelife.com. Time Life, which says the campaign is "very low-cost," also plans to encourage small sites to act as promoters and distributors by offering them a cut of sales that the clips generate on their sites.

Time Life intends to promote all of its DVD collections this way, including upcoming releases This Is Tom Jones and The Andy Williams Show. Those will include the option to pay to digitally download the episodes.