Archive for September, 2010:

Mindy Kaling, B.J. Novak of ‘The Office’ Give Us Sneak Peek of ‘The 3rd Floor’

the-office-the-third-floorNBC.com’s The Office, whose Streamy Award winning companion series Subtle Sexuality garnered both critical acclaim and great viewership turnout, has a new web series up its sleeve: The 3rd Floor, a ‘self-produced’ horror film created by The Office character Ryan Howard (B.J. Novak).

The series, which is scheduled to premiere October 21, released a sneak peek trailer on NBC.com today. The series stars and is directed by Mindy Kaling (Kelly Kapoor), who starred in Subtle Sexuality and House Poor on StrikeTV. Joining Kaling and Novak in the cast are Ellie Kemper (Erin Hannon), Kate Flannery (Meredith Palmer) and Brian Baumgartner (Kevin Malone).

This past Tuesday Kaling appeared on The Tonight Show and expained to Jay Leno why she might not be able to watch her own creation:

The problem with me in being in and directing horror series webisodes is that I can’t watch them because they terrify me so much…the images get ingrained in my head forever, and I just replay them in the shower, on the drive to work, and then it haunts me.

The short horror film also features microsite the3rdfloormovie.com, a “Horror Film Produced, Directed, Written, and Scored by Ryan Howard,” which promises more features leading up to the late October release. We’ll keep you posted!

Travis Betz, aka ‘The Receptionist’, Wins Kia’s Search for Next YouTube Star

We’ve always been a little skeptical about sponsored online video contests with cash payouts, especially when the decision on the winner is in the brand’s hands. But when Kia Motors launched its Who’s Next? reality web series to find the next YouTube star, we took interest. This one didn’t have nameless judges, but instead tapped well known YouTube creators SMOSH, LisaNova and ShayCarl to sift through all the submissions of would-be stars.

Today they picked a winner. Down to two finalists, it was Travis Betz, creator of the channel The Receptionist on YouTube, who walked away with the oversized prize check for $10,000. The campy final episode of the reality series is above, complete with LisaNova hamming it up as an overdressed reality show hostess—proving the YouTubers still keep it loose and weren’t turning stiff corporate shills just for a paycheck.

Betz has been on the web video map before, having had 10 episodes of his Receptionist series commissioned by Comedy Central for Atom.com back in May of 2009. The series of videos had actually launched on YouTube back in 2006, and after a little hiatus in the middle, now totals 96 videos in all.

We asked Betz whether he’s noticed an uptick in viewership since making on the Kia series. “Absolutely. I have been very fortunate to have amazingly dedicated fans, but since the contest I have noticed that the fan base is expanding,” said Betz. “More views, more comments and more subscribers. It’s very cool. Nothing is more exciting than introducing your work to wider audience. Of course, none of this would have ever been possible with out the people who have been with me since the beginning.”

He also added that YouTube is the place to be for building up an audience for his online video creations. “I’m also an independent filmmaker, and so my YouTube audience has been a great supporter of my other works,” Betz added. “I think YouTube is a great way to build up a fan base, but it is also an incredible amount of work. I’ve been at this for four years now and I still work my butt off to get my stuff out there.”

He still has a ways to go to crack the Top 100 most subscribed on YouTube, but since the contest began he’s tacked on over 7,000 subscribers to put him over the 32k mark. Total views on his videos (on YouTube) are just over 2.3 million. Not bad at all for a guy who actually makes his videos while at work as, you guessed it, a receptionist.

So what is Betz going to really do with the $10,000 prize check? “I also need stupid little things like, shoes, contacts, brita filtes…I know, boring,” he told us. “I will be getting a new laptop though! And finally I will be putting some of it into promoting my new feature film coming out next year, The Dead Inside.”

Facebook Now Second Only to YouTube in Online Video

Facebook videoFacebook continues its head-turning upward trajectory in online video, firmly taking over the second place spot to Google sites (YouTube) in comScore’s latest report on online video in the US released today. The data for August 2010 shows that the social networking site delivered 243 million video streams—or as they call them ‘viewing sessions’—to an estimated 58.6 million unique viewers that month. Last August Facebook barely made the chart, coming in at number 10 with just 24 million viewers.

It was enough to see Facebook leap over Yahoo! sites, which is now in third place with 229 million viewing sessions to 53.9 million viewers. Music video powerhouse VEVO isn’t slacking either, serving up 205 million sessions to 45.4 million viewers.

