Google's Adsense: the next major broadcaster?

There has been quite a bit of chatter over the past 24 hours about Google's decision to team with "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane to be the exclusive broadcaster of his next sit-com, one with the catchy title, “Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy.” Yes, the same Seth MacFarlane.

Here's the twist. Google will use its AdSense delivery platform to distribute video clips of "Cavalcade" to thousands of (presumably) targeted websites. Google already owns the world's biggest online video channel in YouTube, but, as is becoming clear, there is no proven formula yet of YouTube making the adverts pay for the broadcasting costs. AdSense (or, in this case, to be referred to as the Google Content Network), the thinking goes, will deliver more ad impressions than YouTube. Google and MacFarlane told the New York Times they've already landed "several deals [that] are among the largest ever landed by   AdSense, which  went into business  in 2003".

Targeted placement to individual sites rather than hosting in a single busy location where viewers are bound to get lost or distracted, Google feels, is the way to finally monetise online video. If successful it will turn mass media video distribution on its head, The Times predicts.

I can see the appeal of the on-demand aspect of distributing video in this way, but I'm dubious Google will be able to control the distribution via AdSense so that the video lands only on legit and relevant sites. For spammers and the like, it's still too easy to game the AdSense (not to mention Blogger) system with bogus fly-by-night sites whose only purpose is to dupe the occasional hoodwinked surfer to make an errant click or two. At the very least, this could be the perfect excuse for Google to clean up AdSense. If we get a few good laughs as well, all the better.

-- Bernhard