Google has enlisted Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane to create an original animated series that it will distribute on the Web via its AdSense advertising system, according to The New York Times.
Seth MacFarlane is creating a Web-only animated series for Google.
(Credit: Seth MacFarlane)Google plans to use AdSense to syndicate the program--called Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy--to thousands of Web sites that are popular with MacFarlane's target audience, according to the newspaper. Advertising will be incorporated via "preroll" ads, banner ads, or "brought to you by" ads, according to the report.
MacFarlane is also reportedly working with advertisers to create original advertising to run with the Cavalcade content, although neither Google nor MacFarlane would reveal any of the advertisers, saying only that the deals were among AdSense's largest ever.
MacFarlane, who will receive a percentage of the ad revenue, told the newspaper that the two-minute episodes would be "animated versions of the one-frame cartoons you might see in The New Yorker, only edgier."
Google, which launched AdSense in 2003, expanded its AdSense program last year so that Web site publishers could display and make money off embedded video clips from YouTube content partners that have targeted banner or text ads. Google has experimented with distributing video and video ads on its AdSense publisher network before, but with mixed results. The company has tested distributing in-stream video ads and in-stream video clips with bundled ads.
Google is expanding its advertising business into a new domain: graphical ads that appear on mobile devices.
As with the company's text-based mobile ads, the Google image ads are displayed on the basis of keywords that appear on Web sites that people visit with their mobile phones, Google said Wednesday.
Google offers a variety of small display ad sizes.
(Credit: Google)Mobile devices are a new frontier for the Internet in general and for the advertising business that Google and many others are building atop it. The mobile Web has been hobbled by tiny screens, slow and unreliable connections, and carriers' data-access fees, but a new era is arriving.
Apple's iPhone has shown what's possible. Increasingly widespread Wi-Fi makes it possible to bypass mobile-phone network operators. And initiatives such as Intel's Mobile Internet Device and Google's Android could lead to a new generation of devices.
During last week's conference call to discuss quarterly financial results, Google co-founder Sergey Brin was bullish about the opportunity to bring advertising to the mobile Web.
"The mobile ads work very well," Brin said. "There's nothing to dissuade me it would be any worse than traditional desktop search."
Google's mobile image ads are similar to those appearing on ordinary Web sites, Google said, but are smaller and are limited to one per page. Advertisers will pay only when users click on an ad, as with the company's text ads that appear next to search ads. Google requires only one ad per page, and the ads must link to mobile-specific Web pages.
This pay-per-click model is popular among advertisers who want to match expenses to active expressions of interest in their ads, though "click fraud" can mean some of that activity is bogus.
Google works to identify fraudulent or accidental clicks and doesn't charge for what it deems to be invalid clicks.
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