The overall consumption numbers for online video show steady growth once again, with 178 million U.S. Internet users watching online video content in August for an average of 14.3 hours per viewer. That’s about an 11% year over year growth from last August in terms of total viewers.

Full chart below:

comScore online video - august 2010

Facebook is far and above the largest social network site with over 400 million users and counting, but for many of its early years video was largely ignored by the company’s developers. Instead third-party applications like Slide’s FunShare app did most of the video delivery. And while it still hasn’t reached the saturation where it can be the default video search engine that YouTube is, there’s just no escaping the fact that now there’s a whole lot of video getting watched on Facebook.

Hulu Remains King of Video Ads

With heavy viewership numbers come increasing ad consumption, and the August report shows that Americans viewed more than 3.8 billion video ads in August. Top dog Hulu served up the highest number of video ad impressions with 790 million. Not only that, Hulu delivers not just the reach, but the frequency, serving an average of 30 over the course of the month—the highest frequency of any video ad network.

BrightRoll served up 469 million ad views, but at a frequency of only 7.2 ads per viewer. And in the game of video advertising it’s all about reach and frequency, so no wonder content creators are gushing over Hulu’s generous CPMs right now.

One final note, the duration of the average online content video is now at 4.8 minutes. Remember when this was 2.7 minutes not too long ago? Call it the ‘Hulu Effect’, or better bandwidth, or more longer form content, but either way the US internet audience is getting used to kicking back on their laptops a little longer than before.

First it Was Makeup, Now Gaming Gurus Booming on YouTube

[Editor’s Note: This is the first of a two-part special on YouTube’s burgeoning video game community from WilllOfDC. Click here for Part 2.]

Two to three years ago, there were a handful of women on YouTube making videos centered on beauty, makeup, and style. Today, there are six makeup/beauty gurus in the top 100 most subscribed to YouTube channels of all time (michellephan‘s the most popular, currently holding #18 spot).

The unexpected and astronomical success of the makeup guru community is one of the best stories on YouTube, especially for the content creators who acquire brand deals (like michellephan, who signed with Lancome) and are sent massive amount of free makeup/skin care products. Add to the makeup gurus thousands of other guru content creators who are racking up millions of views, and it’s easy to see the guru community on YouTube has grown so big it rivals the passion and size of YouTube’s comedy community (which most people probably thought was YouTube’s only community).

video-game-gurusNow there is a third YouTube community that’s risen to rival both the comedy and guru crowd. And that community is gaming.

While machinima has been on YouTube since 2006 and been a dominant force on the site for years (it’s currently YouTube’s #1 most viewed channel of all time), until recently, there’s been no other noticeable success stories for the gaming community. The obvious exception to this is LikeTotallyAwesome, a creation sxephil launched in Fall of 2009.

With his contacts, sxephil was able to partner, license and put together a successful gaming channel in the same style as machinima. Yet no one else was able to duplicate his success. Until now. The gaming community is currently exploding in massive ways rivaling the numbers of long established YouTubers.

But why did it take so long? How did machinima and LikeTotallyAwesome attain YouTube popularity? Why did other gaming channels, despite good numbers and fan support from a $60 billion worldwide video game industry, not reach any kind of comparable mainstream YouTube success?

There are a few reasons. First, it has to do with the style of the content.

Despite being part of that $60 billion worldwide industry, gaming content is still niche. Yes, makeup content is very niche, too, but it was able to explode because YouTube success is personality driven. People who would never care about makeup or beauty found themselves becoming instant fans of those creating the content. A lot of the gurus are great in front of the camera. Sure, some are easy on the eyes, but it’s not just that. The voice, tone, personality, knowhow, and overall presentation of a lot of the gurus make them easily watchable and very likable, regardless of whatever it is their guru-ing about.

This is exactly why the gaming community is currently exploding. People who would never care about gaming watch a video from one of gaming’s many genres (news, reviews, and lets play – entire walkthroughs of a video game) and find themselves mesmerized by the content while simultaneously being drawn to the voice, tone, personality, knowhow, and stories of the content creators.

A second reason gaming recently came into mainstream YouTube success is that it reached a tipping point.

One can’t overestimate the size of the worldwide gaming community, and once enough of that community decided to make YouTube its hub, everyone else seemed to follow. Where sites like IGN were previously the focal point for gaming videos, news, and reviews, YouTube is emerging as another player, providing fans an easy way to put out and popularize their own content.

Another reason gaming is blowing up at such an accelerated rate is an awesome side effect of the FarmVille phenomenon.

