When Google began distributing clips from MTV Networks over its AdSense advertising network in August, Jennifer Feikin, Google’s director of video and multimedia search partnerships, said it was “an amped-up form of AdSense” - and the first, but not last, syndication deal of its kind.

Now the model that Google used to distribute MTV’s content could hint at its plans for YouTube, CNET writes. With Google giving little information on how it plans to monetize YouTube, analysts are left to examine Google’s past video projects for clues.

Still, one of the main problems for Google will be selling traditional advertisers on buying ad space alongside untraditional, and often “inappropriate” content - some of which, moreover, uses copyrighted material. Recent deals with music labels to distribute content via YouTube will alleviate some of those concerns, but not all.

Still, in the end, the interactive nature of YouTube may be enough to sway advertisers to follow their customers. “What all of this [concern] is missing is that video can be interactive. It’s still a lot like television; it begins and ends,” Dorian Sweet, executive creative director in Tribal DDB’s San Francisco office explains.

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News Corp.’s Fox, Viacom Inc., CBS Corp. and NBC Universal have entered into talks to create a video-sharing site that would host content from their properties and serve as a competitor to YouTube.While a potential site is still in the planning stages, the four media companies envision a the creation of a video-sharing site that would be the web’s primary source for video content from their television networks, Reuters reports, citing a Wall Street Journal article. The likely goal is to tap into the popularity of online videos to derive advertising revenues.

YouTube has become the internet’s most popular video-sharing site due in part to the hosting of copyrighted material from network and cable television shows. Fox, Viacom, CBS and NBC Universal want to divert traffic to such content away from YouTube and twoard the site they are considering.

The Wall-Street Journal reports that these media companies have been in talks about the creation of such a video-sharing site since the start of the year.

To get a wider audience for its television broadcasts, Fox Television has partnered with Critical Mention to distribute video clips to bloggers and others, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Through the deal, segments from local news broadcasts will be made available to interested site publishers; for example, a clip dealing with movies might be available for embedding on a blog that covers films. The videos would be ad-supported, and the publisher running the clip would receive a share of that ad revenue.

Measurement of online video, especially across a vast and non-centralized network, remains an issue to be resolved. That stumbling block, along with contractual problems with setting up such deals, is holding back more adoption of this sort of syndication. Some media companies are also nervous about giving up control over how and where their content is distributed.

Such outreach by media companies to tap into the niche audiences that exist on the internet is still in its initial stages. Buena Vista Television has made clips from some of its syndicated shows available to the websites of CW Television Network affiliates, and others have tried different techniques, but no model has emerged yet.

MTV has announced plans to launch the first of 10 short-form episodes of an original series developed specifically for wireless devices; called Sway’s Hip-Hop Owner’s Manual, the series features MTV correspondent and radio personality Sway Calloway, writes AdWeek (via MediaBuyerPlanner).

All wireless carriers that offer MTV Mobile Video as part of their content subscription packages will carry the show.

Sway’s Manual is MTV’s first series for mobile devices, but several other Viacom networks already have similar projects. Last month, VH1 launched a music-video themed mobile show, Dingo Ate My Video, and Comedy Central plans to release its original animated series, Samurai Love God, for mobiles later this year.

MTV Networks has purchased teen-oriented community site Quizilla from Gorilla Nation Media for an undisclosed amount. The site will be managed jointly by Nickelodeon and the MTVN Kids and Family Group.

Quizilla.com, which surpassed 4.7 million users in September, is a registration-only site where teenagers, mostly girls, create and share content consisting of quizzes, puzzles, stories and poems, MediaWeek explains. Many advertisers use the site to sponsor quizzes and puzzles with a viral element, or to conduct market research.

MTV wants to leverage the synergies between Quizilla, TheN.com and Neopets, the online virtual-pet universe.

“The acquisition of Quizilla combined with The N.com and NeoPets will further deepen our already strong connection with our audience and provide them with new ways to experience our content on The N, as well as the ability to create and share their own creative ideas and passions through Quizilla,” said Cyma Zarghami, president, Nickelodeon and MTVN Kids and Family Group.

Video Valentine
on 1-800-flowers.com

E-commerce sites like 1-800-Flowers.com, Buy.com and Blendtec.com are betting that seeding video-sharing sites and and otherwise relying on video will increase sales and traffic, writes the New York Times.

