If today’s announcement that Google will launch Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane’s original web series across its network of AdSense sites sounds familiar that’s because the same parties made the exact same announcement last year. Someone, however, forgot to tell the New York Times, who managed to dust off the story, give it a fresh veneer and up the ante by quoting AdSense representative Kim Malone Scott as saying “We feel that we have recreated the mass media.”

Kim, you will never live that down.

No matter. I love what this deal represents, although I’m somewhat skeptical that users will adopt the model of clicking what has been defined as an advertisement in order to watch an advertisement in order to then watch a short blast of something MacFarlanely funny. (more…)

My recent post “Economic Constipation and Digital Malnutrition” was an attempt to critically analyze Mark Cuban’s provocative May 4th post entitled “The Ala Carting of Video on the Net - Will it lead to disaster?”.

Incidentally, it was my most trafficked day and much to my surprise, I received a comment from one of my favorite bloggers, Hank Williams, who writes the influential whydoeseverythingsuck.com?”

Mark’s post has sparked a debate that has spilled over from the circle of web video bloggers into a broader conversation. Next week I’m in New York for the Advertising 2.0 event and plan to bring Mark’s position, and my rebuttal, to the panel on which I’m speaking. (more…)

Anyone else notice that NBC.com’s traffic has taken a dive since Hulu launched?

I’ll bet the folks that run NBC.com did. In fact, they mention it, but Hulu represents a threat to NBC.com and all network vertical sites. But as we know, a threat is opportunity unspun, which might be why I found last week’s Ad Tech Keynote discussion with NBC’s Chief Digital Officer, George K. so interesting.

(more…)