At its heart, FarmVille is a video game, and it’s becoming the “gateway drug” of gaming. It hooks people into the gaming experience. Then they crave more. Users click on the easiest way to get their fix, which is the traditional console and computer gaming scene, which can quickly lead to participation in the industry’s biggest genre, competitive gaming, which is effectively turning into a sport (and people love competition and sports). Users upload videos of themselves competing against others in multiplayer games, like Starcraft 2 and Modern Warfare 2.

But what’s biggest reason that YouTube’s gaming community is only now coming into its own? You guessed it! Laws and politics. Tune in tomorrow for an explanation.

TD Ameritrade Shares ‘The Invested Life’


The Invested LifeBrokerage firm TD Ameritrade Holding Corporation launched its own financial advice web series The Invested Life on the Money section of MSN.com today. The reality television-formatted series is hosted by familiar Onion News Network anchor Suzanne Sena, who tells us:

In these times of economic uncertainty, we want to give you the tools to take control of your financial future. So we went out and found people just like you and matched them up with some of the most well respected financial coaches from across the country—with one goal in mind: helping you manage your portfolio, and reaching your retirement goals.

Consumers are paired with independent financial advisers (who, we were surprised to find, are not TD Ameritrade employees) who coach them on subjects beyond just investing—retirement, taxes, college savings, real estate, and taxes. TD Ameritrade is planning to release three seasons of the show, each spanning a financial quarter.

According to a recent New York Times Business Day article, the campaign will cost TD Ameritrade an estimated $5 million to $10 million. “With our history as a leading online brokerage, doing something online seemed like a natural choice,” said Peter Sidebottom, Executive Vice President for Product and Marketing at TD Ameritrade. “Getting Americans to engage in their financial life in a new and creative way is important at this time.”

The Invested Life was developed by the MSN unit of Microsoft along with production and talent management agency Generate and Ogilvy Entertainment, part of the Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide division of WPP. Doug Scott, president of Ogilvy Entertaiment, told the New York Times, “the web is a better home for The Invested Life, because of the markets’ changing dynamics; the longer lead times required for television production could render the recommendations from the advisers as outdated or irrelevant.”

Ben Stiller Directs Parents, ‘Stiller and Meara’ on Yahoo

There’s this scene in Episode 5 of the first season of Mad Men. Freddy Rumsen, one of the good old boys of the 1960’s fraternity that was the American advertising industry, is talking with his boss, Don Draper and Art Director, Salvatore Romano. Rumsen recounts how he wrangled all the secretaries in the office into an observation room and had them try on Belle Jolie lipstick so he could get ideas for an ad campaign. While most of the other girls fluttered about doing whatever it was women who were suffocated by the feminine mystique and a lack of upward workplace mobility did, Peggy Olson actually came up with a helluva catchphrase. Rumsen was truly amazed. He tells Draper and Romano, “It was like watching a dog play the piano.”

That’s how I think we think about old people.

stiller-and-maeraOur platonic ideal of octogenarians is either all “Get off my lawn!” or sweet and loving elders whose mere presence commands a certain amount of respect or arthritic, semi-senile individuals needing constant attention or some combination of the three. When eightysomethings act outside these expectations – whether it’s by hosting SNL, making sketch comedy ripe with sexual innuendo, riffing on the Jersey Shore, or telling dirty jokes – we like it. A lot.

And that’s part of why Stiller & Meara works. The other part is they’re hysterical.

Yahoo’s latest original web series is created, directed, and produced by Ben Stiller under the banner of Red Hour Films. The show stars his parents, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara in a kind of redux of the couple’s popular, long-acclaimed comedy routine. Early graduates of Second City, the husband and wife duo are seasoned vets at the art of improv. It shows.

In the first two installments, Stiller and Meara exchange the kind of banter about the internet and the Jersey Shore only 40+ years of comedy training and companionship can produce. It’s a gentle ribbing, complete with jokes about ovulation and kids these days, built on top of an almost tangible foundation of genuine affection. It’s also way more entertaining than any dog playing the piano. This is definitely one web series to watch.

Online Video View Fraud, Paid Views and What to Make of It

Jim Louderback is a vocal critic of the current state of ‘views’ in online video. In a guest column in AdAge today, Louderback, who’s also the CEO of Revision3, continued to lambast the industry for rampant misrepresentatation of viewership counts on videos. The worst culprit of all? The dreaded embedded autoplay.

