Google Gets Family Guy Creator

Kim Malone, the Google executive in charge of online sales and
operations for Google AdSense, doesn’t own a TV. And why should she?

Google today announced a deal with Media Rights Capital (MRC) to
distribute original digital content across Web sites in the AdSense
content network.

The “multi-million dollar content,” as MRC described
it in a statement, will include new animated shows from Seth
MacFarlane, creator of animated hits Family Guy and
American Dad!, as well as a “How To” series by Raven-Symone and
Disney’s “That’s So Raven.”

All the content in the deal will be developed exclusively for digital
distribution. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Google will present MacFarlane’s and Symone’s programming bundled
with banner ads and in-stream video advertising, which users must
click to view the content.

This is a crucial element of Google and
Malone’s philosophy that advertisements should invite
potential customers, not intrude upon them. The idea is that if
users have control over how much advertising they consume, marketers
will in turn know which types of ads work and which do not.

As broadband penetration has deepened in the U.S., it’s made Web video
as technically feasible for many Americans as cable TV. But so far,
the mystery of how to monetize high-quality Web video content has
gone largely unsolved.

But MRC Co-CEO Asif Satchu thinks his company may have an answer
after first approaching Google a year ago.

“We feel this partnership answers the question of how best to reach
viewers online, because the Web is fragmented into millions and
millions of viewing destinations,” Satchu said in a statement.

“AdSense connects all of those fragments and offers us access to them
in one simple and powerful distribution solution.”

Malone is equally optimistic.

“This combination allows for the creation of original content that
was historically too expensive to produce for Internet distribution
and connects advertisers with high-quality content,” she said in a
statement.

Last summer, Google signed a similar deal with Viacom to distribute MTV content. Given Viacom’s $1 billion suit against Google, it’s perhaps not surprising that a Viacom spokesperson told internetnews.com “That test program concluded. It’s no longer in place.”