According to FYI’s blog this morning, the company has raised $1 million in capital and will be seeking to raise a Series A round in the near future.

For Your Imagination, a New York City based online media company and executive producers of acclaimed web series DadLabs and Break a Leg, has received an additional $1 million in seed capital from ConsensusOne Ventures, LLC and will partner with the firm to raise a Series A round of capital.

CEO Paul Kontonis tells OVW that, “The funding will be allocated to cover our operating expenses for the rest of this year. We anticipate that our gross revenues will continue to grow, we are already at 60% of 2007’s gross revenues, and will provide enough capital to expand into new video content networks that will be revenue generators as well. Given the state of the financial markets we are focusing on growing our business upon a very stable financial base and to further develop our revenue generating channels.”

I’ve been a fan of Viddler’s platform for a while, mainly for its simplicity and high quality encoding. I turned to Viddler for my personal online video player needs when Brightcove abandoned their personal services.

On Feb 26th, Viddler introduced the first official release of their platform’s wordpress plug in, enabling WP users to embed Viddler-hosted video directly from the Wordpress dashboard. Nice touch for people who have already adopted Viddler as their “not-YouTube” video platform and happen to be bloggers. Like me. Works similarly as the Slide plug in for Facebook, grabbing videos from YouTube.

Saul Hansell of the New York Times is reporting that Google has begun testing video ads on their search pages.

“The big insight of Google wasn’t text ads; it was that the ads should be conducive to the format. We were doing text-based search that was all textual. Visual ads don’t work in that format,” Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search products and user experience told Saul in their interview.

“We don’t want all sorts of video and banner ads all over the site all the time,” Ms. Mayer said. “People who advertise a movie want to show a trailer. Why shouldn’t they have the same format we use for search results and have a little plus box that says watch the trailer?”

Google will be slowly introducing video ads with a small “plus sign” icon next to search results that contain video, according to Hansell’s Bits Blog. Google has been testing multiple ways to leverage video, including YouTube’s overlay graphical ads. Video units were introduced to AdSense in October. Rest assured, this won’t be the last video development for AdSense.

Wi-FiTV’s Newsblog has the Superbowl ads up and ready for you to catch early, so you can still tivo through the big game later. You can watch them as a consecutive stream or individually by clicking on the On Demand box and selecting the advertisement.

SpikeTV also has a collection of this year’s ads in case you can’t wait until later. Oddly enough, you’ll see :15 second pre-rolls before every other ad you watch. And, to save you the trouble of watching stuttering, broken up streams from GoDaddy during the game, head over there before the rests of the world does to watch the Danica Patrick “Exposure” commercial that will be teased during the game.

For a look at the best ads from years past, instead of hunting around YouTube, head over to www.superbowl-ads.com.

As the writer’s strike lingers on (hey, at least Broadway is back), more and more people throw their opinions into the mix. One of the most rational I’ve seen lately comes from Shelly Palmer. I’ve enjoyed the conversations we’ve had the few times we’ve met, but his recent Media 3.0 newsletter reminded me why I enjoy chatting with him so much.

If they’d just set a three year time limit on the Advanced Media portion of the deal, they could promise the writer’s 100% of the profits — there won’t be any! That’s a bit of hyperbole, but it’s not entirely inaccurate. Guys — we’re in a transition period, any deal you make today will be completely obsolete by the time the ink is dry. You’ve made your point, let’s revisit this when everyone understands the issues better than we do today.

Well said, Shelly. Its not like any of the striking writers are getting paid for spoofing their “day jobs” on YouTube.

A step aside from online video to point out a post on Barrons Tech Trader Daily about a company I worked for a while back, bidz.com.

A negative report this week from Citron Research has sparked a steep selloff in bidz.com stock after pointing to irregular bidding activity and a major shareholder and supplier convicted in the 80s for fencing stolen jewelry.

Bidz today went back on the offensive, threatening legal action on a day when the Citron website has experienced Denial of Service attacks

In case you’ve ever considered buying from Bidz, consider these tales from my time there: the “$1 no reserve” claim they flaunt has always been a joke.

When items were sold below a certain price they would error out in the system preventing the sale. Customer service was instructed to tell users the merchandise was damaged or oversold.

