Broadband Jungle Blog

Google Content Network rolls out Seth MacFarlane original series

In a novel approach to both online advertising and original content distribution, Google announced a new project with Seth MacFarlane, the creator of the animated series Family Guy. The web-only series entitled Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy will be distributed exclusively through Google AdSense.

An article by Brooks Barnes in the New York Times today outlines the innovative plan:

Google will syndicate the program using its AdSense advertising system to thousands of Web sites that are predetermined to be gathering spots for Mr. MacFarlane’s target audience, typically young men. Instead of placing a static ad on a Web page, Google will place a “Cavalcade” video clip.

Almost too subversive to be true: This could be a very effective way to get original content seen and monetize at the same time. Google calls the new service Google Content Network.

Advertising will be incorporated into the clips in varying ways. In some cases, there will be “preroll” ads, which ask viewers to sit through a TV-style commercial before getting to the video. Some advertisers may opt for a banner to be placed at the bottom of the video clip or a simple “brought to you by” note at the beginning.

Creator Seth MacFarlane receives a percentage of the ad revenue as part of his deal.

But the partnership with Mr. MacFarlane represents a bold step into the distribution business, one that, if successful, will surely send shock waves through the entertainment business. “Cavalcade” is not only from a high-profile Hollywood talent, but also carries a multimillion-dollar production price tag, by far the largest amount spent on original Internet content to date.

Derrie-Air Ads

My favorite genre: The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News ran fake ads last weekend for Derrie-Air, introducing a new concept of ticket prices for air travel: Pack Less. Weigh Less. Pay Less.

I'm particularly drawn to the politically correct carbon-neutral lingo mixed in with the carefree assault against our heavier fellow travelers.

'Welcome to Derrie-Air, the world's only carbon-neutral luxury airline, where you don't have to choose between living the high life and saving the planet.
The magic comes from our one of a kind "Sliding Scale"—the more you weigh, the more you'll pay. After all, it takes more fuel—more energy—to get more weight from point A to point B. '

Fabulous work: I can hear the copy editors laughing all through the weekend, apparently even the paper's disclaimer didn't save some innocent Sunday morning readers from confusion.

Here's the story in Editor & Publisher by Joe Strupp.

E&P's follow-up if you like to follow the story and its flaring debate about the campaign's ethics ...

Discovery Networks warms up to rebrand

Early word about Discovery Networks’ re-branding and relaunch effort expected for October. SoCal based 72 and Sunny just won the account.

 

Gregory Solman in AdWeek: Discovery Picks 72andSunny

The Discovery brand "is still caught up in the intellectual space," Dan Bragg, (client vp and creative director at Discovery,) said. "The brand itself is not as heartfelt as our programming. So the marketing will try to move the brand to being more culturally relevant and more emotionally engaging."

Glenn Cole, partner and creative director at the El Segundo, Calif.-based agency, said the rebranding push would "speak from a place of enthusiasm as opposed to the point of scholarship."

Added Greg Perlot, agency partner and strategic director: "We have a feeling that the culture is in a really curious place right now. It's interested in adventure, experience, the planet itself and stewardship of it, so we'll position Discovery at the center for those who are curious."

Yahoo's Steve Mitgang new Veoh CEO

Has Dmitry Shapiro's pioneering VeohTV broadband network finally found who it needs to  turn into a portal that really matters? Niche talk is on.

Abbey Klaassen writes in AdAge: Yahoo Veteran Looks for Veoh's 'Great Business'

Steve Mitgang arrived at Yahoo via its Overture acquisition in July 2003. aBut now as Veoh CEO, he believes there's a big business in online video advertising. That is, if marketers can figure out how to target the intentions of viewers.

Ad Age: Why has it been so hard to create a viable business around online video? It seems to be wildly popular among consumers.

Mr. Mitgang: According to the reports, YouTube only sold $30 million in ads last year because they didn't build a system to support ... that healthy tension between editorial and advertising. They just didn't build it.

