So, it’s finally happened. What you ask? A content owner, and not a shabby one at that, Disney is streaming a feature length movie, in its entirety, for free, albeit with a couple of adverts. There is a single 30 second Post Cocoa Pebbles commercial, followed by a Disney commercial at the beginning of Finding Nemo, which ended last week. I believe Monsters Inc is next.

And there is this impossibly cool companion banner that kind of glides in from the lower right-hand side of the web page. Compared to sitting through what seems like an interminable 15 minutes of trailers at the beginning of some blockbuster movies, this is great.

You can’t fast-forward, rewind, or anything, but it’s still great to see content owners begin to dabble in streaming high-value content. If they had ways to monetise it on sites all over the web and they could syndicate the distribution of it, and still track everything, they’d get a lot more eyeballs, I bet.

- Jayant Kadambi

Digitas and it’s newly formed brand content division, The Third Act:, held their first ever Digital Content NewFront ’08 yesterday in Chelsea, where video content production companies showcased their original, web-specific video productions and discussed the state of original online video content in front of a standing room only audience of fellow producers, agency folks and advertisers. There were around a dozen different companies from the space, including ABC/Disney’s Stage9, showing their sizzle reels and participating in panel discussions.

While there was a disagreement over whether the internet has seen its first real original video hit and how “hit” status should be determined, there were some very consistent themes across panels and companies. Most notably, a repeated theme was that original video content produced specifically for the web presents advertisers with a chance to get involved early in the process of production with the content creators (writers, directors, editors, producers). Rather than “lease” an association with content via a :30 spot in a TV show pod, brands have a unique opportunity to “own” original content in an evergreen fashion through brand integration and product placement.

Questions remained on the overall efficacy and ROI such initiatives would yield the advertisers, and that leads to a bigger question on how many forward thinking brand marketers would be willing to take a risk and invest in the plethora of content now available. The NewFront however, did a respectable job in helping present the opportunity to advertisers and was a solid step in moving this dynamic segment of the online video landscape forward.

- Gian Lombardi