If you want proof that the center of media power is in fact moving to Silicon Valley, look no further than this morning's news that Google is syndicating video content from Dow Jones, Conde Nast and other companies on whose very souls are written "New York City."

NYT: Google in Content Deal with Media Companies

Google is working with Dow Jones & Company, Condé Nast, Sony BMG Music Entertainment and other large content companies to syndicate their video content on other Web sites. The videos appear inside Google ad boxes on sites that are relevant to the content of the videos, and advertisements run during or after the content. Google shared the ad revenue with the video provider and with the sites that show the videos.

The ads are part of Google’s larger initiative to gain traction with consumer goods companies who spend billions on brand advertising. Founded as a text-based search company, Google’s early advertisers were smaller companies and advertisers who bought ads to generate direct sales rather than to build brand recognition.

Large brand advertisers still spend the bulk of their money on television advertising, but Google sees potential for them to spend more online through the use of video ads.

It's a substantial expansion of Video AdSense, where there's a real value to sites to run Google's video advertising. Aside from the pennies paid on click-throughs there is no editorial value to adding AdSense text ads to your site. And adding a video commercial is either just plain annoying or irrelevant to your readers. So Google is taking a page from TV and making advertising part of editorial content. Except, in true Google fashion, they are getting other people to deliver the edit, in exchange for access to the Google placement networks some of us still fondly refer to as the Internet.

There's a transformative effect on media companies. Fire the marketing department. Stop trying to promote the corporate "site" (yeah, right) and engage in simple viral marketing. Use Google to put your content out there, where new viewers can discover it and win new customers. That model makes it hard to justify a marketing department, a sales department, maybe even an editorial department.

Or ... maybe not so fast. Maybe New Yorkers are a little more savvy than that.

Adam Cahan, executive vice president of strategy and business development for MTV Networks, said that his networks want to make sure that when their content is distributed on the Web, that it links to their sites.

“In the same way that Harry Potter book sales grow from a Harry Potter movie, you would not give the movie away to support the book sales,” Mr. Cahan said. “There is a balance between promotion and consumption that is up to the original content producer to manage.”