“And recently I’ve come to find the off-site—or embedded autoplay—as a particularly heinous malodorous video view,” he writes. “Why? Because many embedded autoplay videos often get streamed to pages that have zero content relationship to the video served, and often play below the fold with audio turned off.”

The timing of this conicides with TubeMogul releasing today an updated version of their “What Counts As a View” study that breaks down the varying threshold of the major video sites. The overall conclusion was that the views threshold has in fact become less stringent that their original 2008 study. Blip.tv still stands as the most stringent, counting only one view per IP address per session, whereas sites like Dailymotion and Yahoo Video are much more liberal in what counts. Some have tigheten up, like YouTube which used to count embedded autoplaying videos as separate views until a Avril Lavigne fans tried to game the system to make her the popular of all time.

Embedded Autoplay

We’ve been against the concept of embedded autoplay here at Tubefilter as well, especially when the networks or creators turn around and pitch us their web series that is allegedly a “hit” with millions of views, even when they are really counting all those autoplaying paid views. Remember when we caught MySpace buying views for their game show series BFF?

In this case it isn’t so much fraud as it is the unspoken truth that most major branded entertainment series have built in a sizable media buy into the overall deal. A network like MySpace may promise to deliver say 10 million views for that series within the brand’s target demographic. If they don’t reach that organically just by posting on site—which hardly ever seems to happen—they turn to the practice of syndication of those videos through ad networks like Tremor Media, SpotXchange and Heavy. The video often gets placed in display ad units around the web as an embedded autoplay video—we’ve all seen them. (Even our ad network partner here at Tubefilter, Technorati Media, has been known to run them from time to time.)

For BFF, it was P&G’s Always brand along with Ortho Women’s Health & Urology that were on board to back the show. And part of their allocated budget was set aside for this very practice. So the brand itself wasn’t really getting misled, at least not directly. Instead they were getting sold on the idea that online video series and campaigns are really just rich media display ads with video. Their target customers (hopefully) will get blasted with the video spots which will hopefully lure them in or at least passively expose them to the brand message.

But really, it devalues all those real web series that have captured a genuine audience that comes back time and again.

Seeking Standards

Some organizations including the IAWTV, a group of online video industry professionals and creatives, are looking to define a set of standards that the industry can agree on. The IAWTV has set up a standards committee, chaired by Louderback, that is addressing this very issue. (In full disclosure, I’m also a member of the committee though I’m not writing on its behalf here.)

Louderback suggests in his AdAge column the idea of an alternate way of looking at the autoplay conundrum, taking a nod from an existing term in the advertising world.

But recently I’ve begun to soften my stance to play-starts—whether user initiated or autoplay—It’s clearly not a video view in any sense of the word, but it is something. And that something actually hearkens back to a traditional TV metric, called OTS, or “Opportunity to See.” I discovered the view to OTS connection from Anne Drake, the head of research and analytics at Kantar Video. According to Anne, OTS simply measures whether a piece of video (typically an ad) was actually delivered to a physical TV set, not whether someone actually saw it. And that makes sense, if you think about pre-DVR TV, where viewers often used ad breaks to grab a snack, use the bathroom, or annoy their little sister. – Jim Louderback

The challenge with standards is finding something that is universally accepted amongst a critical mass of the industry. Right now in online video, it’s the advertisers that are calling the shots. So step one is actually separating their needs to quantify paid media buying with that of the unpaid, organic audience attention.

Separating view counts out into paid views (or perhaps OTS as Louderback proposes) versus organic views, would allow both the brands and the creatives to actually assess how effective a online video or web series was at reaching a real audience.

Web video creators The Fine Brothers (Benny and Rafi) have long been advocates of transparency in view counts and have spoken out against view count fraud and manipulation. In a recent email they wrote:

The public should know the difference to get transparency of the web video world, and let advertisers understand what they are paying for, and then decisions can be made on what’s more important to a potential sponsor, studio, etc – engaged sustained viewer ship, or impressions. This difference should be public knowledge and we should not have to continue dealing with what is, in our opinion, one of the biggest issues in the space right now which is over the top view numbers being touted on series that have no actual fan base which is destroying expectations about the reality of a successful online video/series. – The Fine Brothers

Where the standards come from will still remain to be seen. Headway may be able to be made first with the video portals themselves—blip.tv, YouTube, Vimeo and the like—which sit at the front of the consumer facing experience of online video. The metrics firms like comScore, Kantar and Nielsen will also play into this as they demo and roll out all sorts of different metrics for their paying ad clients. But just as the GRP (Gross Rating Point) became the standard number for TV, in order to get widescale adoption, there’s most likely going to need to be one metric that becomes the default. The water cooler number.

