Yahoo! Partners with the 2012 Sundance Film Festival

Taking consumers and advertisers behind the scenes in Park City

For the first time ever, Yahoo! is partnering with the Sundance Film Festival to support talented and creative storytellers, as well as to expand the premium content we offer Yahoo! users. As the Official Sponsor of the Short Film Program, Yahoo! will feature an exclusive selection of Sundance short films, which were chosen in collaboration with the Festival and Yahoo! Movie editors.

Starting today, Yahoo! will invite its millions of users to watch the nine short film finalists on Yahoo! Screen, share them with friends, and vote for their favorites. The filmmaker with the top votes will win the first-ever Yahoo! Audience Award and $5,000 from Yahoo! to continue his or her creative journey as a storyteller.

Why is Yahoo! sponsoring Sundance?

As one of the most anticipated entertainment industry events, the Sundance Film Festival emerged as an ideal place for Yahoo! to share its most popular content with movie enthusiasts and entertainment professionals. In addition to the Yahoo! Audience Award competition, users will get behind-the-scenes coverage of all the parties, premieres and power players by omg! NOW, an original daily series on the Internet's #1 most-visited celebrity news site. The Yahoo! Movies Sundance Blog will also develop original content at the festival, including reports from panels like "The New Frontier in Creating, Producing & Distributing Movies" featuring Yahoo!'s SVP of Media, Mickie Rosen, and filmmaker Morgan Spurlock. Bertolli is the exclusive sponsor of Yahoo!'s 2012 Sundance content across all of our highly-trafficked Media Network properties

What this means for advertisers

Bertolli chose to sponsor Yahoo!'s Sundance because the brand recognized Yahoo!'s ability to connect brands with the high-quality content that consumers care about most. In fact, Yahoo!'s partnership with the Sundance Film Festival (which was born out of a meeting between Festival creator Robert Redford and Americas EVP Ross Levinsohn) is part of Yahoo!'s increasing focus on creating unique, immersive experiences around the biggest annual events that. In the entertainment realm, this has recently included such buzzed-about initiatives as our live stream of "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 1" premiere and the Clinton Foundation's 10th anniversary concert, broadcast exclusively on Yahoo!.

Brands and marketing at Sundance

We know that most marketers can't take nearly two weeks off to hit the slopes and do some networking in Park City. That's why our Yahoo! Advertising Solutions team will be on the ground, sharing coverage of the business side of Sundance. We'll bring you interviews with entertainment industry leaders talking about how the Internet is changing the film industry, as well as cool examples of how brand marketers are telling their stories at the Festival.

Stay tuned to our Events page for all our Sundance reports---we promise lots of marketing insights with some snow and star sightings sprinkled in along the way.

--- Dianne Molina