The flip side of understanding those user behaviors and recommendations is for targeting purchases. We can say, look at the car enthusiasts ... [these ones] are primarily interested in German cars or muscle cars. Being able to tell that to the brand manager of Mustang or Mini, we'll be able to help them better than anyone else. Whether watching user-generated or premium content we'll help target against the right users.

BudTV

Yes, they finally launched and once you make it past the velvet ropes in the form of a strict age verification process, you’ll reach the promised land of broadband television, ca. 2007. Looks like AB did everything right here, BudTV will quickly represent a new quality standard for any type of original content on the web, whether it’s sponsored, ad supported or re-purposed.

Lorne Manly explores this new phenomenon at great length in this in-depth NY Times Magazine article:

“Bud.TV may be a marketing venture at heart, but it is marketing sotto voce. The shows’ plots won’t revolve around the quest for the perfect beer and a beautiful woman to share it with. Characters won’t declaim the virtues of Budweiser’s freshness at every opportunity. The site won’t be cluttered with banner ads. Anheuser-Busch executives are banking on a more subtle connection. Attach a brand name to something cool, something entertaining, and that elusive young man (and to a lesser extent, young woman) may check out Bud.TV’s offerings again and again, send them along to friends, even take a stab at creating his own minifilm for the site. Cultivate that warm, fuzzy feeling about Budweiser, and the company may cement the loyalty of the existing customer, or better, woo the uncommitted or hard-to-reach drinker to a Bud Light or a Michelob or a Peels malt-liquor beverage.”

Forbes on YouTube

Your future’s so bright, you’ve got to wear shades? If anyone, that’s YouTube’s wunderkind-CEO Chad Hurley smiling from the cover of the October issue of Forbes. The old school flagship runs with seven (!) articles on the Internet video phenomenon.

Video Fixation is the cover story by Scott Wooley, and he recounts the fine line Hurley and partner Steve Chen have been treading on their way to becoming broadband revolutionaries.

You Tube for Grownups by Cesar Suero has all the stats and provides a map to navigate the site for the uninitiated. More than Words examines the fledgling video search industry, while Can YouTube Grow Up And Stay Cool? by Peter Kafka deals with licensing issues and upcoming solutions like the arrangements with Warner Music and NBC.

Broadband Brewers—Bud.TV & Man Laws

Something’s fermenting among America’s mainstream mega-brewers, and the full flavor would do a micro brewery proud: Miller is scoring big with its self-deprecating Man Laws round table TV ads that found a permanent home on Miller’s broadband player. It can’t hurt that the guys are wrangled by non other than Burt Reynolds, according to Miller “possibly the best loved Man icon of all time.”

Annheuser Busch wetted their broadband appetite during last season’s Super Bowl with a dedicated micro-site designated to ‘big game’ commercials and related branded content.

Rumors were flying high immediately that America’s favorite Lager would eventually roll out a branded multi-channel broadband player, but it took until September to follow up with a formal announcement.

Scheduled for the day after Super Bowl 2007, the brewer will launch a full-blown broadband network with 8 channels of original content. According to AdAge, this is how they intend to monetize their $60 million player:

“Bud.TV will be the largest piece of an online budget that will command 10% of the brewer's $607 million media largesse, said Tony Ponturo, VP-global media and sports marketing. He said the bulk of the spending would come at the expense of prime-time and late-night TV.”

DDB, Chicago apparently packaged much of the channel content that includes footage from the A-B sponsored Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy tour, viral clips and ads, collaborations and contests with Kevin Spacey’s Bud-sponsored TriggerStreet community and a Matt Damon / Ben Affleck created broadband version of Project Greenlight, billed as the world’s largest online filmmaking contest.

For the broadband era, Bud.TV would be the first time a corporate entity sets out to start a competitive network to package compelling content while peddling their ware. Modern day sponsors obviously left a lasting imprint on programming since the dawn of network television. A-B’s commitment, however, seems to be a watershed moment by bringing together a new generation of advertisers with content creators and in front of a hungry (and thirsty) audience at exactly the right moment in time.

Could it be that the brewers actually succeed and do a good job at it?