Can that default metric still be a view? Or is something else better in your opinion? We want to know. Leave a comment below and we may quote you for our next piece on this issue.

Disney, Jim Henson, Clorox Open ‘Possibility Shop’

the-possibility-shopTwo weeks ago, Disney Online and the The Jim Henson Company announced Chef Cat Cora would leave the hallowed halls of Kitchen Stadium at least once a week to star in a pair of online, muppet cooking shows. Today, the two progenitors of modern family-friendly programming announced another web series that’s safe for work and fun for the kids.

The Possibility Shop is back for a second season.

Created by and starring “every family’s Aha-inspiring guru,” Courtney Watkins, the series attempts to engage mothers and inspire them with a DIY spirit and “how to, can do” attitude. In every installment, the modestly dressed and impossibly upbeat Watkins embarks on an everyday creative project, including “designing and building a haunted house, offering instructions for a make-your-own board game, jump starting a conversation, or finding ways to carry the spirit of the holidays throughout the entire year.”

The 20-episode second season will run through August 2011 with The Clorox Company as The Possibility Shop’s exclusive sponsor. In addition to branding on The Possibility Shop website, Clorox, Glad, Brita, and more of the company’s products will be featured in a quick and easy companion series dubbed Bright Ideas. Moms fresh out of ways to keep their kid entertained and in need of information on a suite of household cleaning products should tune in.

ConAgra Serves Up ‘Life Unjarred’


Life UnjarredConAgra Foods Canada has partnered with Fresh Baked Entertainment to produce a new comedy web series Life Unjarred. The series follows everyday stay-at-home dad, Randy Mathews, his French Canadian wife Natalie, and son Jack as they stumble into the world of unexpected celebrity.

The story centers around Randy Matthews, the series’ relatable protagonist, who is recruited as a spokesperson for ConAgra brand VH Sauces after his son uploads a comedic video to YouTube showing him trying to cook with the sauces. The series debuted September 10 on the Life Unjarred YouTube page, and the custom site features recipe videos (screen tests of a bumbling Randy trying to demonstrate various recipes), blog entries from Randy, and typical social media fare. The storyline will adjust according to consumer response—the target audience are moms with kids under 17 and women of adult only households.

Life Unjarred marks a major change for VH Sauces’ traditional, television-based marketing approach. Tony Angelucci, Senior Brand Manager, Meal Enhancers at ConAgra, told Marketer News “We found [traditional media] wasn’t breaking through. We found that we really needed to engage with the consumer digitally more than in the past.” Although humor is a big departure from VH Sauces’ marketing strategy, it is not for parent company ConAgra, who teamed up with Yahoo! to present What’s So Funny? with Shira Lazar.

Life Unjarred will also be distributed through Canada-based Rogers Media through its on-demand cable platform and through RogersOnDemand.com. Rogers recently announced a partnership with Sony’s Crackle as the studio’s exclusive agent in Canada.

‘Agents of Cracked’ Back For More, Can It Repeat As Audience Fave?

Agents of CrackedAgents of Cracked is back today with their sophomore season after a well-received first season on comedy site Cracked.com. The office comedy surprised many web series observers by picking up the Audience Choice Streamy Award back in April, but to fans of one of the fastest growing comedy web sites it was no surprise at all.

Abe Epperson, Dan O’Brien and Michael Swaim—three of Cracked’s ‘most popular’ writers/personalities—created the scripted web series which launched last November. It follows in the tradition of comedy sites crafting up ficitonalized hijinks within the real confines of their internet offices, something we’ve seen work with College Humor’s Hardly Working and to a lesser extent with Katalyst Media’s Katalyst HQ. The formula for success in these type of series seems to be all about the talent—in this case, O’Brien and Swaim leading the charge on screen.

With Cracked’s parent co Demand Media is in their quiet period ahead of their upcoming IPO which they filed back in August, the company is being keeping somewhat reserved about the comedy site’s recent successes.

Demand Media’s VP/GM for Cracked.com Oren Katzeff recently called it “the fastest growing comedy site online,” noting that the site now attracts around 7 million unique visitors a month. Add to that a heavy push into the mobile and tablet app market with their recently launched iPhone and iPad apps.

Katzeff did have this to say about the new season of his site’s first ever original web series. “Both the hardcore fans and the newbies will enjoy Season Two. We give everyone a distorted and satirical look at what happens in the Cracked.com offices.”

