Head on over to Kevin Nalt’s Will Video For Food and read his post on video sponsorships, product placement and selling out. Its spot on.

In it, he cites 5 trends for online video product placement. I particularly liked #4:

4. There will be no trend four. Trend four is often wrong, which itself is a growing trend.

So go read the other trends, and the rest of the post.

Hysterical video from Bikini Zone.

Uncensored Bootlegged Japanese Bikini Commercial - Watch more free videos

Let us know what you think!

In a move much wiser than the WB made a few weeks ago, Comedy Central has begun a test offering of John Stewart’s Daily Show and Steven Cobert’s The Colbert Report on Web TV portal Hulu.

Just as Netflix has become the go-to destination for all things DVD, Hulu is quickly living up to its promise and potential to become the first stop for users looking for TV content online. The addition of a 480p viewing option is also very much appreciated by those of us streaming web content to our TVs.

With monetization rights management tools like FreeWheel hitting the market, syndicated content owners are getting the ad revenue they rightfully deserve, removing the risk to hyper syndication of content. We’ll be seeing more deals like this as specific destination sites become the one-stop-shop for the content you are looking for. YouTube’s quality, and lack of formal distribution deals with broadcasters, won’t cut it for long…..unless you still want to watch “Dog on Skateboard.”

I love a good coincidence. And this morning, I woke up to one.

Last night I was watching the movie “Untraceable,” staring Diane Lane. Quick synopsis: Psycho guy streams the torture and death of people online. The more people that go to the website, the faster they get killed. Social media at its worst.

This morning, The Today Show did a segment on a series of viral videos - “Fire in the Hole” - that are pranks on fast food drive thru employees. One victim found the video and got her attackers arrested. The punishment? Make a video, apologizing, and post it on YouTube.

Given that the prank videos have received millions of hits, and the apology a mere few thousand, I can’t help but wonder which direction this trend is headed.

Here’s the Today Show segment:

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.