But when a branded series is treated like a PR initiative, there’s more risk but potentially greater reward.”

Could you clarify this part? Does it mean that “Leap Year” will NOT be using “paid views”?

In a previous article NTV has discussed the use of “paid views”:

http://gigaom.com/video/paid-distribution-becomes-a-mainstay-of-web-series/

How exactly does one generate a “paid view”? (ok that might be a trade secret, but does anyone know?). What do we know about the people who are responsible for “paid views”. What do we know about their viewing habits. Why do most paid views appear to be almost invisible if you look at discussions on social networks. Does a “paid view” ever make it past the first second of a video, or worse, the preroll before a video? Do such “paid views” actually view the content they are directed to……or do they simply click away because they were “tricked” in some way?

Finally how does the approach being used by “Leap Year” differ from this classical “paid view” approach.

Yes, it is an interesting way to introduce a new brand to a new audience. Look, we are talking about them already, so that is something (how many dollars is that worth?)

It is nice to see the show will be on several platforms and non geoblocked. That is very important…………and to those who support geoblocking I fully understand the reasons why some choose to use it … I just think its horrid how it breaks the fabric of the “web” and makes “embeds” problematic for those who have a global readership. We are one “media World now and it is time to recognize that fact by supporting the World Wide Web and not regionally censored versions of it.

Anyway, I guess we will all be watching episode one very soon now on our preferred distribution platform, so good luck with the project and I hope it pays off for the sponsor.

Hopefully in time those who use the “presented by” model will give the “creatives” much more room to produce the most compelling content for the viewer……..that is really the “holy grail” from a viewer perspective, and in time hopefully sponsors will see true value in that model as well.

We actually just launched the Hiscox SMB Facebook page maybe 2 weeks ago. The Leap Year page was launched I think in February. They’re kind of a new player in the U.S. for small biz insurance so we wanted time to get people familiar with Leap Year first; get them to see the content first and the brand second if that makes sense. Leap Year is an introduction for Hiscox to this audience so it wouldn’t have made as much sense (to us anyway) to expect the audience to engage with the brand before they’d gotten to know who they were through Leap Year.

I agree, it will be interesting to see how the series benefits the sponsor in this way but we’re confident in the idea that the real-life startup entrepreneurs out there who could benefit from knowing about Hiscox will somehow relate to the characters and situations we portray in Leap Year. Hopefully, if they like the show, they’ll like the sponsor who funded it for them, you know?

Thanks as always for keeping me on my toes :)

http://www.dailymotion.com/LeapYearTV

13 047 views for the trailer on that one……

Right?

http://www.youtube.com/leapyeartv
http://blip.tv/leap-year
http://leapyear-tv.tumblr.com/

Is there a time delay on those channels?

http://www.facebook.com/HiscoxSmallBiz

What will be significant is how many “likes” on the “web series” translate into “likes” for the company itself……at least if you are going to attribute a monetary value of $3.60 to each fan. Yes, it is possible that the “likes” for a web series on FB have some monetary value but is it still $3.60 in terms of branded content?