Season One of Agents of Cracked reached 3.9 million views on Cracked.com—which by the way self-reports their numbers though they are visible on site. The ‘overly dramatic’ trailer (below) has already notched 117,000:

Web Series Winners at NYTVF

nytvfOn Saturday night, the New York Television Festival capped off a week’s worth of screenings and entertainment industry-oriented events with an awards show honoring some of this year’s top submissions. Here’s a summary of the web series that took home cash and acclaim on Saturday night.

Greg & Donny
Most of yins are familiar with Jeff Skowron and Matt Yeager from their roles on Williamsburgh’s favorite web show, The Burg, but these two Steelers fans from Western Pennsylvania are attracting quite the following for their own series. The creators of the tech-illiterate Greg and Donny won IFC‘s “Out of the Box” award and received a $25,000 development deal from the cable network.

9AM Meeting
This “barely-animated web series” has been a long-time hit amongst New York’s Channel 101 crowd, stringing together 10 callbacks in a row (and counting!) at the monthly voter’s choice screening. Now MTV has taken notice. Brooklyn-based comedy writer and 9AM creator, Dan McCoy won MTV’s Animation Award along with a $5,000 development deal.

Jack in a Box
Created by Michael Cyril Creighton and Marcie Hume, Jack in a Box is the story of a disillusioned, would-be Broadway star who’s relegated to selling tickets to Broadway shows in order to make it in the Big Apple. This workplace comedy with a nod to New York’s theater crowd won NYTVF’s Best Web Series Pilot.

Congrats to all of New York Television Festival’s Selections and Winners. Check out the full list here.

Vuguru Taps Fireworks, Bullish on International

Vuguru - Pretty Tough

vuguruVuguru has always had an eye or two outside the fickle US market for online content. When Michael Eisner’s Tornante Company opened its online studio in early 2007, it scored a hit in its first at bat, taking teen drama Prom Queen abroad to foreign buyers. Yes, even selling Japanese rights (as Tokyo Prom Queen) in a country that doesn’t even celebrate prom.

Flash forward to 2010. Even with a much stronger domestic US market for online content, and a commitment to stepping up its production output, Vuguru is still looking to international as the linchpin of its broader multiplatform strategy. After last year’s investment from Rogers Media, which brought in a long-term Canadian distribution partner, the studio looked beyond North America for its next move.

The Booth at the EndVuguru just signed a two-year agreement with ContentFilm’s Fireworks International, giving the distributor a first-look opportunity to acquire international multi-platform distribution rights—except for the US and Canada—for all Vuguru’s new productions. The partership comes after a successful test-run with Fireworks for psych thriller The Booth and the End—we’re told a major international deal for the series will be announced soon.

Pretty Tough is the latest web series project that the studio is taking to the international markets hoping to entice buyers hungry for reasonably priced US entertainment content. First stop for the 18-episode web series is MIPCOM 2010 in Cannes. Fireworks has one of the more impressive track records for selling web series abroad taking steampunk drama Riese to SyFy along with shopping fellow Streamy-winner Valemont, both of which were positioned as both short-form series and longer-form television.

“International is a big piece of the business for us,” Vuguru’s President Larry Tanz told us. “It’s very strategic for us because we have buyers who are looking for premium scripted content and they are buying it.”

He cited France Telecom’s Orange with its six recently launched mobile ‘bouquets’ which are hungry for programming content, particularly short-form. Other mobile buyers like Germany’s Deutsche Telekom are also said to be on the lookout for US content.

I asked whether pre-sales—the practice of advance selling international territories before the content is even produced—are part of the business model, and as of now Tanz says they are not. “We aren’t using an international pre-sale as decision criteria for going ahead a project,” he noted, adding however, that “the ContentFilm [Fireworks] deal helps us know early on if there is a market for it.”

Tanz seemed to echo the optimism around online content that other digital execs have been showing this fall, like Lionsgate’s Curt Marvis last week. So have we turned the proverbial corner in terms of a self-sustaining industry?

“I think we’re gettting there,” Tanz added. “Between the ContentFilm and the Rogers deal, and the US ad-supported online, we feel really good about the business model.”

And checking in on Vuguru wouldn’t be complete without nudging them for a clue as to when we in the States will get to see Prom Queen: The Homecoming getting its online bow.

“We’ve started to gather a lot more momentum behind it in terms of sponsors,” said Tanz. “Rogers has already launched it in Canada. It will come out with a distributor and advertiser combination behind it.”

(Photo above from Pretty Tough, courtesy of Vuguru)