Written by Liz Gannes
Posted Wednesday, October 15, 2008 at 10:57 AM PT

Google’s Big New Content Push: Poptub

Google is making its most serious foray into video production yet, with the new video series Poptub, a sort of Entertainment Tonight for YouTube.

Google’s direct involvement with the creation of the show — which we are frustrated to admit we’ve been trying to ascertain for months now — was revealed in a story in the Hollywood Reporter today.

Poptub is actually a recreation of Yahoo’s cancelled The 9, with the same perky host, Maria Sansone, the same sponsor, Pepsi, and the same production company, New York City-based Embassy Row. However, it’s now meant to be a curator for Google’s sprawling video site, YouTube.

The show, which is co-hosted by Nick Vitale, comes out about three times a day, with short interview segments, hosted video roundups, most-viewed countdowns, and straight-up video compilations. Poptub has actually been posting episodes since Sept. 7, and has been heavily promoted (at least in my experience) via ads on YouTube itself. However, its audience so far is modest, with episodes rarely scoring more than 10,000 views and fewer than 4,000 subscribers. It’s using the smart strategy of riding on the coattails of YouTube stars like HotforWords and Obama Girl, though that hasn’t really paid off yet.

Poptub will have the added boost of being distributed through Google Content Network, the advertising-as-distribution setup that Google refined alongside Seth MacFarlane’s Cartoon Cavalcade of Comedy. GCN, which features video content in advertising units on demographically aligned sites, helped drive Cavalcade to 14 million views in its first three weeks.

Poptub is reportedly committed to 3 billion impressions across GCN and YouTube before the end of the year. Better get cracking!

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Topic: Hitlines, Shows & Stars

Comments (6)

Liz, do you know the video ad sense take rate. i.e. how many video are they streaming in the “video as distribution” setup?

Akash — 11:47 AM on October 15, 2008 Reply
We haven’t heard anything about that yet. Would be good to know.

In the HR Poptub story the folks behind Cavalcade wouldn’t talk about that either, except in vague terms. “[Dan Goodman of MRC] credits GCN for driving much of the traffic to YouTube” is the quote, which I just saw paidContent pick up as saying that GCN was the “primary driver” of traffic to Cavalcade on YouTube. That seems like an overreaching interpretation to me, but maybe it’s just semantics.

Liz Gannes, NewTeeVee — 12:00 PM on October 15, 2008 Reply
“Curating” sites have become the new “aggregate” site. PopTub fits right in it seems, gathering information to meet the needs of visual consumers and making it more convenient for them to see what they want all in one place. Newsy.com is one site that plans to do this as well, though not in affiliation with any other site, unlike PopTub. I know newser.com is another such site as well as the newly launched The Daily Beast. Each one will simply need to find it’s niche so as to differentiate.

Jessi — 4:05 PM on October 15, 2008 Reply
We’ve been seeing a lot of Poptub AdSense ads on mefeedia.com – just saw one here is next to The Fringe TV Show page:
http://www.mefeedia.com/feeds/51296/

Can play and change videos right in the ad, without leaving our site – very effective! I like it!!

Frank Sinton — 4:11 PM on October 15, 2008 Reply
This still seems too much like television for my liking.

Nick — 7:47 PM on October 15, 2008 Reply
Great article!! very effective stuff. Got to love google. At times

Occult Holiday Guy — 3:52 PM on June 4, 2009 Reply

Linkbacks (5)

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Google dips second toe into content —… — 1:35 PM on October 15, 2008
[...] is disingenuous. And their track record of suck is undeniable. POPTUB is under the gun to try and produce some ungodly amount of views to justify their existence before the end of the year, and NEWS FLASH!, they aren’t going to get anywhere close to that number. Despite all the [...]

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[...] Google Big New Content Push Poptub Posted by root 33 minutes ago (http://newteevee.com) Adsense ads on mefeedia com just saw one here is next to the fringe tv show page this still seems too much like television for my liking if your comment doesn 39 t show up immediately it may have gotten caught in our trusty but marketing consulting by acs Discuss | Bury | News | Google Big New Content Push Poptub [...]

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