There were countless complaints that a piece of jewelry a customer purchased appeared used, had an engraving, or came with a photocopied or otherwise altered certificate of authenticity.

I never myself saw shill bidding, but I did see a number of user accounts with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of merchandise purchased at prices way above what a reasonable person would pay for them.

If you buy from bidz, or own stock, good luck. Frankly I’m amazed none of this came out sooner, I never thought the company would be around this long.

“The ironic reality of the writers’ strike is its irrelevancy,” leads Jack Myers’ blog post on Mediapost.

Not unlike the music industry, Myers points out that, “Today, fewer than one network television series in twelve breaks through to profitability. This one program in twelve has to support the enormous operating overhead of those who risk capital to develop and produce the programs. It is a business of failure, not success. The Writers Guild of America wants a piece of that American Dream — the ability to fail time and time and time again, and ultimately have a profitable business.”

I can’t envision any scenario where writers get to simply sit and write and expect to benefit financially whether or not their scripts are ever developed. So perhaps they must fight the good fight now to protect what little future upside they have in any distribution model.

Have a busy week at work or on the road and look at all the things you miss. Variety’s blog has been hosting a “Funniest Web Videos” awards. While the voting is already closed, you can visit their site and check out the finalists.

Brian Monahan, Director of IPG’s Emerging Media Lab leads a discussion on looking at online video beyond the pre-roll experience and more of a platform form brands. He’s joined by Ian Schafer from Deep Focus, Corey Weiss from Palisades Media, Peter Winkler from Teletrax and Brain Aucoin from Mediaedge.

Aucoin pointed out the irony of video consumption right now. People are simultaneously watching on the biggest screens ever available to them as well as the smallest. Schafer asks the question about how to advertise around the content that people are watching. TV content is a known entity, but online video can be anything (including monkeys drinking their own urine. (yes, thats his example.))

Weiss is working with online webisodes artists like Happyslip, which, as content created for the web, takes advantage of the medium, generating huge numbers of comments to the videos, including 14 video responses in just three days. With all of the content available, it is relatively easy for marketers to find content that is relevant to their brands.

Schafer points out that online media is inherently more measurable than TV and that the internet is starting to shake out in terms of tiers, just like TV. But reach is still a challenge for any one online video outlet. Distributing content across multiple distribution channels (Bebo, MySpace, etc) is key to having reach that rivals network TV.

Ian mentioned that he recently worked with ScanScout to help advertisers leverage user generated content. Their Brand Protector technology allows for “negative keyword targeting” that allows brands to avoid particular content that may be embarrassing for their brands.

And this is one of the challenges for advertisers. With 50% of streams being user generated content, brands want to be where the eyeballs are, but also need to be protective of their brand.

Branded entertainment is something that all advertisers are focused on. For studios, their advertising is content, and they want it treated as such. But advertisers are now trying to figure out how to create entertainment that can serve as a vehicle for a brand message. Ian Schafer talks about Tide’s effort to create content, with their new show about some young professionals that live in LA and wash their clothes with Tide. “It’s….not awesome,” and he’s right. More brands need to think about content first, branding second in this space.

Brian Monahan asks, “Whats the problem with pre-roll?” Consumers don’t want to wait for the content they selected. Users expect a different experience than what TV delivers, but they aren’t getting it. Schafer points out that pre-roll isn’t the problem, but the frequency and ad rotation is. One pre-roll is ok. Ad after ad after ad is not.

Why is there such a disparity in online video ad spending vs TV ad spending, and what is it going to take to make that shift? Corey Weiss believes that we haven’t proven the model yet. Once there are more case studies, the floodgates will open. That isn’t just for pre-roll and overlays, but for integration and video in general. Ian Schafer believes that if the TV buyers did the buys, that would also be a big catalyst. Its easier for them to spend the money than for a true shift to occur. But because of the complexity of the medium, TV buyers aren’t equipped to handle it just yet.

Typical for LA, everyone must be stuck in traffic. Despite having more than 400 registered attendees, the room isn’t even half full for the start of OMMA Video Hollywood.

Be sure to check Mediapost’s live event blog for feedback on the even from attendees at the conference.

Steve Smith kicking it off with some stats on the growth of streaming video across different types of video content, and how users are blurring the lines between platforms.