Did you notice that Google now offers certain “premium” content for free if you watch advertising? What a novel concept, I wonder if anyone has thought of that before…

With Google’s just announced “test” of “free today” sponsored streaming of premium videos at Google Video, Schmidt may no longer be disclaiming that as the company seeks to “organize the world’s information,” it is a media company.

Bogatin’s piece rightly points out the hypocrisy coming out of Google Video.

We’ll get back to you after the Google overlords have convinced everyone that they invented the 30-second spot.

A company that you’ve probably never heard of just beat iTunes and BitTorrent to the punch:

Through its deal with Warner, Guba will initially sell almost 200 movie and television titles (quickly expanding shortly thereafter), ranging from new releases like “Good Night and Good Luck” to ‘classic’ television content like “The Jetsons”.

Guba will offer two services to users. View-On-Demand (VOD) is priced from $1.79 to $2.99 and affords the user a 24 hour rental. Download-To-Own (DTO) will range from $9.99 to $19.99 for newer titles and allows unlimited viewing on 2 computers and 1 portable device, while allowing a single DVD burn for backup. The service will play content through Windows Media Player on a 640X480 screen. Downloads are progressive and will run up to 1.3MB/second.

Unfortunately, the pricing model for VOD will be problematic as iTunes sells TV episodes for $1.99 that don’t expire after 24 hours. Welcome to the party Guba.

Unless you are live under the proverbial rock, the talk of the town has been Apple’s negotiations with studios to finally sell feature films on iTunes. What is interesting is that most people haven’t been discussing why this has taken so long. You see, unlike the music industry, Apple doesn’t have the studios over a barrel:

ITunes was the first etailer to start selling songs and TV shows online, but when it adds movies, it will enter a competitive market. Movielink and CinemaNow already sell permanent downloads of films. BitTorrent has a deal in place with Warner Bros. and is in talks with other studios. Amazon.com also will start selling movies online soon, possibly through its IMDb Web site.

And it brainwashes you better too:

Prime-time ABC television shows were viewed more than 11 million times on the Web in the first month of a test by the Walt Disney Co of whether consumers will watch ads online if the shows are free.

An online exit survey posted the first week of the two-month trial showed that 87 percent of respondents could recall the advertisers that sponsored the episodes they watched.

That compares with typical ad recall of about 40 percent for commercials viewed on television, industry sources said.

A retooled version of the free site, which incorporates data gathered during the test, will be launched in the fall, Disney officials said.

Recently in the NYTimes:

In the first episode of “Lovespring International,” a new comedy on the Lifetime channel about a dysfunctional dating service in Southern California, the owner of the agency storms into an office, furious at two employees.

“Do you know how many people have signed up for Perfectmatch.com in the last five minutes?” she barks. “1,623.”

In real life, Perfectmatch.com is a subscription-based online dating service with more than three million members. On “Lovespring International,” Perfectmatch.com will appear throughout the season as a faceless nemesis that is mentioned flatteringly as it steals clients from Lovespring.

Call it sponsorship, branded entertainment or product integration, but Perfectmatch’s deal with Lifetime is increasingly common in advertising — weaving the name of a product into a television show or film, not as an obvious ad, but as a distinct part of the story. (In another episode, a disgruntled client screams, “I would have had better luck on Perfectmatch.com.")

As the idea of the 30-second spot becomes extinct, the TV world is scrambling to come up with new ideas. Branded entertainment is a return to the early years of TV before the advent of content-interrupting commercials. Branded entertainment has the advantage that it survives ripping, bittorrenting, Tivoing, slingboxing and just about any other kind of time-shifting or place-shifting technology.  The problem is that this is the equivalent of burning in a giant corporate logo over the entire screen. Sure, everyone will see your logo but does that mean they want to watch a show all about your logo?

Naturally AdAge is the type of publication to understand the importance of this development:

Walt Disney Co.’s ABC issued a statement today confirming the network was prepared to negotiate with agencies using the existing ratings metric of “live only,” meaning it will only charge marketers for viewers who watch programs when they are aired (and not for viewers who watch later using a digital video recorder).

The issue of which metric to base this year’s upfront negotiations on has held up deals. Media agencies were united in their stand that they would only pay for live viewers, while the broadcast networks wanted to charge for those viewers who watched programs either later that same day (live plus same day) or later that week (live plus seven days). But late last week, ABC began to soften its stance, offering to negotiate with buyers on “live plus same day.”

Perhaps the silver lining in the networks’ clouds is that they will try to make up for the loss of advertising in TV via their new internet properties.