First Season of Popular Machinima Series Garnered Over 14 Million Views –Series Will Also Air on FEARnet Cable Network

SANTA MONICA, Calif. and LOS ANGELES, Feb. 3, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — Machinima, the number one video entertainment brand for gamers around the world, and Lionsgate LGF +2.62% , a leading diversified global entertainment company, have partnered to renew Machinima’s original zombie apocalypse comedy series “Bite Me.” It was announced today by Allen DeBevoise, Chairman and CEO of Machinima, and Lionsgate’s Curt Marvis, who orchestrated the Company’s partnership with Machinima and is overseeing the series for Lionsgate.

 On March 6th, the second season of “Bite Me” will premiere on the Machinima Network online (YouTube.com/Machinima) and on FEARnet, the premium cable network for horror, thriller and suspense, backed by Lionsgate, Sony and Comcast.

“”Bite Me” is yet another example of the type of premium content that we know resonates with our global audience of highly engaged and influential young males,” said DeBevoise. “We’re thrilled to partner with Lionsgate on the second season and look forward to expanding this into a global franchise.” Continue Reading

New or recycled perspectives on extraterrestrial life will always be the fascination of sci-fi producers everywhere.  Aliens and UFO sightings continue to capture the imagination, and as web series begin to evolve and boost production value, a quality story can be told on the web, directly at the targeted audience of sci-fi geeks and conspiracy theorists whom are already there.  The latest series aiming for this audience is RCVR, a new X-Files type of show coming from one of YouTube’s top channels, Machinima.  But while its show structure seems aimed at The X-Files, its marketing is pure Lost.  This is an extremely good blueprint to launch your web series. Continue Reading

With all the talk about courting the increasingly affluent U.S. hispanic consumers, I’m actually surprised that this hasn’t happened sooner. Apparently Kmart is the first major brand to sponsor an original web series on YouTube aimed directly at Spanish-speaking American consumers. The new series,Madres Y Comadres, bowed on a custom branded YouTube page this week with 8 episodes, all in Spanish, centered around two Hispanic mothers swapping stories of raising kids these days.

There will be a new animated webseries on YouTube,”Spider-Man 2099″,from ComicBookMovie’s themrcharlesbryant1, Charles Bryant and Saadiq Springs.This animated series takes place in Marvel Comics’  futuristic timeline of 2099, about Miguel O’Hara, the Spider-Man of 2099, and his missions and stories as Spider-Man.  Unlike any other Spider-Man; Peter Parker, this Spider-Man; O’Hara, holds futuristic power and technology very much differentiated from the original Spider-Man, and experiences much situations that are stranger and even more intense then situations with the Spider-Man of the past.  This series will premiere on YouTube, and animated by Charles Bryant and written by Charles Bryant and Saadiq Springs in 2011.

Pursuing TV Dollars With Big-Money Projects From Howcast, Endemol, Ben Silverman’s Electus and Others

YouTube has pitched advertisers on funding big-budget web shows featuring stars like Kobe Bryant, Lady Gaga and “Dancing with the Stars” host Brooke Burke, asking millions of dollars to make them happen.

The pitches are part of YouTube’s foray into Hollywood for polished, TV-style web video that can attract the kind of advertisers that devote most of their ad budgets on TV. The concepts were pitched as branded entertainment, shows created for or in conjunction with advertisers. YouTube is separately trying to seed the market for professional web video by funding as much as $5 million in startup costs for producers to create YouTube content channels around advertiser-friendly categories like food, fashion, sports and comedy.

The celebrity shows that YouTube recently proposed to advertisers — so-called YouTube Originals — would make the video site, best known for user-generated content and music videos, look more like a traditional TV network than ever before, according to pitch documents obtained by Advertising Age.

For instance:

• “Dream Makers,” a series in partnership with “Big Brother” producer Endemol that would feature Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant rewarding “outstanding young people” with with the “dream of a lifetime.” YouTube is asking marketers for $1.7 million to exclusively sponsor a run of six to eight five-minute episodes.
• “The Incubator,” a series from Ben Silverman’s Electus featuring 36 short webisodes with 10 entrepreneurs as they turn ideas into businesses. The price tag: $3.5 million for six months of exclusivity.
• And, most ambitious, a live Lady Gaga concert in New York proposed for 2011, streamed on the web through YouTube and Vevo. Price tag to sponsor the one-off event? Nine million dollars for a sponsorship along with Samsung, including a presence on Lady Gaga’s YouTube channel and Facebook page.

Some of the series pitched by YouTube will never see the light of day, or a studio may opt to get their own sponsorship and proceed on their own. Some have already come to fruition: Howcast’s “Chief Household Officer,” pitched by YouTube as a 10-week series for $2.8 million, is running on YouTube with a sponsorship deal from HP.

An exec close to the deal said these series are distinct from the “channel” strategy being pursued by former Netflix exec and now YouTube VP-Programming Robert Kyncl. Rather, they are pitched as branded entertainment that wouldn’t get the go-ahead without a big-ticket advertiser attached.

YouTube has been in the branded entertainment business for some time, but its involvement in selling the shows and working with Hollywood studios signal new ambition to win major marketing budgets. Indeed the price tags suggest YouTube is seeking higher ad rates than seen typically on TV. Assuming YouTube can deliver a hefty 100 million views to a series for $3.5 million in six months, that’s still a cost-per-thousand viewers of $35, higher than a typical TV ad rate of $20, and more in a league with Hulu, which sells TV spots on the web for $40.

YouTube can’t be faulted for a lack of ambition. Top YouTube execs like to say they’re creating the next generation of cable TV, built and scaled for the web. But instead of 500-odd channels on TV, YouTube is making a play for the “next 10,000,” appealing to all sorts of niches and interest groups.

Despite all that, outside executives involved in the talks argue that YouTube still isn’t thinking big enough. “I’d rather see them take a more aggressive approach, and get brands involved earlier, rather than re-create the cable model,” said one marketing exec involved in the talks.

Key to driving views to shows, and revenue to producers, is a redesign of YouTube itself, which hasn’t changed much since it was founded in 2005. YouTube has already released an iteration of the redesign, Cosmic Panda, which owes a lot to Hulu in its look and feel. This relaunch, targeted for January, will redefine navigation to rely less on search algorithms and more on human curation of video.

While not unheard of, YouTube’s asking price is significantly higher than the typical budgets for web series. If YouTube can get its asking price, it will change the economics of online video and add another significant player in the market, along with Hulu, Netflix, and perhaps soon, Amazon.

“Every time you see a YouTube or Hulu or Netflix move into original content creation, it’s more opportunity for brands,” said one agency exec. “It’s a bigger playing field and more ways to reach an audience.”

By: Michael Learmonth

source: http://adage.com/article/digital/youtube-s-sell-buy-a-web-series/228712/