"Family Guy" creator hooks up with Google
Seth McFarlane, creator of the hilarious animated series "Family Guy" has just hooked up with Google, using its AdSense network to distribute original video shorts. The show, which will be paid for, McFarlane and Google hope, by embedded ads, will appear in banners Google serves on both its own and independent sites. The notion is that as ads, the videos will reach a larger audience than a website dedicated to the clips. For Google, it's a way to fill unsold ad inventory and prove the notion of AdSense as a distribution vehicle, after a similar deal with Viacom's MTV Networks collapsed. And it could also have a long-run benefit for Google. By inserting content into ad banners, Google could be, in essence, retraining users to pay attention to the Web commercials they've long learned to ignore.