“You think about even the best and brightest minds in Hollywood and how many times do you have hits versus misses?” says Harvin Furman, Starcom’s SVP COE Digital Acceleration, in an interview with Beet.TV.

Furman also observes that the two competing business models around video — the one optimized for TV, where substantial resources are invested in developing a limited slate of programming, and the other for digital, where a greater volume of content is produced cheaply to see what bubbles up to the top — are actually starting to merge. By way of example, he points to Disney, which last year acquired Maker Studios. Their programming often covers similar Disney themes, like fairy tales and superheroes, but Maker’s content is shorter-form with a sensibility that’s been honed for a millennial audience.

Another interesting trend that Furman saw play out at this year’s upfronts was that networks were talking up their blockbuster hit strategies and weren’t touting their digital assets, which were a major theme two years ago.

“They’re still trying to remind advertisers of the power of sight and sound and motion in television,” he says.

The talent that Maker Studios works with is closely involved in programming, production and branded content, Krebs says. “Brands needs to understand that creators have an audience for a reason and speak in their voice and if they don’t speak in their voice the creators won’t do it,” he says. Specifically, if a creator produces a video that feels inauthentic, chances are they’ll lose audience and therefore money. That sort of “self-preservation” helps ensure the branded content process is collaborative and worthwhile to both parties, he says.

Maker Studios is owned by Disney, which acquired the digital content network for up to $950 million this past spring. “There is a natural alignment. We are in a huge movie production company now so there are dozens of other stories we can attach to online video,” he explains, pointing to a video for the Maleficent film in which a Maker Studios makeup artist showed her audience how to become Maleficent. “Disney didn’t have that before joining Maker. We have folks who bring those things to life,” he says.

We interviewed Krebs at the Beet.TV leadership summit on branded video. You can find additional videos from the event here.

Comedy is a mainstay of entertainment, he says. Even without YouTube, it would still be around.

“But what YouTube did was allow people who didn’t have access through the front door of the Hollywood system…figure out their voices on their own,” he says.

Thanks to digital, there is content we never would have seen before created by people who would never have had the chance to publish via a traditional medium.

“You can do whatever you want online, whereas in TV there’s a million people making a million decisions that homogenizes everything.”

We spoke with Gharaibeh at the 2014 Cannes Lions Festival. You can view other Beet.TV coverage of the event here.

This amount of mobile consumption is higher that the 40 percent that YouTube ascribes.

Maker was purchased by The Walt Disney Company earlier this year in a deal worth between $500 and as much as $900.

We spoke with McPherson at the Cannes Lions Festival earlier this week.

Please find all our videos from Cannes published right here.