As most of you know, ClickZ’s Kate Kaye provides some of the most insightful analysis of the online ad market. Like me, she’s also a political junkie.

Now that the primary season is over, Kate explains to the Business News Network how the campaigns leveraged new media, and who succeeded, and why.

Ed sidenote: Are non-embeddable players even acceptable any more? Why I can’t share this clip with you right here is beyond me.

Weezer has done a pretty good job of virally promoting their new album. The music video for Pork and Beans featuring YouTube stars like Tay Zonday and Chris Crocker was the most watched video on YouTube this week. And they programmed a channel of additional content to keep viewers coming back.

Weezer Introducing Pork and Beans

Pork and Beans Music Video

Daft Dancers Doin’ Weezer

Pork & Beans: Will it Blend

Flight of the Conchords has a new video out on YouTube by way of their label Sub Pop Records. The band plans to write season two back in New Zealand and they’re on tour now so it may be a while before they’re back on HBO. In the meantime, enjoy this:

Above: Flight of the Conchords - Ladies of the World

This online video campaign, for AMP energy drinks, is my new favorite ad. BBDO Worldwide certainly nailed their audience. I’m predicting “Tea Partay” type numbers.

Head over to Adweek or Brightcove to watch.

Levis has their own version of the Ray-Ban sunglass flip; 2.4 million views in a week and counting:

Gawker lines them up side by side.

Moderator: Alan Schulman, Senior Vice President, Executive Creative Director, Executive Director of User Experience, imc2
Nick Johnson, VP National Sales, Internet & Broadband, NBC Universal
Rishi Malhotra, Vice President, Multiplatform Program Marketing, HBO
Jon Vlassopulos, Senior Vice President, Digital Media & Branded Entertainment, Endemol USA

Sizzle reels to kick off the “Great Content” panel. Seems like I’m watching a lot of TV. This is more “Big Love” than I’ve ever watched. And I can’t change the channel. But I digress.

New Endemol show, Get Close to the Sugar Babes is the first interactive, mobile only video show. Reminds me of the “30 Rock” clip from about a year ago….

Nick: Post strike, the creative palate is as wide as ever. Marketers and content creators are thinking about how to extend their content digitally from the get go. For Heroes, NBC will be continuing to extend the show, and working on better integration between the show offline and on. The question is how to get wider distribution. Will also be creating additional web only content.

Jon: As a content producer, more and more people coming to them to find out how to get involved. It is an interesting time creatively. We’re not just talking about static advertising, or just about repurposing, but post-strike we’re thinking more about the web as its own vehicle and how to create content for it.

Rishi: The strike created a massive awareness of the other screens on the writing side. Writers wanted to get paid, right? Now, the first thing you hear from writers is, “What else can we do for the other screens?”

Alan: More “Pre-purposing” of assets post-strike. Excellent term.

Alan: HBO doesn’t have brand adjacency, so what do you do to leverage these new screens?

Rishi: Using content to market content. Using the story as an on ramp for the larger story, building a franchise.

Alan: How do advertisers get involved in influencing the storyline?

Nick: The appetite for integration depends a lot on the maturity of the brand. Will Nissan affect the broader storyline? No. But having a good relationship with the show owners is key to finding opportunities that make sense for your brand.

Alan: What about cable? More opps?

Nick: yes. Shows like Top Chef provide a lot more opportunity for brands to integrate and capture frequency. Reality and challenge shows are easier to integrate brands and products.

Nick: If you want to be more efficient in a broadband environment, there are plenty of them. But not very many opportunities to justify the high CPMs that high quality content offers.

Alan: with all the “pre-purposing” of assets, who is paying for the creation of that content?

Rishi: When people ask late in the game, it adds production days and costs. The earlier you can build a “surround story” and bake it into the natural show production, the better.

If you are from the left or from the right - or somewhere in the middle - don’t let your politics get in the way of voting for your favorite Obama in :30 video.

More than 3 million people voted to nail down 15 finalists. Thanks, 3 million people. I didn’t want to sit through the terrible ones.

We’re not celebrities. They aren’t celebrities. The restaurant hasn’t been “the” place to been seen in years. But dining at New York City’s Balthazar last night, OVW met Narragansett Pictures’ Chip Benson, an independent television producer…..and a die-hard Red Sox fan.

Narragansett Pictures produces the Red Socks Diaries, a daily video blog comic strip - about the Red Sox - featuring improv comedian and voice actor Ron Hayden impersonating Big Papi David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez, and closer Jonathan “Papelbuns”

I’m obviously biased given the subject matter, but here’s a great example of high quality, well produced, short-form niche content that reaches a targeted and loyal audience. The duo previously produced another Sawks inspired show, The Red Sake Show, which you can still catch on Brightcove. Go Sox!

The New Yorker has a feature on a Business Week employee trapped for 41 hours in an elevator in the McGraw Hill Building. The magazine posted a video of the ordeal on YouTube which has become their first viral success. 2.2 million views so far. (Via 1 Tim Street)

The folks from Fox Sports’s Best Damn Sports Show Period have created a music (well, sorta) video ahead of this weekend’s football draft.

I hope they can analyze draft picks better than they can rap. Pretty funny, though. Lucky for us, the title of the post works because there isn’t a whole lot of pre-draft viral video floating around. Or is there?