Google launches showbiz news site on YouTube

By Andrew Wallenstein

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Google is mounting another experiment in content distribution that might be even more ambitious than its recent launch of original animation from "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane.

The Internet giant quietly launched a video series September 8 on its YouTube property called "Poptub" with Embassy Row, the production company run by "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" creator Michael Davies, and Pepsi.

As it did with MacFarlane's "Cartoon Cavalcade of Comedy," which became an instant hit on YouTube, Google plans to distribute "Poptub" on its Google Content Network (GCN), an ad network that provides the additional reach of hundreds of thousands of Web sites beyond YouTube.

But while "Cavalcade" is simply a collection of 50 shortform episodes, "Poptub" is intended as an "Entertainment Tonight" for the YouTube set that will yield thousands of episodes, not to mention a more curated point of entry to YouTube, which it has been criticized for lacking.

"For Seth, it's about launching episodes on a weekly basis," said Alexandra Levy, director of branded entertainment at Google. "With 'Poptub,' we're creating an organic destination on YouTube meant to live there for a longer period."

Both "Cavalcade" and "Poptub" are employing Google's branded entertainment program, which allows content providers to bring in an advertiser to finance programming that gets distributed over what Google calls its "hub and spoke" model. The hub is a channel on YouTube, and the spokes are in GCN, the countless selection of Web publishers that can be demographically targeted.

GCN embeds the video on these Web pages in Google Gadgets, applications that allow viewers who sample an episode to link back to the "hub" channel, where they can sample more programming and marketing messages from the sponsor.

Combining GCN and YouTube provides a one-two punch for knocking out the primary concern advertisers have about funding content online: guaranteed reach. "Poptub" alone pledges to deliver 3 billion impressions by year's end.