‘Family Guy’ Creator, Google Team Up to Break Ground on the Net

By Anastacia Mott Austin

Seth MacFarlane, creator of the television hit "The Family Guy" says he was feeling stifled by the TV censors.

The opportunity to team up with Google and make original cartoons exclusively for the Internet came along at just the right time.

"I just felt I could be a lot more honest on the Internet," said MacFarlane to reporters.

That and the hefty salary he was offered sealed the deal. In September the new series of two-minute animated cartoons will be introduced online, combined with advertising. The genius of the plan is that the cartoons will use Google’s AdSense system to appear on thousands of existing websites where fans of MacFarlane’s work are likely to be visiting anyway.

Investors are excited about the new format. This is the first time an original series – each cartoon being a "webisode" - will be distributed to users in this manner.

AdSense executive Kim Malone Scott crowed to the press, "We feel that we have recreated the mass media."

Media Rights Capitol, the major backer of the series, feels that having the series come to wherever viewers are, rather than trying to attract viewers to a separate web address – will be very profitable.

Karl Austen, an attorney who helped broker the deal, told reporters at The New York Times, "We believe the revenue could be formidable."

Added Austen, "What is exciting is that this is a way to monetize the Internet immediately. Instead of creating a Web site and hoping Seth’s fans find it, we are going to push the content to where people are already at."

MacFarlane calls the series "Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy," and told reporters it would be "…animated versions of the one-frame cartoons you might see in The New Yorker, only edgier."

The ads will run either in "prerolls," those annoying video clips that run before you can get to the site or story you want, or on a banner running underneath the cartoon, or as a "brought to you" byline.

Google feels the idea will be successful for a number of reasons. First, the content will be brought to websites where MacFarlane’s target audience – primarily young men – are already frequent visitors. Second, with a two-minute cartoon, there will be a much higher rate of CPMs (clicks per minute) than with a standard static ad, so the publisher of the site, MacFarlane, and Google all get more moolah, as advertisers typically pay by the click. Third, Google will be able to track which websites attract the most users to the ad.

Because of its anticipated success, advertisers are paying more to air their ads with the webisodes of "Cavalcade" than for regular Adsense Ads.

MacFarlane has also signed an even more lucrative deal to create original animated advertising content, to be shown along with the "Cavalcade" installments.

AdSense was started by Google in 2003, and recently upgraded to allow for websites to embed video clips with attached advertising.

MacFarlane has told reporters that he created an entirely new collection of characters for the web series. Those who are fans (or anti-fans) of the admittedly weird and raunchy show "The Family Guy" can agree that they’ll be interesting, at the very least.