Big butt of a web series
I’ve been researching the Google/MacFarlane deal some more and wanted to detail some of the most interesting commentary from the web below:
‘However, while the deal may be groundbreaking, it’s not necessarily going to set a larger model for original online video. MacFarlane’s content is the best indicator that this project will be successful, combining the success of animation online, the bite-size format that does so well with web audiences, the preponderance and attractiveness of MacFarlane’s young male demo, and especially the known track record of Family Guy clips online.
MacFarlane said he saw the project as an opportunity to connect with his audience without being censored for broadcast television. He apparently also shaped the format and content of the series around “stacks of data showing how people interact with Web video,” and scrapped his original ideas since they were made on assumptions that the data disproved. It sounds like a spontaneity-sucking move, but it may just be the reality of getting content paid for online.
The resulting deal is a revenue split between four separate parties: MacFarlane, Media Rights, Google, and the web site where someone clicks on one of the syndicated videos. What the article doesn’t say is whether or not there will be a central web site that archives the episodes.’
(Liz Gannes - newteevee)
‘I wonder if the bigger point of this is that Google’s not afraid to experiment with the AdSense network. That represents a GIANT cross-section of the fixed and mobile Web, and those few lines of embedded JavaScript give Google the technical ability to put just about anything you can imagine on their publishers’ sites. How far it will go is open to debate and market forces, but this has the potential to open up entirely new monetization and distribution models for not just content providers but also folks out there building web apps and web services that can be shrunken, encapsulated into Gadgets or possibly some derivative framework, and embedded into the AdSense box.
Color me exuberant but this is pretty damn disruptive stuff if they can get it right.’
(Eric Austin Litman commenting on Howard Lindzon)
‘…there should be little doubt that this is only scratching the surface of Google’s ambitions to leverage the prime real estate they already control on an overwhelming number of Internet properties (and don’t forget mobile fits in there, too). Think someone at Google isn’t wondering how some derivative of Gadgets - Google’s framework for encapsulating pretty much anything you can imagine - might be published and monetized in this same way? What does the Web start to look like when what we think of today as ad units deliver more value to end users than the site where they’re displayed does?
This isn’t just relevant for content providers, either. In fact, it may be an even bigger deal for application providers who may end up with a viable, performance-based model to federate and monetize whatever it is they do as contextual transactions - and I’m using that term about as broadly as it can be applied - across a huge swath of the Web.
Give it time, but the implications of this have the potential to significantly change the economics of the Web and create a new class of opportunities for entrepreneurs and investors. I’ll be watching it closely, and you probably should, too.’
Whilst there has been experimentation in this area before notably Google/MTV, it’s the quality of the content that will ultimately determine the success of the venture and with credits like Family Guy, it’s clear MacFarlane could make this work.
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