Family Guy creator's sellout to Google almost complete
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Google is revealing new details on the recruitment of Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane to attract prime-time television advertising dollars to web-only video content.
In September, the search giant plans to roll out a series of animated clips funded by its AdSense network called "Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy," according to the New York Times.
The story of a MacFarlane/Google advertising matchup has been swimming around the 'net for about a year — so the Gotham rag is a bit late to the punch. But it has gathered up some details on the pact which are interesting.
The original video shorts will serve as a flagship for the Google Content Network, which has until now has only experimented with in-stream video ads. Google's plan for securing massive advertising figures for video content is to bring the content to the user, rather than the other way around.
Cavalcade is described to The Times as "animated versions of the one-frame cartoons you might see in The New Yorker, only edgier". So, er, the bar has been set pretty low.
The shorts will be embedded on thousands of independent web sites frequented by MacFarlane's target audience (young men under 30) as free, ad-supported streams.
The series will be funded by advertising put into the feed via a mix of pre-roll ads, video banners, and "brought to you by..." messages prefacing the clips, according to The Times. MacFarlane will also offer to animate original commercials for a more substantial fee.
Google and MacFarlane aren't saying which advertisers are currently onboard with the idea, although they claim several deals mark the largest AdSense buys ever.
“What is exciting is that this is a way to monetize the Internet immediately. Instead of creating a Web site and hoping Seth’s fans find it, we are going to push the content to where people are already at,” said Karl Austen, a lawyer who worked on the deal, speaking to The Times.
MacFarlane has already created 50 "episodes" for the campaign, which run about two minutes each. So that's a clip with at least 1/3 of the time dedicated to advertising if it uses a pre-roll commercial slot. Perhaps a bit tedious for an audience — but easy money in the bank for MacFarlane. ®
COMMENTS
South Park
Even though its dull, family guy is much better than south park which seems to just revolve around how many times they can get supposedly primary school kids to say f**k or whatever expletive in a sentence.
Apart from the voiceover by Isaac Hayes (Chef) its often difficult to determine what they are actually saying.
I would assume that fixit_f is devoid of higher level intelligence and accompanying sense of humour if he/she thinks its the zenith of comedy or perhaps they are a 13 year old who has found their way onto El Reg as I cant think of anyone with half a brain that would find SP funny.
family crap
family guy is a piss-poor simpsons rip-off and the characters are borderline 'freak-me-out' material. i mean, does no-one else find an adult baby with an upper-class english accent vaguely disturbing?
nothing beats early simpsons, when it was still capable of ridiculing american society - before it became a watered down vehicle for celebrity guest star brown-nosing and really hit rock bottom with a guest appearance by your favourite war criminal, tony fucking blair.
@ Peyton
"What I want to know is how the show's script-writing manatees feel about this move."
One of the best South Park story arcs in recent times. I guess it might be because its airing here in Zild coincided with the astonishingly rapid collapse in the quality of Family Guy, but it was the first time I was 100% behind one of Cartman's schemes, and I was gutted when it failed.
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