I caught up with Justine Ezarik AKA iJustine at Macworld 09 and asked her about projects that she’s worked on where she was hired to appear on someone else’s show. I was interested in hearing her response because I’ve seen her in few sponsored shows that got very little traction except for their own websites.

The idea of using web video is that you are going to get millions of views. Some people still think you just make a video, post it for free and that video will go viral. Other marketers are more jaded and think that viral videos are snake skin oil. Well the truth about web video is somewhere in the middle.

If you were planning a trip you could drive a car to get there. But what if you didn’t have a car? Well then, it would be much easier to rent a car than building a car first and then driving there.

The same is true of web video. If you have a short term marketing goal you might be better of sponsoring someone else’s Internet video than building one of your own. If you have long term marketing goals you might want to think about creating your own web video series to market your brand, product or service and if you do so you might want to think about hiring a web celebrity to be in you online video project but be careful just having them in your video isn’t going to get you millions of views.

There are many people that think that iJustine has so many viewers and followers on Twitter because she is a young sexy blonde. Well those people are wrong. Justine understands the culture of social media and she’s not just some dumb blonde. Hiring her to just appear in your video is like hiring Michael Jordan to sit on your bench at your church’s private fundraising basketball game and not let him play or coach.

Web celebrities are Internet famous because they know how to move the ball. The understand the culture, they have a network of friends and fans and most importantly they aren’t just “talent.”