[clarification needed][4] Webisodes have become increasingly common in the midst of the post-broadcast era, which implies that audiences are drifting away past free-to-use television design.
[9]: 2 Webisodes are part of a trend called branded entertainment, which is growing due to the increased demand for marketers to find new methods to reach consumers in an era where the traditional media is losing viewers to the social web.
[11] : 81 In 2006, for example, hip-hop entrepreneur Sean Combs, aka P. Diddy, started his own YouTube channel called "DiddyTV," which he used to post webisodes and blog about his life on tour.
[12] Combs built hype around the web series by using his social media sites, such as Myspace, to direct users to the YouTube channel.
[13] In 2011, Jeff Schroeder, known for his role in the reality series The Amazing Race, assisted AT&T with a digital marketing scheme based around webisodes.
Original comedies have become the preferred genre for webisodes because they deliver a low budget format for experimentation and prompt results.
[8]: 15 The model for the popular website Funny or Die, is based entirely on distributing a variety of original comedy web series.