Expanding on their existing partnership, Bonnier, one of the largest U.S. magazine publishers, and Net2TV, a startup connected-TV media company, will create 30-minute TV programs for Bonnier titles "Cycle World" and "Saveur." The companies have also renewed the current "Popular Science" program. All of the programs are built by curating short-form videos into shows that are available on Net2TV's Portico TV service, on millions of connected TVs.

As I've written in the past, Net2TV's model is to create ad-supported TV-like experiences using high-quality short-form videos from branded partners. The videos are curated and assembled into 30, 60 and 90-minute programs, often accompanied by hosts who help create a narrative. The programs are typically updated on a weekly basis for now, with more frequent updates planned in the future. The Portico service is delivered from the cloud, accelerating the scaling of its integration with multiple connected TVs and devices.

Tom Morgan, Net2TV's president and CEO, told me yesterday that the 30-minute programs will have a 1-minute ad break every 7 minutes, consisting of two 30-second spots. Portico uses LiveRail's ad platform for dynamic ad insertion, which also enables both a revenue share model with the connected TV companies and also an affiliate model in which these companies get a share of the ad inventory to sell themselves. Samsung is already taking advantage of the latter approach.

Part of Net2TV's premise is that advertisers will be more comfortable allocating spending on high-quality online video that looks and feels more like traditional lean-back TV, but is further enhanced with dynamic insertion, targeting and interactivity. Tom noted that based on their experiences to date, video from branded providers like Bonnier's titles draw the best viewership. Other partnerships are in the works.

The Bonnier-Portico programs are in line with numerous other online original long-form programming, most recently yesterday's announcement by AOL of its first long-form series, "Connected."

The Saveur program launches today (see screen shot below) and Cycle World will launch in late April.