Kate Moss, agent provocateur

Talk about super-rich media: Ubiquitous Kate Moss stars in a four-part web movie by Academy Award nominated director Mike Figgis. Produced for British lingerie maker Agent Provocateur, the cinematic foursome is called “Dreams of Miss X.”

Dream 1,‘Shadows,’ features the supermodel in her first speaking part as Miss X. She’s quite convincingly narrating a disturbing dream while walking around an eerily deserted mansion wearing Agent Provocateur underwear. Once word got out about the steamy one-reeler, the ensuing groundswell of excited traffic brought the label’s website to a quick crash.

Having previously created Timecode, one of the first movies shot on mini DV that received a theatrical release, Figgis is no stranger to new technologies. An extensive interview with the director is also available on the micro-site.

Dreams 2, 3 and 4 are scheduled to launch November 1, January 1 and March 1.

‘rich’ broadband advertising

Salut, c’est Chloé! With the help of fresh-faced & very alluring Chloé, Neutrogena France enticed teenage girls to exchange beauty tips and post videos on a blog site dubbed Visibly Pretty.

Chloé got the ball rolling with 4 straightforward clips shot web-cam-style that are running simultaneously on the homepage. The campaign hit a nerve – girls immediately responded by posting countless stills and comments and submitted more than 1,500 videos to the site, turning it into a forum to foster diverse ideas of beauty and self-esteem.

Washington Mutual expanded their print campaign featuring stodgy bankers at the competition into a micro-site called: Trapped Banker. Forever stuck in bankers’ hell behind a red rope, this group of old-school Wall Street types with cranky attitude is condemned to answer questions with the help of rich (and very entertaining) media.

Specialized Bicycles are no strangers to cool interactive web environments packed with entertaining and essential information. They’ve just added a micro-site called Specialized Ride-in-Movies where they screen pretty edgy web films from a world where bikes routinely outperform any car, as seen in the short ‘Outlaw In Lycra.’

In an effort to confront stagnant sales and fire up its image, Ford Motor Company has been on an internal and external mission to re-invent itself. Their extremely professional and authentic looking documentary-style web series Bold Moves takes this message way outside the realm of corporate messages and straight into cyberspace.

Apparently fearless about letting the public peek in on how conflicted the company’s current course is, Bold Moves doesn’t shy away from big questions such as fossil fuels, developing alternatives and takes viewers to board and strategy meetings. Ford has so far posted 9 episodes containing candid interviews with top executives, custom car icon Carroll Shelby and successfully reveals how hard and complex it might be to steer a vehicle of that magnitude into the future.

Subway and the lost TV pilots

No idea why the Going to Work for Subway pitch from agency.com ruffles so many feathers in the advertising community – aren’t we all putting ourselves out there hustling for jobs? From a programming point of view I actually quite like it. ‘Subway’ is funny in a very dry kind of way, fairly well-produced given the shoestring budget they most certainly had, plus it does get the message across to Subway: These guys really are after your account!

For an agency to use youTube and iFilm as viral platforms to get a potential client’s (and everyone else’s) attention is unique and probably a first. The piece seems in the vein of The Accountants webisodes spun off from The Office or clips on the Daily Show but it easily holds its own. Can it be that we recognize too much of ourselves in this mockumentary and can’t forgive when shows stop being ‘reality’ TV and start resembling real life?

Relying on the broadband tubes to give a guerilla project that extra push isn’t entirely new, though: Nobody’s Watching, the spirited sitcom about two Ohio guys’ love of good old sitcoms had been passed on by the WB in 2005 but eventually got picked up by NBC after the pilot was leaked to youTube and gained momentum there.

Using this blueprint, the cancelled Fox Television pilot The Adventures of Big Handsome Guy and His Little Friend recently made it into the digital hands of slubber.com and break.com. Fox has threatened with cease-and-desist letters but the creators seem happy since the miraculous appearance is drawing eyeballs and doing them some good.

According to break.com’s Keith Richman, around 250,000 unique visitors clocked in to watch part 1 of the pilot in their entirety, quite unusual for a viral site specializing in short form programming. Since the show is still under option, maybe somebody somewhere at Fox is looking at the numbers and reconsidering a pick-up?