Blendtec’s WillItBlend.com have led to a measurable boom in business, and its popular videos have been viewed 11 million times - despite being responsible for hundreds of copycat videos’ being posted on YouTube. And in a move to increase customer involvement, 1-800-Flowers is promoting its Video Valentine service: Users can upload photos, write messages and choose music and graphics to send to their valentines, for free.

The flower company is also posting on YouTube a Reconnections series of clips, which highlight when a gift from the site either resulted in a reunion in the person’s life, or helped make the reconnection special.

Finally, Golfsmith.com is employing user videos for reviews and is considering rewarding people who create popular videos, while hiring vendor BazaarVoice to screen content for inappropriate content. In addition to adding value to the site, the videos help increase traffic coming from search engines when a product is typed.

Cingular has teamed up with YouTube for an online promotion allowing independent musicians to submit videos that the YouTube community can then vote for.

The promotion, titled YouTube Underground, will run October 2-18, Internet News reports. Along with an appearance on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” the four winning bands will receive airtime on Sirius Satellite Radio and could have their songs featured in an upcoming movie and television show.

Cingular’s partnership with YouTube is the latest attempt by marketers to reach the video-sharing site’s 13 million daily users. Recently, Warner Music Group announced it would distribute its library of music videos via YouTube.

Sean “Diddy” Combs says he is having it his way as he partners with Burger King to create the new brand channel DiddyTV for YouTube.

The branded channel on YouTube will feature tracks from Combs’s new Bad Boy/Atlantic Records CD “Press Play,” as well as original content for fans, AdWeek reports. Combs will also be featured in an upcoming ad campaign in support of DiddyTV. WPP Group’s VML designed the brand channel and will co-manage DiddyTV with Bad Boy Entertainment.

Online banner ads created by VML are currently the only advertising support planned for the venture.

The partnership will have Combs’s consulting BK on entertainment and marketing. The fast-food chain will also sponsor Diddy’s tour this fall. BK will conduct special listening parties for fans during the tour

Fox has served YouTube with a subpoena in an effort to discover the identity of the person who recently uploaded entire episodes of The Simpsons and 24. 

The subpoena was granted by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Jan. 18 and served this Wednesday, writes the Hollywood Reporter (via Reuters). Whether YouTube has complied is not yet known. Another video-sharing site, LiveDigital, was served a similar subpoena.

The uploaded episodes of 24, which were the basis of the subpoena, actually appeared on YouTube prior to the Jan. 14 season premiere on the Fox broadcast network. Fox was made aware of the uploaded episodes on Jan. 8, according to the subpoena.

Filed with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as its basis, the subpoena includes testimony from Fox Entertainment Group VP Jane Sunderland, who suggests that Fox had been unable to determine the video uploader’s identity on its own.

Interactive Video Network (IVN), an Interep Interactive company, plans to launch a new video network called the Viral Video Network, offering a single point of contact enabling advertisers to place marketing-related video in front of large audiences, the company announced.

IVN will guarantee advertisers both placement on consumer-generated content sites and plays of videos that marketers want to establish as viral-worthy. Several sites, including photobucket.com, gofish.com, vmix.com and redbalcony.com have joined as distribution partners of Viral Video Network (VVN), which will reach over 15 million monthly unique users at first - nearly 9 percent of the total internet audience - and expects to reach 20 percent by yearend.

Campaigns will be sold on a CPM basis with a minimum number of guaranteed video plays; VVN will provide real-time reporting to assess progress and will optimize campaigns to assure delivery of video plays within specific date ranges, according to Kevin Gianatiempo, president of IVN.

“Viral Video Network gives advertisers the ability to ‘jump-start’ viral video campaigns with guaranteed positioning on sites that specialize in consumer generated content, especially video,” Gianatiempo said in a statement.

“We are making it easy and efficient to place marketing-related video, whether shot by professionals or just a guy with a cool idea, as an alternative or a supplement to ’seeding’ multiple sites and hoping a viral component takes over.Viral Video Network will bring order to the process.”

Viral Video Network will share revenue with its network publishers, on behalf of whom it will maintain client relationship, implementation and campaign management.

IVN is a division of Interep Interactive and a sister company of Winstar Interactive, the largest independent online ad sales company in the United States. IVN’s turnkey solution is used by Napster, vMix, GoFish and Winstar Interactive sites such as HistoryChannel.com and Biography.com.